It’s been a year since her wretched cad of a husband died, and Valencia is finally her own woman. Freedom is sweet, and life should be perfect. Until the new duke surfaces. Nothing like the haughty noblemen who populate the ton, Rhain, the newly minted Duke of Dedham, is a big brawny Welshman with an accent that makes Valencia’s knees go weak as he boldly moves into her home. With a pittance to her name, Valencia needs his support to remain in London and enjoy all the pleasures her new position as a merry widow has to offer. So a bargain is struck. Valencia will usher his sisters into Good Society and see them happily betrothed. In return, he’ll give her the financial security and independence she craves. But the more time they spend under the same roof, the more she realizes it's not safety she wants but the dangerously seductive Rhain.

It’s been a year since her wretched cad of a husband died, and Valencia is finally her own woman. Freedom is sweet, and life should be perfect. Until the new duke surfaces. Nothing like the haughty noblemen who populate the ton, Rhain, the newly minted Duke of Dedham, is a big brawny Welshman with an accent that makes Valencia’s knees go weak as he boldly moves into her home. With a pittance to her name, Valencia needs his support to remain in London and enjoy all the pleasures her new position as a merry widow has to offer. So a bargain is struck. Valencia will usher his sisters into Good Society and see them happily betrothed. In return, he’ll give her the financial security and independence she craves. But the more time they spend under the same roof, the more she realizes it's not safety she wants but the dangerously seductive Rhain.

The thrilling second book in New York Times bestselling author Sophie Jordan’s amazing new high-concept series, The Scandalous Ladies of London, which chronicles the lives of a group of affluent ladies reigning over glittering, Regency-era London, vying for position in the hierarchy of the ton. They are the young wives, widows, and daughters of London’s wealthiest families. The drama is big, the money runs deep, and the shade is real. Life is different in the ton.

“I liked my husband well enough...but I like him even better dead.”

It’s been a year since her wretched cad of a husband died, and Valencia, the Dowager Duchess of Dedham, is finally her own woman. Flitting from party to party, freedom is sweet and life should be perfect. Until the new duke surfaces.

Nothing like the haughty noblemen who populate the ton, Rhain, the newly minted Duke of Dedham, is a big brawny Welshman with an accent that makes Valencia’s knees go weak as he boldly moves into her home with his six wild unwed sisters. The rude and humorless usurper thinks her vain and spoiled. But with a pittance to her name, Valencia needs his support to remain in London and enjoy all the pleasures her new position as a merry widow has to offer.

So a bargain is struck. Valencia will usher his sisters into Good Society and see them happily betrothed. In return, he’ll give her the financial security and independence she craves. But the more time they spend beneath the same roof, the more she realizes it's not safety she wants but the dangerously seductive Rhain. Valencia has vowed never to risk marriage again. And yet how can she resist the tempting man when he might be the greatest adventure of her life?

Audiobook available, read by Mary Jane Wells

The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation and straightness. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name --- Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane and, above all, Miles. 1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue. 3 SHADES OF BLUE is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond.

The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation and straightness. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name --- Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane and, above all, Miles. 1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue. 3 SHADES OF BLUE is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond.

From the author of the definitive biography of Frank Sinatra, the story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists --- Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Bill Evans --- who came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue.

The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation and straightness. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name --- Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane and, above all, Miles. 1959 saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue.

3 SHADES OF BLUE is James Kaplan’s magnificent account of the paths of the three giants to the mountaintop of 1959 and beyond. It’s a book about music, business, race, heroin and the towns that gave jazz its home, from New Orleans and New York to Kansas City, Philadelphia, Chicago and LA. It’s an astonishing meditation on creativity and the strange hothouses that can produce its full flowering. It’s a book about the great forebears of this golden age, particularly Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the disrupters, like Ornette Coleman, who would take the music down truly new paths. And it’s about why the world of jazz most people know is a museum to this never-replicated period.

But above all, 3 SHADES OF BLUE is a book about three very different men --- their struggles, their choices, their tragedies, their greatness. Bill Evans had a gruesome downward spiral. John Coltrane took the mystic’s path into a space far away from mainstream concerns. Miles had three or four sea changes in him before the end. The tapestry of their lives is, in Kaplan’s hands, an American odyssey with no direction home. It is also a masterpiece, a book about jazz that is as big as America.

Audiobook available, read by Dion Graham

Camp counselor Cory Ansel --- who is 18 and aimless, and afraid to face her high-strung single mother’s disappointment --- is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel --- who is 18 and aimless, and afraid to face her high-strung single mother’s disappointment --- is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear.

A “superb…refreshing” (The New York Times Book Review) reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Demeter set on a lush private island, exploring themes of addiction and sex, family, independence, and who holds the power in a modern underworld.

Camp counselor Cory Ansel --- who is 18 and aimless, and afraid to face her high-strung single mother’s disappointment --- is no longer sure where home is when the father of one of her campers offers an alternative. The CEO of a pharmaceutical company, Rolo Picazo is wealthy, divorced and magnetic. He is also intoxicated by Cory. When Rolo offers her a job, Cory quiets an internal warning and allows herself to be ferried to his private island. Plied with luxury and the opiates manufactured by his company, she tells herself she’s in charge. Her mother, Emer, head of a teetering agricultural NGO, senses otherwise. With her daughter seemingly vanished, Emer crosses land and sea to heed a cry for help that only she can hear.

Alternating between the two women’s perspectives, FRUIT OF THE DEAD incorporates its mythic inspiration with a light touch and devastating precision. The result is a tale that explores love, control, obliteration and America’s own late capitalist mythos. Lyon’s reinvention of Persephone and Demeter’s story makes for a haunting, electric novel that readers will not soon forget.

Audiobook available, read by Carlotta Brentan and Joy Osmanski

All Ruby wanted was a fresh start. But after an early retirement and a relocation to a tight-knit community with her husband, Tom, and her daughter, Lily, her new beginning takes a turn. First her troubled daughter and then her husband disappear without a trace. Unsure how to cope, grief-ridden Ruby turns to her neighborhood friends to find a way forward with new hobbies, including a murder club where they try to solve cold cases. But just as unexpectedly as her family vanished, a body floats to the surface of the nearby lake. And everyone is sure the body belongs to Tom...everyone except Ruby. Determined to find out what happened to her family once and for all, Ruby digs into her neighbors’ lives, and her own, only to uncover secrets that raise more questions than they answer.

All Ruby wanted was a fresh start. But after an early retirement and a relocation to a tight-knit community with her husband, Tom, and her daughter, Lily, her new beginning takes a turn. First her troubled daughter and then her husband disappear without a trace. Unsure how to cope, grief-ridden Ruby turns to her neighborhood friends to find a way forward with new hobbies, including a murder club where they try to solve cold cases. But just as unexpectedly as her family vanished, a body floats to the surface of the nearby lake. And everyone is sure the body belongs to Tom...everyone except Ruby. Determined to find out what happened to her family once and for all, Ruby digs into her neighbors’ lives, and her own, only to uncover secrets that raise more questions than they answer.

When a body is presumed to be her missing husband’s, a woman must unravel the secrets of her own past to clear her name, find the truth and put her conscience to rest once and for all.

All Ruby wanted was a fresh start. But after an early retirement and a relocation to a tight-knit community with her husband, Tom, and her daughter, Lily, her new beginning takes a turn.

First her troubled daughter and then her husband disappear without a trace. Unsure how to cope, grief-ridden Ruby turns to her neighborhood friends to find a way forward with new hobbies, including a murder club where they try to solve cold cases.

But just as unexpectedly as her family vanished, a body floats to the surface of the nearby lake.

And everyone is sure the body belongs to Tom...everyone except Ruby.

Determined to find out what happened to her family once and for all, Ruby digs into her neighbors’ lives, and her own, only to uncover secrets that raise more questions than they answer. And the biggest question of all: Why doesn’t she recognize the body?

Audiobook available, read by Rachel L. Jacobs

When the narrator of THE HEARING TEST, an artist in her late 20s, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year --- a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned --- while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog. Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters --- with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians and philosophers --- making meaning becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival.

When the narrator of THE HEARING TEST, an artist in her late 20s, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year --- a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned --- while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog. Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters --- with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians and philosophers --- making meaning becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival.

A young woman reorients her relationship to the world in the wake of sudden deafness in this mesmerizing debut novel for readers of Rachel Cusk, Clarice Lispector and Fleur Jaeggy.

When the narrator of THE HEARING TEST, an artist in her late 20s, awakens one morning to a deep drone in her right ear, she is diagnosed with Sudden Deafness but is offered no explanation for its cause. As the specter of total deafness looms, she keeps a record of her year --- a score of estrangement and enchantment, of luck and loneliness, of the chance occurrences to which she becomes attuned --- while living alone in a New York City studio apartment with her dog.

Through a series of fleeting and often humorous encounters --- with neighbors, an ex-lover, doctors, strangers, family members, faraway friends, and with the lives and works of artists, filmmakers, musicians and philosophers --- making meaning becomes a form of consolation and curiosity, a form of survival.

At once a rumination on silence and a novel on seeing, THE HEARING TEST is a work of vitalizing intellect and playfulness that marks the arrival of a major new literary writer with a rare command of form, compression and intent.