THOUGHTS ON THIS 'n THAT

  * Publishers Weekly Best Books of Summer 2025 * Bookbub Best Non-Fiction Release of the Season * MSNBC/Afar Magazine 10 Best Books for the Summer Traveler * Newsday’s Top Must-Read Book for Summer * Christian Science Monitor Best Book of May 2025   * Longlisted for the 2025 American Library in Paris Book Award A riveting and stylish saga set in Paris during World War II,  The Art Spy  uncovers how an unlikely heroine infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the world's most treasured masterpieces. On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans’ final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the truth—a story that would mean nothing less than sa...

Lady Georgiana “Georgie” Rannoch is just like any other new mother, balancing responsibilities of being 34th in line for the British throne and solving the shocking deaths of several young men, in this 19th Royal Spyness novel from the queen of historical mystery, Rhys Bowen. Georgie may be figuring out what it means to be a new mother but she does know one thing for sure: she absolutely despises the strict nanny who was foisted upon her by her meddlesome sister-in-law. In search of a new nanny, Georgie travels to London to see her old friend ZouZou only to find her about to depart for a funeral, after the unexpected death of a young man in her social circle. It quickly becomes clear there’s more than one mysterious death around town, when another friend reveals he’s also just returned from the funeral of a school friend, who seemingly died in a boating accident. But when word arrives that the son of family friend has also died tragically and unexpectedly, Georgie is certain it can’t b...

  The stunning sequel to the instant international bestseller  Heavenly Bodies. . Never make a bargain with a god.      Elara is out for revenge. Her love, Prince Enzo, is trapped between the realms of life and death, and her enemy has vanished, leaving Elara with a life she never wanted and new powers she cannot control.      Now, a disgraced queen on the run, Elara must find a way to wake Enzo while also seeking the lost Titans, a league of gods who ruled the world long before the Star.      But there is a darker power at play, one that even Ariete, King of the Stars, is afraid of. With enemies at every turn, Elara must tread carefully if she has any hope of saving her soulmate and fulfilling her promise to make every Star fall. Imani Erriu  is the author of the romance fantasy series Heavenly Bodies. She is a graduate of the Manchester Metropolitan University, where she received a Bachelor's Deg...

  MY HUSBAND'S WIFE (FarrarStrausandGiroux) is Alice Feeney's latest masterpiece that will leave you questioning everything you know about love, identity, and revenge. Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife. One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying. Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person's date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and...

Detective Leanne Everhart swore she’d never go back to her hometown near Marfa, Texas—but she returns when her brother needs her, only to find a town in need, too, still torn apart by a decades-old crime. Leanne Everhart knows women have something to fear in her artsy hometown, especially if they’re not rich, white locals. Returning to town after her father’s death, she sees the ugliest sides of an area that draws people for its severe, untamed natural landscape.  While her department faces mounting backlash over a recent wrongful conviction in the long-ago murder case of a popular local teenager—which is now unsolved—Leanne is called to a fresh crime scene at the edge of the desert. A nameless woman was found murdered, with no clues as to her identity. As Leanne digs into the crime scene evidence, she grows convinced this latest murder case is linked to the local teenager’s murder. And to multiple cold cases, all unnamed female victims, that have all been shelved by...

  In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.   Ruth was raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning, she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth, they remain puzzles.  Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact, be happiness?   Ruth  immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs. Riley says she had to argue for the author bio on the back flap of  Ruth , one last oblique quip in the style of Ruth her...

  Diana Wood has a job she likes and a husband, Oliver, she loves. Together, they have a daughter they adore. She and Oliver spend so much time together that they even carpool to work in the same office. They’re in married love, which isn’t the same as love love, but it’s fine. Or is it? Is fine good enough? Diana and Oliver haven’t had sex in months, and their intimacy seems more like a memory than a reality. The cozy trappings of Diana’s life in Dallas, Texas, have become ever more confining. She is restless, growing more distant from Oliver by the day. A trip to see an old friend in Santa Fe prompts Diana to remember the woman she used to be: an aspiring artist,and  someone devoted to creativity, spontaneity, sensuality. In her past—especially with Jasper, the dashing photographer with whom she once had an unforgettable love affair—Diana let herself fantasize, she let her body lead the way. She was wholly... alive. Returning to Dallas, Diana decides to rediscover the deeply...

  Special Agent Alex Martel is thrown back into a deadly world of deception when a series of attacks threaten to incite World War III in this action-packed thriller. While sailing across the Mediterranean, the megayacht Aurora is rocked with explosions, taken under siege by unknown assailants. On board are some of Europe’s wealthiest and most powerful political players, including the secretary general of Interpol, a high-ranking Finnish diplomat, and Special Agent Alex Martel―whose lethal sniper skills kick in to bring them safely to shore. Someone is waging a ruthless campaign of attacks against Finland, one of NATO’s newest members, in an attempt to throw the Alliance into turmoil. Teaming back up with CIA agent Caleb, Alex is thrust into the middle of the fray, pursuing the villains from the waters off of Monaco to the Baltic Sea and home to American soil. As the US is pulled deeper into the conflict, a global catastrophe seems inevitable. But who is really responsible for these...

  The story of a runaway mother’s ten days of freedom—and the pain, desire, longing, and wonder we find on the messy road to enlightenment—from Pulitzer Prize winner, Quiara Alegría Hudes. April is a young mother raising her daughter in an intergenerational house of unspoken secrets and loud arguments. Her only refuge is to hide away in a locked bathroom, her ears plugged into an ambient soundscape, and a mantra on her lips: dead inside. That is, until one day, as she finds herself spiraling toward the volcanic rage she calls the white hot, a voice inside her tells her to just . . . walk away. She wanders to a bus station and asks for a ticket to the furthest destination; she tells the clerk to make it one-way. That ticket takes her from her Philly home to the threshold of a wilderness and the beginning of a nameless quest—an accidental journey that shakes her awake, almost kills her, and brings her to the brink of an impossible choice. The White Hot takes the form of a letter from...

A sweeping and immersive history of modern Afghanistan from the one of the world ’ s leading war correspondents. In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world. Lyse Doucet – now the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, then a young reporter on her inaugural trip to Afghanistan – first checked into the Inter-Continental in 1988. In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall, and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors. Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory da...

  Lucy Gardiner felt like she was put on earth to dance. Amid the chaos of her Massachusetts upbringing—her loving, erratic brothers; her overburdened mother—twelve-year-old Lucy is discovered and cast on a new dance reality show. When its popstar judge, Bruise, takes an obsessive interest in Lucy’s raw talent, Lucy’s life suddenly becomes what she’s always wanted—or has it? In the whirlwind of talk shows, movie sets, and extravagant Hollywood parties of her teenage years, Lucy slowly grows more alienated from her family. And when a series of youthful mistakes comes back to haunt her, she finds she must free herself from Bruise’s world of fame and all its trappings, and decide where her home truly is. With lively prose and a rich cast of supporting characters—including a retired parrot actor traumatized by his former career— Lucky Girl  is an unparalleled coming-of-age story that explores the sparkling highs and heartbreaking lows of ambition, infamy, and the determination to ...

  The first major biography of Jeannette Rankin, a groundbreaking suffragist, activist, and the first American woman to hold federal office. “Few members of Congress have ever stood more alone while being true to a higher honor and loyalty.” —President John F. Kennedy on Jeannette Rankin Born on a Montana ranch in 1880, Jeannette Rankin knew how to ride a horse, make a fire, and read the sky for weather. But most of all, she knew how to talk to people, how to convince them of her vision for America. It was this rare skill that led her, in 1916, to become the first woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. As her first act, Rankin introduced the legislation that would become the 19th Amendment. Throughout her two terms in 1916 and 1940, she continued to introduce and pass legislation benefiting unions, protecting workers, and increasing aid for children in poverty. In 1941, she stood tall as the sole anti-war voice in Congress during WWII, advocating for pacifism in the fa...

  You think you know what abusive relationships look like, until you see it for yourself. When Lucy and Meg’s mother is assaulted by her husband, stepfather Greg, his arrest seems to mark the end of a nightmare. But when their mother chooses to stay with him, the sisters are thrust into a disturbing moral dilemma. Desperate to protect her, they take a drastic step: secretly install hidden cameras to capture the truth for themselves—and the rest of the world. What unfolds isn’t what Lucy expected. Told with emotional clarity and literary depth, The Truth About You probes the unsettling gap between what we’re taught to believe and the evidence. As Lucy grapples with conflicting narratives of abuse, loyalty, and manipulation, she’s forced to question not only her mother and stepfather’s roles in this abusive relationship, but the entire framework of judgment, justice, and victimhood. This is a bold, timely novel for readers who crave psychological insight, emotional complexity, and st...

  "You don't know who to trust or where loyalties lie in  The Perfect Hosts . I loved every minute of this fun, twisty, wild ride!"  –Mary Kubica,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Local Woman Missing A couple’s gender reveal party turns deadly, and everyone is a suspect in this gripping thriller from the  New York Times  bestselling author of  The Overnight Guest Is it a boy or a girl? They would die to know … Madeline and Wes Drake have invited two hundred of their closest friends and family to their sprawling horse ranch for the most anticipated event of the year: a “pistols and pearls” gender reveal party so sensational it is sure to make headlines. But the party descends into chaos when the celebratory explosive misfires, leaving one woman dead and a trail of secrets. As the aftershocks of the bloody party ripple across the small town, Agent Jamie Saldano is brought to the scene to investigate. Battling his demons fr...