Adult

In THE HEART OF IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, Jimmy Hawkins helps us focus on the true meaning behind the classic holiday movie. It’s not just the message or its many famous lines but rather the motivation behind the creation of the film and director Frank Capra’s unrelenting vision for what it should be. As a boy, Jimmy played George Bailey’s youngest son, Tommy. And he has spent the eight decades since living out the heart of the story and becoming arguably the world’s foremost expert on the movie. Filled with unpublished facts that the author has collected about the cast and crew, this book gives a clearer understanding of what they all brought to the scripted pages. Through excerpts from the screenplay, never-before-seen photos, and a lifetime of friendship with both Capra and the stars of the movie, Hawkins guides us to discover why this story still touches the spirit decades after its release. 

In a world that often feels disconnected and transactional, there's nothing more radically hospitable than welcoming people into your space, your table and your life. In this accessible, inviting book on hosting and entertaining, author, CEO and internet big sister Chelsea Fagan guides readers on creating moments worth staying in for. From designing the right space, to crafting a menu that won’t keep you in the kitchen all night, to revitalizing the lost art of cultivating grown-up communities, HAVING PEOPLE OVER will make you the perfect host at every budget.

By the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was the most influential, highly paid and enigmatic comedian in America. Every week, 20 million people tuned their TVs to "Your Show of Shows" and witnessed his virtuosity in sketches and film spoofs, pantomime and soliloquy. To Caesar’s mostly urban audience, his comedy was an era-defining leap forward from the days of vaudeville. To his rivals, Caesar was the man to beat. To his fellow American Jews, his show’s success meant something more: a post-Holocaust symbol of security and a source of great pride. But behind all that Caesar represented was the real Sid. Introverted and volatile, ill at ease in his own skin, he could terrorize his collaborators but reserved his harshest critiques for himself. In WHEN CAESAR WAS KING, veteran journalist David Margolick conjures this complex man as never before.

Sola Longe, estranged from the family, is secretly back home in Chicago. She’s a newly single and recently disgraced influencer trying to put her life back together again. The other three Longe siblings aren't doing much better. Anjola is in love with her best friend, who just got engaged to someone else; Karen, a college junior and the baby of the family, is grappling with her sexuality and self-image; and Ola, the golden child with a baby of his own on the way, is questioning his marriage and how to raise a Black son in America. Sola’s unexpected return sets them on a crash course towards each other, and when the four siblings find themselves together again at their Nigerian immigrant parents' Thanksgiving table, a decade’s worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore.

Growing up in Depression-era Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner is a dutiful daughter and diligent student with ambition aplenty and no place to use it. When she is not cooking or cleaning or taking care of the kids, she peddles cleaning products to other housewives. In 1963, after she has been divorced three times and widowed twice, she sets up her own company, selling second chance and self-invention for the price of a skin care showcase. Soon millions know her as the little lady in the big wig who gives away pink Cadillacs. From its unpromising start in a 500-square-foot Texas storefront, Mary Kay Inc. grows into a global phenomenon. Based on 15 years of research, SELLING OPPORTUNITY gives us a page-turning rags-to-riches story set against the background of direct selling in all its overstated, over-the-top glory.

Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n’ roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music’s greatest stories. There are myriad revisions to the conventional narrative which underscore just how in control of that narrative the band has been up to now --- small example: no, Muddy Waters was not mopping the floors at Chess Records when the Stones showed up. But in a larger sense, as with the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Spitz’s greatest gift is for the big picture. He knows where the magic is, and why it is. He is as clear-eyed a connoisseur of the show business, the spectacle and the collateral damage of this whirlwind as anyone alive, and that lucid gaze pierces a lot of incrusted bullshit, but the ultimate goal is to connect with a creative force whose power shows no signs of fading, over 60 years on.

When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous, '90s-era boy band and 3,000 screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood. Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, newly divorced, turning 50 with an empty nest, and here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Between the slushy alcoholic drinks, the familiar music, and the throngs of middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. By the time she meets one of the band members --- not just a celebrity but someone in need of a friend --- she has accessed a new sense of possibility.

Grace has loved Jackson since she was fifteen. Spending every summer together exploring his grandfather’s chateau, they were best friends. Until he married someone else. Three years later, a newly single Jackson re-enters Grace’s life with an irresistible offer: her dream job in the very town where their story began. As memories from those idyllic summers flood back, Grace encounters another old friend Étienne, who proposes a plan to make Jackson jealous. Their scheme begins to work just as Grace finds herself questioning if the sparks between them might not be so pretend after all. But games can be dangerous, and Étienne is harboring a secret that could shatter Grace’s heart.

Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a "coven" of like-minded women Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger. Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals and international intrigue and her past lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it.

Leonard Summers is on the run. A former high-ranking Russian intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. after providing critical information about Russian spies in U.S. government service, Leonard, his wife Martha, and son Bernard have spent the past year holed up in a CIA facility near Washington. After the CIA makes a deal with the U.S. Marshal Service’s Witness Protection Program (WPP), Leonard’s family is transported to Minneapolis. The plan is to hide them in a wooded Minneapolis suburb. The Summers are received at their destination. Unbeknownst to them, the WPP group has been tracked by a Russian hit team. And while nobody in the WPP has ever been attacked, Leonard might be the first victim. As shots are fired and enemies dodged, Lucas must move quickly to uncover where the leak is coming from, before the hit team can strike again.