29 Best books for 20 year olds

NOW COMPLETELY UPDATED to reflect the changes in tax legislation, health insurance, and the new investment realities. In this “highly valuable resource” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) Quinn “provides simple, straightforward” (The New York Times) solutions to the universal retirement dilemma–how to make your limited savings last for life–covering mortgages, social security, income investing, annuities, and more!

Will you run out of money in your older age? That’s the biggest worry for people newly retired or planning to retire. Fortunately, you don’t have to plan in the dark. Jane Bryant Quinn tells you how to squeeze a higher income from all your assets–including your social security account (get every dollar you’re entitled to), a pension (discover whether a lump sum or a lifetime monthly income will pay you more), your home equity (sell, rent, or take a reverse mortgage?), savings (how to use them safely to raise your monthly income), retirement accounts (invest the money for growth in ways that let you sleep at night), and–critically–how much of your savings you can afford to spend every year without running out. There are easy ways to figure all this out. Who knew?

Quinn also shows you how to evaluate your real risks. If you stick with super-safe investment choices, your money might not last and your lifestyle might erode. The same might be true if you rely on traditional income investments. Quinn rethinks the meaning of “income investing,” by combining reliable cash flow during the early years of your retirement with low-risk growth investments, to provide extra money for your later years. Odds are, you’ll live longer than you might imagine, meaning that your savings will stretch for many more years than you might have planned for. With the help of this book, you can turn those retirement funds into a “homemade” paycheck that will last for life.

Dottir is the inspiring and poignant memoir written and read by two-time CrossFit Games champion, Katrin Davidsdottir.

As one of only two women in history to have won the title of “Fittest Woman on Earth” twice, Davidsdottir knows all about the importance of mental and physical strength. She won the title in 2015, backing it up with a second win in 2016, after starting CrossFit in just 2011.

A gymnast as a youth, Davidsdottir wanted to try new challenges and found a love of CrossFit. But it hasn’t been a smooth rise to the top. In 2014, just one year before taking home the gold, she didn’t qualify for the Games. She used that loss as motivation and fuel for training harder and smarter for the 2015 Games. She pushed herself and refocused her mental game. Her hard work and perseverance paid off with her return to the Games and subsequent victories in 2015 and 2016.

In Dottir, Davidsdottir shares her journey with readers. She details her focus on training, goal setting, nutrition, and mental toughness.

Candace Cameron Bure, best known as D.J. Tanner from Full House and Fuller House and a New York Times bestselling author, whose faith and wit have delighted audiences for decades, lets you in on her best-kept secrets for Staying Stylish. This gorgeous manual for beauty, style, health, and spiritual wellness will bring all you need to live your most stylish life.

As an actress, producer, New York Times bestselling author, and inspirational speaker, Candace Cameron Bure has spent her entire life in the spotlight, and she is well aware of the pressures women face. Throughout her career, Candace has balanced her faith, family, and passion for work and found her spot as a role model to women of all ages–and as a style icon.

In her brand-new book Staying Stylish, Candace invites you behind the scenes of her day-to-day life and shares more than 100 tips and tricks for looking and feeling your best–both inside and out. Nurture your body, style, and soul as you listen through this beautiful book full of insider secrets and exciting ideas to revamp your own life into its best possible version. She offers her insight into balance, spiritual growth, and looking great while doing it all.

Staying Stylish topics will include personal style, fresh hair and makeup for any age, a well-balanced diet and fitness regime, and a well-nourished spirit.

Photos with step-by-step beauty tips, tutorials, and workout instructions are available in the audiobook companion PDF.

This program is read by the author.

“One of the best history books I’ve read in the last few years.” –Chris Hayes

The Field of Blood recounts the previously untold story of the violence in Congress that helped spark the Civil War.

Historian Joanne B. Freeman recovers the long-lost story of physical violence on the floor of the U.S. Congress. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that the Capitol was rife with conflict in the decades before the Civil War. Legislative sessions were often punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slugfests. When debate broke down, congressmen drew pistols and waved Bowie knives. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were beaten and bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance, particularly on the issue of slavery.

These fights didn’t happen in a vacuum. Freeman’s dramatic accounts of brawls and thrashings tell a larger story of how fisticuffs and journalism, and the powerful emotions they elicited, raised tensions between North and South and led toward war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities–the feel, sense, and sound of it–as well as its nation-shaping import.

Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and other luminaries, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating men. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
ONE OF SMITHSONIAN’S BEST HISTORY BOOKS OF THE YEAR

From an acclaimed African writer, a novel about family, freedom, and loyalty. When Bella learns of the murder of her beloved half brother by political extremists in Mogadiscio, she’s in Rome. The two had different fathers but shared a Somali mother, from whom Bella’s inherited her freewheeling ways. An internationally known fashion photographer, dazzling but aloof, she comes and goes as she pleases, juggling three lovers. But with her teenage niece and nephew effectively orphaned – their mother abandoned them years ago-she feels an unfamiliar surge of protective feeling. Putting her life on hold, she journeys to Nairobi, where the two are in boarding school, uncertain whether she can-or must-come to their rescue. When their mother resurfaces, reasserting her maternal rights and bringing with her a gale of chaos and confusion that mirror the deepening political instability in the region, Bella has to decide how far she will go to obey the call of sisterly responsibility. A new departure in theme and setting for “the most important African novelist to emerge in the past twenty-five years” (The New York Review of Books) Hiding in Plain Sight, is a profound exploration of the tensions between freedom and obligation, the ways gender and sexual preference define us, and the unexpected paths by which the political disrupts the personal.

Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history. For the first time, he recounts what happened behind closed doors during the Trump presidency.

Few White House advisors have had such an expansive portfolio or constant access to the president. From his office next to Trump, senior adviser Jared Kushner operated quietly behind the scenes, preferring to leave the turf wars and television sparring to others.

Now, Kushner finally tells his story–a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account of how an earnest businessman with no political ambitions found himself pulled into a presidency that no one saw coming.

Breaking History takes readers inside debates in the Oval Office, double-crosses at the United Nations, tense meetings in Arab palaces, high-stakes negotiations, and the daily barrage of leaks, false allegations, investigations, and West Wing infighting.

A true historical thriller, this book is not your typical political memoir. Kushner details Washington’s intense resistance to change and reveals how he broke through the stalemates of the past. An outsider among outsiders, Kushner was a results-driven executive among beltway power brokers. He questioned old assumptions and delivered unprecedented results on trade, criminal justice reform, production of COVID-19 vaccines, and Middle East peace. His successful negotiation of the Abraham Accords, the most significant diplomatic breakthrough in 50 years, earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Written by one of the few people by Trump’s side from his trip down the golden escalator to his final departure from Andrews Air Force Base, Breaking History provides the most honest, nuanced, and definitive understanding of a presidency that will be studied for generations.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

“A must read for serious leaders at every level.” –General Barry R. McCaffrey (Ret.)

The FBI’s former head of counterintelligence reveals the Bureau’s field-tested playbook for unlocking individual and organizational excellence, illustrated through dramatic stories from his own storied career

Frank Figliuzzi was the “Keeper of the Code,” appointed the FBI’s Chief Inspector by then-Director Robert Mueller. Charged with overseeing sensitive internal inquiries, shooting reviews, and performance audits, he ensured each employee met the Bureau’s exacting standards of performance, integrity, and conduct. Now, drawing on his distinguished career, Figliuzzi reveals how the Bureau achieves its extraordinary standard of excellence–from the training of new recruits in “The FBI Way” to the Bureau’s rigorous maintenance of its standards up and down the organization. Unafraid to identify FBI execs who erred, he cites them as the exceptions that prove the rule.

All good codes of conduct have one common trait: they reflect the core values of an organization. Individuals, companies, schools, teams, or any group seeking to codify their rules to live by must first establish core values. Figliuzzi has condensed the Bureau’s process of preserving and protecting its core values into what he calls “The Seven C’s”. If you can adapt the concepts of Code, Conservancy, Clarity, Consequences, Compassion, Credibility, and Consistency, you can instill and preserve your values against all threats, internal and external. This is how the FBI does it.

Figliuzzi’s role in the FBI gave him a unique opportunity to study patterns of conduct among high-achieving, ethical individuals and draw conclusions about why, when and how good people sometimes do bad things. Part pulse-pounding memoir, part practical playbook for excellence, The FBI Way shows listeners how to apply the lessons he’s learned to their own lives: in business, management, and personal development.

Leonardo da Vinci was born in a small Italian town in 1452. He trained to be a painter, but he only completed around 13 paintings-one of which was the famous Mona Lisa. Even though Leonardo wanted to learn all he could, he never received a formal education. Struggling to make a living in his 20s, he then moved to Milan, where he flourished. New worlds of discovery opened to him and his interests in engineering, art, theatre, and much more were satisfied. He expanded his knowledge in these fields to become a key figure in the Renaissance and an inventor whose designs of helicopters, parachutes, submarines and many other ingenious devices were well ahead of their time. Acclaimed historian John Phillips introduces young audiences to key figures and events in world history with concise prose and interesting language. “… this work is an attractive and friendly resource for students.”-VOYA

Read by the author.

Learn to make creativity work for your career.

Anyone, regardless of who you are or what you do, can cultivate the habits, actions, and attitudes that inspire creativity and innovation.

There has never been a more crucial time than now to develop your creativity and your ability to innovate. Coming up with original ideas of value is today’s most precious skill.

How Creativity Rules the World shows that, despite contrary beliefs, creativity can be taught and learned by anyone. Creativity is an inexhaustible resource that is the key to thriving in the business world and beyond. This timeless guide promises to make the creative process of successful seven-figure artists and billion-dollar entrepreneurs–as well as Maria’s own–accessible and actionable for you to take the power of their ideas to the next level.

In How Creativity Rules the World, you will learn how to:

• Overcome limiting thoughts and dispel myths about creativity.
• Unleash creativity through concrete data, historical passages, and examples of modern entrepreneurship.
• Develop timeless habits, principles, and tools that worked six centuries ago and continue to work today.
• Employ creativity in an everyday context to produce extraordinary results.

With revealing studies and stories spanning business and art, this book is a deep dive into history, culture, psychology, science, and entrepreneurship; analyzing the elements used by some of the most creative minds today and throughout the last 600 years.

Contemporary art curator and founder of The Groove, Maria Brito discovered the power of creativity when she transitioned from being an unhappy Harvard-trained corporate lawyer to a thriving entrepreneur and innovator in the art world. After applying the principles in How Creativity Rules the World to her own business, Maria started teaching them to hundreds of people, ranging from entrepreneurs to artists to CEOs. Proven by her students’ creative successes, Maria will guide you to strike gold with your ideas as well.

The Zondervan Reflective Audio Study series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook’s direct narration of a book’s text, Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Audio Study include high-quality live recordings in which the author teaches the content of the book, discusses important points, and introduces additional sources. The end result is an engaging audio study focused on learning.

Did you know Vincent van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime, and that during the last three months of his life he completed an average of one painting every day?

Did you know that Michelangelo’s David is covered in a dusting of human skin?

Did you know Caravaggio murdered several people while he was painting some of the most glorious paintings of Biblical scenes the world has ever known?

Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Audio Lectures is an invitation to discover some of the world’s most celebrated artists and works, while presenting the Gospel of Christ in a way that speaks to the struggles and longings common to the human experience.

These lectures are part art history, part Biblical study, part philosophy, and part analysis of the human experience; but it’s all story. These sessions traverse the chronological arc of art history in the West, from the Italian Renaissance on. Some artists are well known, others not as much. But together, the stories of their works raise important questions about humanity’s hunger and capacity for glory, and all of them teach us to love and see beauty.

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world’s most famous paintings, Edvard Munch’s Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world’s greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries listeners deep inside the art underworld–and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

For millennia, humans have tried–and often failed–to master nature and transcend our limits. But this has started to change. The new scientific frontier is the human body: the greatest engineers of our generation have turned their sights inward, and their work is beginning to revolutionize mankind.

In The Body Builders, Adam Piore takes us on a fascinating journey into the field of bioengineering–which can be used to reverse engineer, rebuild, and augment human beings–and paints a vivid portrait of the people at its center. Chronicling the ways new technology has retooled our physical expectations and mental processes, Piore visits people who have regrown parts of their fingers and legs in the wake of terrible traumas, tries on a muscle suit that allows him to lift ninety pounds with his fingertips, dips into the race to create “Viagra for the brain,” and shadows the doctors trying to give mute patients the ability to communicate telepathically.

As science continues to lay bare the mysteries of human performance, it is helping us to see–and exist–above our expectations. The Body Builders will take readers beyond the headlines and the hype to introduce them to the inner workings and the outer reaches of our bodies and minds, and explore how new developments are changing, and will forever change, what is possible for humankind.

“Hot and sexy.”–Romance Reader at HeartTM

A PROMISE MADE

Investigative reporter Christy Madaris doesn’t want to complicate her life with romance. She made that mistake once when she believed Alex Maxwell’s promise to marry her. True, Alex made that promise when Christy was just a teenager. But she believed him with all her heart–and when Alex laughed it off years later, Christy was crushed.

A PROMISE BROKEN

The owner of his own P.I. firm, Alex refuses to compromise everything he’s worked for to honor a silly promise. Christy should have known he was only teasing, right? But when Alex finally sees Christy again, he knows he made a big mistake. She has grown up into a smart and stunning woman–and Alex can’t get her off his mind.

A LOVE THEY CAN’T FORGET…
When Christy’s latest story takes a dark turn, the Madaris brothers ask Alex to keep her safe. But putting Alex in charge of Christy is like putting a rooster in charge of the hen house! The more she snubs him, the more he wants her. But when Christy’s life is in danger, can Alex save her before it’s too late?

“A perfect balance of tension and chemistry.”–RT Book Reviews

The go-to bestselling guide to help young people navigate from a middle school book report to English Comp 101

In How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids, New York Times bestselling author and professor Thomas C. Foster gives tweens the tools they need to become thoughtful readers.

With funny insights and a conversational style, he explains the way writers use symbol, metaphor, characterization, setting, plot, and other key techniques to make a story come to life.

From that very first middle school book report to that first college course, kids need to be able to understand the layers of meaning in literature. Foster makes learning this important skill fun and exciting by using examples from How the Grinch Stole Christmas to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, from short stories and poems to movie scripts.

This go-to guide unlocks all the hidden secrets to reading, making it entertaining and satisfying.

Since the formation of the American Republic the principles of free enterprise and equal opportunity have been at the very core of economic philosophy. During the revolution, colonists fought not only for intangibles like “liberty” and “justice,” but also for the promises of a free market that provided everyone with the opportunity to pursue economic advancement regardless of social position and unsubjugated to a crown. America quickly became a society in which an individual’s success would be measured not by birthright, but rather by determination. In this atmosphere, men and women have sought fortune limited only by their own abilities, their willingness to work hard, and their courage in the face of unknown dangers. In this course, we’ll examine the lives and careers of successful men and women who seized the opportunities offered by the vibrant and open economy that has ensued. We’ll examine how each of these individuals found the necessary resources-both economic and personal-to achieve greatness in the business arena. In doing so, we hope not only to arrive at a better understanding of American business history in general, but also to commune with its greatest visionaries-its Masters of Enterprise.

From the former President and CEO of the United States Tennis Association–the first black woman and youngest person ever to hold the position–comes a behind-the-scenes look at the leadership skills involved in hosting the U.S. Open, the largest and most lucrative sports event in the world–lessons that can be applied across business and to any life challenge.

One of professional tennis’s Grand Slam Tournaments, the U.S. Open has been described as a fourteen-day Superbowl. This single tennis championship, held annually in New York City, attracts top professionals from around the globe, generates more money than any other sporting event–or any other sport over an entire season–and attracts more than 700,000 attendees and millions of television viewers.

In Own the Arena, Katrina Adams offers a privileged, singular inside look at this sensational global event, while elaborating on what makes tennis the only sport of a lifetime. She opens with the women’s 2018 championship match between Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams that ended in boos. This was Adams’s last year as president and the whole world was watching. How would she respond? How should the press be handled? What needs to be said to Osaka? Serena? What does this break from decorum mean for the Open and the sport?

As Adams shares a wealth of stories from her career and personal life, as well as insights from top tennis professionals, she provides invaluable information on meeting life’s tests both on the tennis court and off. Own the Arena offers fresh perspectives on having presence, being remembered, directing a conversation, and moving boldly in spaces where “you are the only one.” It also covers good sportsmanship–treating others with respect and by being inclusive and open to diverse perspectives. Tennis is said to be 90 percent mental; this book shows how to take the elements of mental fortitude and use them to achieve greatness. By embracing and expressing one’s inner grace and humanity, Adams shows, you can own the arena.

In this revelatory memoir, the former CEO of Sonic challenges established thinking, offering counterintuitive career advice essential for every professional at all levels, whether you’re just starting out or in the middle of your career.

In his bestselling Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell introduced readers to the 10,000-hour rule–the foundation of success in any endeavor. But as Clifford Hudson reveals, there are serious pitfalls to this rule. What happens to those who spend years trying to achieve something that doesn’t quite pan out? Do you really have to grind down the same path for many years, sacrificing priorities to become successful?

In this thought-provoking memoir, Hudson asks whether or not mastery is even necessary to succeed. Most people don’t need to be experts in their field. Yes, the successful know more than the average person about a particular topic, and they often possess a better-than-average ability with a particular skillset; but not everyone who is successful is an expert, he makes clear.

More importantly, in today’s technology-driven environment, change is the only constant, including the nature of work and the skills required to do it. Over-investing in expertise is often riskier than learning to be adaptive and open to new knowledge, ideas, and skills. Experience can also lead to overconfidence. And yet we continue to deeply value the expertise ideal.

In Master of None, Hudson turns expertise on its head and shows that by embracing variety and becoming more versatile, anyone can succeed and become more open to different opportunities in life. To do so, he provides three basic rules that will see any professional through:

1. Don’t plan, explore
2. Don’t specialize, generalize
3. Don’t keep your head down, turn it up toward opportunity

Groundbreaking and thought provoking, Master of None is a new way forward to help businesses and professionals at all levels thrive.

In this installment of the Ask the Experts series, Chemistry, our professors, scientists, and researchers tackle reader questions about the substances that compose all matter, their properties, and how they interact and change. Queries range from elementary questions, such as why some elements change color over a flame, to how chemistry works in everyday life, to how certain substances affect the body and more.

“The beauty of sky, music, and the belief in ‘extraordinary things’ triumph in this whimsical and magical tale” (Publishers Weekly) about a girl in search of her past who discovers a secret rooftop world in Paris.

Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive–but “almost impossible” means “still possible.” And you should never ignore a possible.

So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian, threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage, they takes matters into their own hands and flee to Paris to look for Sophie’s mother, starting with the only clue they have–the address of the cello maker.

Evading the French authorities, she meets Matteo and his network of rooftoppers–urchins who live in the hidden spaces above the city. Together they scour the city in a search for Sophie’s mother–but can they find her before Sophie is caught and sent back to London? Or, more importantly, before she loses hope?

Phillip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials series, calls Rooftoppers “the work of a writer with an utterly distinctive voice and a wild imagination.”

From syndicated humor columnist Marc Acito comes a wildly inventive and hysterically funny novel that is equal parts Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fame, Risky Business, Dead Poets Society and The Catcher in the Rye. It’s 1983, and 17-year-old Edward Zanni wants to study acting at Juilliard, but his newly remarried father – who earns too much for Edward to claim scholarship money – refuses to pay. So, Edward enlists the aid of his creative theater pals to swindle the money from his father.

From the award-winning novelist David Whitehouse, hailed by The New York Times as “a writer to watch,” a tragicomic adventure about a troubled adolescent boy who escapes his small town in a stolen library-on-wheels.

“An archivist of his mother,” Bobby Nusku spends his nights meticulously cataloging her hair, clothing, and other traces of the life she left behind. By day, Bobby and his best friend Sunny hatch a plan to transform Sunny, limb-by-limb, into a cyborg who could keep Bobby safe from schoolyard torment and from Bobby’s abusive father and his bleach-blonde girlfriend. When Sunny is injured in a freak accident, Bobby is forced to face the world alone.

Out in the neighborhood, Bobby encounters Rosa, a peculiar girl whose disability invites the scorn of bullies. When Bobby takes Rosa home, he meets her mother, Val, a lonely divorcee, whose job is cleaning a mobile library. Bobby and Val come to fill the emotional void in each other’s lives, but their bond also draws unwanted attention. After Val loses her job and Bobby is beaten by his father, they abscond in the sixteen-wheel bookmobile. On the road they are joined by Joe, a mysterious but kindhearted ex-soldier. This “puzzle of people” will travel across England, a picaresque adventure that comes to rival those in the classic books that fill their library-on-wheels.

At once tender, provocative and darkly funny, Mobile Library is a fable about the intrinsic human desire to be loved and understood–and about one boy’s realization that the kinds of adventures found in books can happen in real life. It is the ingenious second novel by a writer whose prose has been hailed as “outlandishly clever” (The New York Times) and “deceptively effortless” (The Boston Globe).

Sometimes the last note is just the beginning. Love Songs & Other Lies is the debut romance audiobook from Jessica Pennington that Katie McGarry calls “fun and full of heart with a hero who stole my heart!”

It’s summer romance and second chances, the songs that stay in your head, and the boy you’ll never forget.

Two years after rock-song-worthy heartbreak, Virginia Miller is looking forward to a fun, carefree summer. Her friends just landed a spot on a battling bands reality show, and Vee is joining them for her dream internship on tour. Three months with future rockstars seems like an epic summer plan. Until she learns she’ll also be sharing the bus with Cam. Her first love, and her first heartbreak. Now Vee has more than just cameras to dodge, and Cam’s determination to win her forgiveness is causing TMZ-worthy problems for both of them. With cameras rolling, she’ll have to decide if her favorite breakup anthem deserves a new ending. And if she’s brave enough to expose her own secrets to keep Cam’s under wraps.

Breaking Vee’s heart was never Cam’s plan. All he wanted senior year was a new life, in a new town, uninterrupted by the tragedy he left behind. Then Vee swept him into a whirlwind of friendship, musical adventure, and a love he didn’t expect or want. Now, he has a second chance to make it right. But things get complicated when ratings-crazy producers, cameramen, and fans are involved. Can he rewrite their love song with the whole world watching?

“I love this book. Profoundly spiritual and hilariously specific…an unusual and intimate epic that manages to capture the wonder and terror of both child and parenthood with an uncanny clarity.” — Lena Dunham, bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl

Edgar and Lucy is a page-turning literary masterpiece–a stunning examination of family love and betrayal.

Eight-year-old Edgar Fini remembers nothing of the accident people still whisper about. He only knows that his father is gone, his mother has a limp, and his grandmother believes in ghosts. When Edgar meets a man with his own tragic story, the boy begins a journey into a secret wilderness where nothing is clear–not even the line between the living and the dead. In order to save her son, Lucy has no choice but to confront the demons of her past.

Profound, shocking, and beautiful, Edgar and Lucy is a thrilling adventure and the unlikeliest of love stories.

“This tale gradually exerts a fiendish grip on the reader.” — Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

“I tore through the luminous pages of Edgar and Lucy as if possessed…What this book has to say about love and truth will stay with me for a very, very long time.” — Sophie McManus, author of The Unfortunates

“A quirky coming-of-age novel that deepens into something dark and strange without losing its heart or its sense of wonder.” — Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of The Leftovers

“Victor Lodato may be our bard of the sadness, humor, and confusion of loss. He senses the absurdities and elation of mourning and childhood with a capacious precision that brings to mind J.D. Salinger, Lorrie Moore, Karen Russell, even James Joyce. Edgar and Lucy will make you feel things you haven’t felt in ages.” — Daniel Torday, author of The Last Flight of Poxl West

This program is read by the author.

“As with all my work, Edgar and Lucy started with the character’s voices, and the rhythms of their particular ways of speaking… because I have this very distinct sense of the sound and rhythms of Edgar and Lucy, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to record the audiobook. Also, having grown up in New Jersey, I felt I could do justice to the world of the novel, and to the north Jersey accent.” — Author Victor Lodato on why he chose to narrate his own novel

Caroline Jacobs has lost herself. She’s a wife, mother (to a tattooed teenage daughter she avoids), Sears Portrait Studio photographer, and wimp. Asserting herself, taking the reins, or facing life head-on are not in her repertoire. So when Caroline suddenly cracks and screams “Fuck you!” at the PTA president, she is shocked. So is her husband. So is the PTA president. So is everyone. But Caroline soon realizes the true cause of her outburst can be traced back to something that happened to her as a teenager, a scarring betrayal by her best friend Emily. This act changed Caroline’s life forever. So, with a little bit of bravery flowing through her veins, Caroline decides to go back to her home town and confront Emily. She busts her daughter Polly out of school, and the two set off to deliver the perfect comeback, which is twenty-five years in the making. But nothing goes as planned. Long buried secrets begin to rise to the surface, and Caroline will have to face much more than one old, bad best friend.

A heartwarming story told with Matthew Dicks’ signature wit, The Perfect Comeback of Caroline Jacobs is a deceptively simple novel about the ways in which our childhood experiences reverberate through our lives, and the bravery of one woman trying to change her life and finds true understanding of her daughter, and herself, along the way.

A suspenseful, feminist Gothic coming-of-age tale with shades of Patricia Highsmith, REBECCA, and ATONEMENT, pitched against the sun-soaked backdrop of a summer holiday on the French Riviera.

Welcome to the Chateau des Setes, a jewel of the Cote d’Azur, where long summer days bring ease, glamour, and decadence to the holidaymakers who can afford it.

Ruby Ashby adores her parents’ house in France, but this August, everything feels different. Unexpected guests have descended upon the chateau–friends of her parents, and their daughters–and they are keen to enjoy the hot, extravagant summer holiday to its fullest potential. Far from England, safe in their wealth and privilege, the adults revel in bad behavior without consequence, while the girls are treated as playthings or abandoned to their own devices. But despite languid days spent poolside and long nights spent drinking, a simmering tension is growing between the families, and the sanctuary that Ruby cherishes soon starts to feel like a gilded cage.

Over two decades later the chateau is for sale, its days of splendor and luxury long gone, leaving behind a terrible history and an ugly legacy. A young widow has returned to France, wanting to purchase the chateau, despite her shocking memories of what transpired that fateful summer. But there is another person who is equally haunted by the chateau, and who also seeks to reclaim it. Who will set the chateau free–and who will become yet another of its victims?

With riveting psychological complexity, The Ruins captures the glittering allure of the Mediterranean–and the dark shadows that wait beneath the surface.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

A magnificent, beguiling tale winding from the postwar rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where a woman can live without her past, The Book of Goose is a story of disturbing intimacy and obsession, of exploitation and strength of will, by the celebrated author Yiyun Li.

Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnes, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised–the place that Fabienne helped Agnes escape ten years ago. Now, Agnes is free to tell her story.

As children in a war-ravaged, backwater town, they’d built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves–until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnes on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Second Helpings continues Megan McCafferty’s New York Times bestselling series – now with a new foreword by New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Serle.

Jessica Darling is in her senior year of high school and things can’t seem to get worse: her best friend, Hope, still lives in another state, and the mysterious and oh-so-compelling Marcus Flutie continues to be a distraction she doesn’t need. Not to mention her parents won’t get off her back about choosing a college, and her older sister’s pregnancy is causing quite a bit of drama in the Darling household.

The second audiobook in Megan McCafferty’s critically acclaimed Jessica Darling series is fun, irreverent, and shows that being a teenager is never easy (or boring). Now with a foreword from New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Serle and a new author’s note from Megan McCafferty!

A Macmillan Audio production from Wednesday Books

“A feast of a read… I finished A Good Neighborhood in a single sitting. Yes, it’s that good.” –Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and A Spark of Light

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son, Xavier, who’s headed to college in the fall. All is well until the Whitmans–an apparently traditional family with new money and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter–raze the house and trees next door to build themselves a showplace.

With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie’s yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today–what does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don’t see eye to eye?–as it explores the effects of class, race, and heartrending love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press

“While Faulkner’s story veers off into the traditional grotesquerie of Southern Gothic literature, Fowler’s culminates with injustices that are painfully easy to imagine because they continue to be a part of our contemporary lived experience.” — Washington Post

“A timely story about what happens when we fail to consider how our actions affect others and the tragedy that can befall us if we can’t coexist with those whose values are different from our own.” — Atlanta Journal

Summer had thought her summer job would be a breeze, until she’s stranded on a deserted island with the boy she despises. Now, they have to work together to survive not only the elements but their differences as their romantic feelings deepen.

When Summer took a job as a nanny for a couple vacationing in Belize, she imagined it would be a fresh start before leaving for college in the fall. And while she adores her charge, Josh, she can’t say the same for her employers’ oldest son, Bray. He’s cocky, inconsiderate, and makes her feel she’s a chore he has to put up with.

Bray had a plan for the summer: party, hang out with friends, and forget all the responsibilities waiting for him back home. But every time he’s forced to be around Summer, her dour, serious mood sets him off. Not to mention she has a habit of pointing out all of his flaws.

The two find themselves on a dive trip gone wrong, stranded on a remote island with no help in sight. As they focus on survival, their differences melt away, and they find being together may be what both needed all along.

Summer by Summer features:

• enemies-to-lovers trope
• dual POV
• clean and wholesome romance
• perfect for fans of Jennifer E Smith, Stephanie Perkins, and Emma Lord

Heather Burch’s other titles include The Halfling series: Halflings, Guardian and Avenger.