Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Texas

Andromeda

Erika Johansen

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel of the Nutcracker

This gloriously transportive reimagining of The Nutcracker tells the tale of twin sisters, divided by envy and magic, set against each another one fateful Christmas Eve. Light and dark—this is the cursed birthright placed upon Clara and Natasha by their godfather, Drosselmeyer, whose power and greed hold an entire city in his sway. Charming Clara, the favorite, grows into a life of beauty and ease, while Natasha is relegated to her sister’s shadow, ignored and unloved. But Natasha seizes the opportunity for revenge one Christmas Eve, when Drosselmeyer arrives at the family gala with the Nutcracker, an enchanted gift that offers entry into an alternate world: the Kingdom of Sweets. Following Clara into the glittering land of snow and sugar, Natasha discovers a source of power far greater than Drosselmeyer: the Sugar Plum Fairy, who offers her own wondrous gifts . . . and chilling bargains. But as Natasha uncovers the truth about a dark destiny crafted long before her birth, she must reckon with forces both earthly and magical, human and diabolical, and decide to which world she truly belongs.

The Kingdom of Sweets

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Julie Murphy

Sierra Simone

Read once by me. Comes from a smoke and pet free home. There is a sharpie dot on the edge (pictured)

A Christmas Notch Novel

Following the success of A Merry Little Meet Cute, a new holiday rom-com cowritten by #1 New York Times bestselling author Julie Murphy and USA Today bestselling author Sierra Simone--about an actress and a perpetually single former boy-band member reunited as costars on a steamy holiday film.

Kallum Lieberman is the funny one(tm). As the arguably lesser of the three former members of the boy band INK, he enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame and then moved home where he opened a regional pizza chain called Slice, Slice, Baby! He's living his best dad bod life, hooking up with bridesmaids at all his friends' weddings. But after an old one-off sex tape is leaked and quickly goes viral, Kallum decides he's ready to step into the spotlight again, starring in a sexy Santa biopic for the Hope Channel. 

Winnie Baker did everything right. She married her childhood sweetheart, avoided the downfalls of adolescent stardom, and transitioned into a stable adult acting career. Hell, she even waited until marriage to have sex. But after her perfect life falls apart, Winnie is ready to redefine herself--and what better way than a steamier-than-a-steaming-hot-mug-of-cider Christmas movie?

With decade old Hollywood history between them, Winnie and Kallum are both feeling hesitant about their new situation as costars...especially Winnie who can't seem to fake on screen pleasure she's never experienced in real life. She's willing to do the pleasure research--for science and artistic authenticity, of course. And there's no better research partner than her bridesmaid sex tape hall of fame costar, Kallum. But suddenly, Kallum's teenage crush on Winnie is bubbling to the surface and Winnie might be catching feelings herself. 

They say opposites attract, but is this holly jolly ever after really ready for its close-up?

A Holly Jolly Ever After

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Devon Daniels

Read once by me and comes from a smoke and pet free home. There is a black dot on the bottom from the seller. This is pictured.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

What happens when the person you find most impossible becomes impossible to resist? Opposites distract in this hilarious romantic comedy about America's least likely couple. There's just one thing standing between liberal Senate staffer Kate Adams and passage of the landmark legislation she's been fighting for all year: Ben Mackenzie, intimidating gatekeeper for one of DC's most powerful conservative senators. After Kate and Ben lock horns in a meet-not-so-cute, they vow to take each other down--by any means necessary. She thinks he's arrogant (and doesn't deserve those gorgeous green eyes). He thinks she's too quick to judge (and irresistibly maddening). But as their endless game of one-upmanship becomes Kate's favorite part of the day, she starts to wonder if her feelings for Ben are closer to attraction than animosity...and maybe their sparring is flirting. When Kate realizes there's more to Ben than meets the eye, she's forced to confront her biggest fear: In her sworn enemy, she may have found her perfect match.

Meet You in the Middle

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J. H. Markert

Comes from a smoke, pet, and child free home. Read once by me.

A Novel

The sole survivor of a serial killer might hold the key to stopping a new spree of murders in this propulsive thriller in the vein of The Black Phone and The Whisper Man. Dark and twisting at every turn, fans of Catriona Ward will love this chilling new tale from the deviously inventive horror author that Peter Farris calls the "clear heir to Stephen King.” Beware the one who got away . . . Father Silence once terrorized the rural town of Twisted Tree, disguising himself as a priest to prey on the most vulnerable members of society. When the police finally found his "House of Horrors," they uncovered nineteen bodies and one survivor–a boy now locked away in a hospital for the criminally insane. Nearly two decades later, Father Silence is finally put to death, but by the next morning, the detective who made the original arrest is found dead. A new serial killer is taking credit for the murder and calling himself the Outcast. The detective’s daughter, Tess Claibourne, is a detective herself, haunted by childhood trauma and horrified by the death of her father and the resurgence of Father Silence’s legacy. When Tess’s daughter is kidnapped by the Outcast, Tess is forced to face her worst fears and long-buried memories. With no leads to follow, she travels back to Twisted Tree to visit the boy who survived and see what secrets might be buried in the tangled web of his broken mind. With captivating prose and an old-school horror flair, Sleep Tight is a must-read, haunting tale from a true master of the genre.

Sleep Tight

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L. Alison Heller

Read once by me. Child and pet free home.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Since they found the body, I've been replaying what I saw. What happened between them, out where no one could hear? I think it was murder. In Cottonwood Estates, a quaint suburb full of PTA parents and manicured lawns, the Best Book Club Group in the World gathers once a month over cockails, gossip, and their latest read. As they debate endings and characters, each of them has her own secret story. Lena has hardly left her house in decades after a tragedy befell her family, but she’s finally joining the group. Her neighbor Annie has a past, and she knows something about what happened to Lena, something she can never share. New resident Jen deeply wants to make some friends, but she’s hiding a secret about her son. And no matter what, they’ll keep their children safe – even if to protect them, someone has to die. L. Alison Heller, whose work has been praised by Liane Moriatry as "warm, witty...refreshingly true to life,” ventures into suspenseful territory with The Neighbor's Secret, a novel of books, secrets, and women who will remind you of your own book club.

The Neighbor's Secret

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Alison Gaylin

The USA Today bestselling and Edgar Award-winning author of Never Look Back and If I Die Tonight plumbs the dark side of justice and the depths of diabolical revenge in this propulsive novel of psychological suspense that melds the driving narrative of Then She Was Gone with the breathtaking twists of The Chain and the violent fury of Kill Bill. "Alison Gaylin's The Collective is an astonishing feat. In the tradition of Ira Levin's unforgettable social thrillers (Rosemary's Baby, Stepford Wives), it's a nerve-shredding, emotionally harrowing ride that also speaks volumes about our current moment, the dangers of our digital world, the potency of female rage. Don't miss it." --Megan Abbott Just how far will a grieving mother go to right a tragic wrong? Camille Gardner is a grieving--and angry--mother who, five years after her daughter's death, is still obsessed with the privileged young man she believes to be responsible. When her rash actions attract the attention of a secret group of women--the collective--Camille is drawn into a dark web where these mothers share their wildly different stories of loss as well as their desire for justice in a world where privilege denies accountability and perpetrators emerge unscathed. Fueled by mutual rage, these women orchestrate their own brand of justice through precise, anonymous, complexly plotted and perfectly executed revenge killings, with individual members completing a specific and integral task in each plan. As Camille struggles to comprehend whether this is a role-playing exercise or terrifying reality, she must decide if these women are truly avenging angels or monsters. Becoming more deeply enmeshed in the group, Camille learns truths about the collective--and about herself--that she may not be able to survive.

The Collective

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Read once by me. Child and pet free home. 

The Holiday Swap

Kate Elizabeth Russell

2000: Bright, ambitious fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017: Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa. Now Vanessa finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? -- adapted from jacket

My Dark Vanessa

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Daymond John

Daniel Paisner

Read once by me. Child and pet free home. Cover has a little damage that is pictured.

How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage

The instant New York Times bestseller from Shark Tank star and Fubu Founder Daymond John on why starting a business on a limited budget can be an entrepreneur's greatest competitive advantage.

Daymond John has been practicing the power of broke ever since he started selling his home-sewn t-shirts on the streets of Queens. With a $40 budget, Daymond had to strategize out-of-the-box ways to promote his products. Luckily, desperation breeds innovation, and so he hatched an idea for a creative campaign that eventually launched the FUBU brand into a $6 billion dollar global phenomenon.  But it might not have happened if he hadn't started out broke - with nothing but hope and a ferocious drive to succeed by any means possible.

Here, the FUBU founder and star of ABC's Shark Tank shows that, far from being a liability, broke can actually be your greatest competitive advantage as an entrepreneur. Why?  Because starting a business from broke forces you to think more creatively.  It forces you to use your resources more efficiently. It forces you to connect with your customers more authentically, and market your ideas more imaginatively. It forces you to be true to yourself, stay laser focused on your goals, and come up with those innovative solutions required to make a meaningful mark. 

Drawing his own experiences as an entrepreneur and branding consultant, peeks behind-the scenes from the set of Shark Tank, and stories of dozens of other entrepreneurs who have hustled their way to wealth, John shows how we can all leverage the power of broke to phenomenal success. You'll meet:

· Steve Aoki, the electronic dance music (EDM) deejay who managed to parlay a series of $100 gigs into becoming a global superstar who has redefined the music industry
· Gigi Butler, a cleaning lady from Nashville who built cupcake empire on the back of a family  recipe, her maxed out credit cards, and a heaping dose of faith
· 11-year old Shark Tank guest Mo Bridges who stitched together a winning clothing line with just his grandma's sewing machine, a stash of loose fabric, and his unique sartorial flair

When your back is up against the wall, your bank account is empty, and creativity and passion are the only resources you can afford, success is your only option. Here you'll learn how to tap into that Power of Broke to scrape, hustle, and dream your way to the top.

The Power of Broke

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David Wiedemer

Cindy S. Spitzer

Robert A. Wiedemer

Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown

From the authors who predicted with unmatched precision the domino impacts of the real estate, stock market, and other bubbles that led to 2008's market meltdown comes the definitive look at what is still to come and what investors can do to protect themselves Just as many are wrongly forecasting a full recovery ahead, Aftershock, now updated and revised, warns of a very different economic future. Home prices and stocks will continue to fall, inflation and unemployment will rise, and the current recession will not automatically cycle back to recovery. Unlike most books, Aftershock goes beyond the outdated notion of "market cycles" to help readers clearly recognize and quickly respond to the rapidly evolving economy. Instead of going back to how things were before, we are moving forward through uncharted territory, with new challenges and opportunities few people anticipate. The book shows you how to: Protect assets before and during the second wave of the financial meltdown Make wise investment decisions regarding stocks, bonds, real estate, and more Know which jobs, careers, and businesses will fare the best Profit from the collapsing bubbles Other titles by Wiedemer, Wiedemer, and Spitzer: America's Bubble Economy Aftershock is easy-to-read, entertaining, and practical book guides readers to seek safety and profits in these evolving economic conditions.

Aftershock

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Adam Silvera

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Adam Silvera reminds us that there’s no life without death and no love without loss in this devastating yet uplifting story about two people whose lives change over the course of one unforgettable day. New York Times bestseller * 4 starred reviews * A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year * A Kirkus Best Book of the Year * A Booklist Editors' Choice of 2017 * A Bustle Best YA Novel of 2017 * A Paste Magazine Best YA Book of 2017 * A Book Riot Best Queer Book of 2017 * A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of the Year * A BookPage Best YA Book of the Year On September 5, a little after midnight, Death-Cast calls Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio to give them some bad news: They’re going to die today. Mateo and Rufus are total strangers, but, for different reasons, they’re both looking to make a new friend on their End Day. The good news: There’s an app for that. It’s called the Last Friend, and through it, Rufus and Mateo are about to meet up for one last great adventure—to live a lifetime in a single day. In the tradition of Before I Fall and If I Stay, They Both Die at the End is a tour de force from acclaimed author Adam Silvera, whose debut, More Happy Than Not, the New York Times called “profound.”

They Both Die at the End

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Normal wear and tear from reading a book once. Only read by me. There are no animals or children in the household. 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Kiss Curse

Jillian Cantor

Read once by me. Smoke, pet, and child free home.

"Jillian Cantor beautifully re-crafts an American classic in Beautiful Little Fools, placing the women of The Great Gatsby center stage: more than merely beautiful, not so little as the men in their lives assume, and certainly far from foolish. Both fresh and familiar, this page-turner is one to savor!" --Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code "Jillian Cantor's shifting kaleidoscope of female perspectives makes F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic tale of Jazz Age longing and lust feel utterly modern. A breathtaking accomplishment."--Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue USA Today bestselling author Jillian Cantor reimagines and expands on the literary classic The Great Gatsby in this atmospheric historical novel with echoes of Big Little Lies, told in three women's alternating voices. On a sultry August day in 1922, Jay Gatsby is shot dead in his West Egg swimming pool. To the police, it appears to be an open-and-shut case of murder/suicide when the body of George Wilson, a local mechanic, is found in the woods nearby. Then a diamond hairpin is discovered in the bushes by the pool, and three women fall under suspicion. Each holds a key that can unlock the truth to the mysterious life and death of this enigmatic millionaire. Daisy Buchanan once thought she might marry Gatsby--before her family was torn apart by an unspeakable tragedy that sent her into the arms of the philandering Tom Buchanan. Jordan Baker, Daisy's best friend, guards a secret that derailed her promising golf career and threatens to ruin her friendship with Daisy as well. Catherine McCoy, a suffragette, fights for women's freedom and independence, and especially for her sister, Myrtle Wilson, who's trapped in a terrible marriage. Their stories unfold in the years leading up to that fateful summer of 1922, when all three of their lives are on the brink of unraveling. Each woman is pulled deeper into Jay Gatsby's romantic obsession, with devastating consequences for all of them. Jillian Cantor revisits the glittering Jazz Age world of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, retelling this timeless American classic from the women's perspective. Beautiful Little Fools is a quintessential tale of money and power, marriage and friendship, love and desire, and ultimately the murder of a man tormented by the past and driven by a destructive longing that can never be fulfilled.

Beautiful Little Fools

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Beth O'Leary

What if your roommate is your soul mate? A joyful, quirky romantic comedy, Beth O'Leary's The Flatshare is a feel-good novel about finding love in the most unexpected of ways. Tiffy and Leon share an apartment. Tiffy and Leon have never met. After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore needs a place to live. Fast. And cheap. But the apartments in her budget have her wondering if astonishingly colored mold on the walls counts as art. Desperation makes her open minded, so she answers an ad for a flatshare. Leon, a night shift worker, will take the apartment during the day, and Tiffy can have it nights and weekends. He’ll only ever be there when she’s at the office. In fact, they’ll never even have to meet. Tiffy and Leon start writing each other notes – first about what day is garbage day, and politely establishing what leftovers are up for grabs, and the evergreen question of whether the toilet seat should stay up or down. Even though they are opposites, they soon become friends. And then maybe more. But falling in love with your roommate is probably a terrible idea...especially if you've never met.

The Flatshare

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Nisha Sharma

Dating Dr. Dil

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Sian Gilbert

Only read once by me, no smokers or pets in the house. 

For fans of Lucy Foley and Liane Moriarty, She Started It is a hot, twisty summer debut thriller about a group of young women whose Caribbean bachelorette party takes a sinister turn. It's Lord of the Flies meets And Then There Were None...but with Instagram and too much prosecco. The party of a lifetime is nothing like what they expected... Annabel, Esther, Tanya, and Chloe are best friends--or were, as children. Despite drifting apart in adulthood, shared secrets have kept them bonded for better or worse, even as their childhood dreams haven't quite turned out as they'd hoped. Then one day they receive a wholly unexpected--but not entirely unwelcome--invitation from another old friend. Poppy Greer has invited them all to her extravagant bachelorette party: a first-class plane ticket to three days of white sand, cocktails, and relaxation on a luxe private island in the Bahamas. None of them has spoken to Poppy in years. But Poppy's Instagram pics shows that the girl they used to consider the weakest link in their group has definitely made good--and made money. Curiosity gets the better of them. Besides, who can turn down a posh all-expenses-paid vacation on a Caribbean island? The first-class flight and the island's accommodations are just as opulent as expected...even if the scenic island proves more remote than they'd anticipated. Quite remote, in fact, with no cell service, and no other guests. The women quickly discover they've underestimated Poppy, and each other. As their darkest secrets are revealed, the tropical adventure morphs into a terrifying nightmare. Endlessly twisty, sharply observant, and deliciously catty, She Started It is sure to shock readers until the very end.

She Started It

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Taylor Hahn

Don't miss the beach read of the summer! A heartwarming and hilarious novel about swinging, marriage, and complexities of the heart.
 
"This book is fun as hell. Hilarious, addictive, moving, and sexy. I lost track of time reading it, and I couldn't get enough!" --Jasmine Guillory, bestselling author of While We Were Dating

Georgina Wagman has it all--a great marriage, a great job at a prestigious law firm, and great friends. She's living the life she always wanted, and everything is perfect. Until, that is, she walks in on her husband Nathan in a compromising position with a junior associate. Georgina has a moment of crisis. But divorce is not a part of the five-year plan, so she comes up with an idea to save her marriage and recapture the spark. She and Nathan are going to become swingers.
 
Georgina isn't going to embark on this adventure alone, though. Her friends Felix and Norah and their respective partners decide to tag along for the ride. They've got relationship woes of their own that swinging just might fix. Georgina, convinced Felix and Norah belong together, is thrilled. What better place to reignite romance between two people destined to be together than a swingers' party? Her plan is foolproof, until she runs into a college ex at the first party. When they reconnect, Georgina will find herself torn between her head and her heart, with her very happiness hanging in the balance. Perfect for fans of Jennifer Weiner and Sophie Kinsella, The Lifestyle is a playful homage to Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse and an outrageously fun summer read.
 

The Lifestyle

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Ellery Lloyd

A razor-sharp, wickedly smart suspense debut about an ambitious influencer mom whose soaring success threatens her marriage, her morals, and her family's safety. Followed by Millions, Watched by One To her adoring fans, Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, is the honest "Instamum" who always tells it like it is. To her skeptical husband, a washed-up novelist who knows just how creative Emmy can be with the truth, she is a breadwinning powerhouse chillingly brilliant at monetizing the intimate details of their family life. To one of Emmy's dangerously obsessive followers, she's the woman that has everything--but deserves none of it. As Emmy's marriage begins to crack under the strain of her growing success and her moral compass veers wildly off course, the more vulnerable she becomes to a very real danger circling ever closer to her family. In this deeply addictive tale of psychological suspense, Ellery Lloyd raises important questions about technology, social media celebrity, and the way we live today. Probing the dark side of influencer culture and the perils of parenting online, People Like Her explores our desperate need to be seen and the lengths we'll go to be liked by strangers. It asks what--and who--we sacrifice when make our private lives public, and ultimately lose control of who we let in. . . . --Samantha Downing, USA Today bestselling author of My Lovely Wife and He Started It

People Like Her

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Kimberly Harrington

A Marriage, in Pieces and Bits

In this tender, funny, and sharp companion to her acclaimed memoir-in-essays Amateur Hour, Kimberly Harrington explores and confronts expectations, marriage, failure, a sort-of-divorce and the ways love, loss, and longing shape a life. Six weeks after she and her husband announced their divorce, Kimberly Harrington began writing a book she thought would be about divorce, heavy on the dark humor. After all, she and her future ex had chosen to still live together in the same house with their kids as they slowly transitioned from being a married couple to single people (someday) living separately. Over the course of two years of what was supposed to be a temporary period of transition, Harrington sifted through her past--how she formed her ideas about relationships, sex, marriage, divorce--and dug back into the history of her marriage--how they met, what it felt like to be in love, how she and her husband had changed over time, the impact having children had on their relationship, and what they still owed one another. But You Seemed So Happy is a time capsule of sorts. It's about getting older and repeatedly dying on the hill of being wiser, only to discover you were never actually all that dumb to begin with. It's an honest, intimate biography of a marriage, from its heady, idealistic, and easy beginnings to its slowly coming apart to its evolution into something completely unexpected. As she probes what it means when everyone assumes you're happy as long as you're still married, Harrington skewers engagement photos, small-town busybodies, Gen X idiosyncrasies, and the casual way we make life-altering decisions when we're young. Ultimately, this moving and funny memoir in essays is a vulnerable and irreverent act of forgiveness--of ourselves, our partners, and the relationships that have run their course but will always hold permanent meaning in our lives.

But You Seemed So Happy

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Ashley C. Ford

A Memoir

“Sure to be one of the best memoirs of 2021.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “So clear, sharp, and smooth that the reader sees, in vivid focus, Ford’s complicated childhood, brilliant mind, and golden heart. Ford is a writer for the ages, and Somebody’s Daughter will be a book of the year.” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed “Ford’s wrenchingly brilliant memoir is truly a classic in the making. The writing is so richly observed and so suffused with love and yearning that I kept forgetting to breathe while reading it.” —John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her incarcerated father. Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional love, Ashley begins dating a boy her mother hates. When the relationship turns sour, he assaults her. Still reeling from the rape, which she keeps secret from her family, Ashley desperately searches for meaning in the chaos. Then, her grandmother reveals the truth about her father’s incarceration . . . and Ashley’s entire world is turned upside down. Somebody’s Daughter steps into the world of growing up a poor, Black girl in Indiana with a family fragmented by incarceration, exploring how isolating and complex such a childhood can be. As Ashley battles her body and her environment, she embarks on a powerful journey to find the threads between who she is and what she was born into, and the complicated familial love that often binds them.

Somebody's Daughter

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Jillian Medoff

"When We Were Bright and Beautiful blew me away. Jillian Medoff's gripping exploration of wealth, consent, and complicity tells the story of a loving family's unraveling with the propulsive pace of the best thrillers. A masterful achievement."--Aimee Molloy, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Mother and Goodnight Beautiful

The acclaimed, bestselling author of This Could Hurt returns with her biggest, boldest novel yet--an electrifying, twisty, and deeply emotional family drama, set on Manhattan's glittering Upper East Side, that explores the dark side of love, the limits of loyalty, and the high cost of truth.

You can have everything, and still not have enough. 

Cassie Quinn may only be twenty-three, but she knows a few things. One: money can't buy happiness, but it's certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother Billy is not a rapist.

When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie races home to Manhattan to join forces with her big brother Nate and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile--white, athletic, and privileged--that makes headlines and sways juries.

Meanwhile, Cassie struggles to understand why Billy's ex Diana would go this far, even if the breakup was painful. And she knows how the end of first love can destroy someone: Her own years-long affair with a powerful, charismatic man left her shattered, and she's only recently regained her footing.   

As reporters converge outside their Upper East Side landmark building, the Quinns gird themselves for a media-saturated trial, and Cassie vows she'll do whatever it takes to save Billy. But what if that means exposing her own darkest secrets to the world?

Lightning-paced and psychologically astute as it rockets toward an explosive ending, When We Were Bright and Beautiful is a dazzling novel that asks: who will pay the price when the truth is revealed? 

When We Were Bright and Beautiful

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The Most Likely Club

Kendra James

Only read once by me, no pets or smokers in the house.

A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School

A sharp-witted and deeply insightful look into the storied world of elite prep schools from the first African-American legacy student to graduate from The Taft School, shedding light from the inside, while giving voice to those on the outside. Kendra James began her professional life selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for select prep schools, her job was persuading students and families to embark on the same perilous journey, attending cutthroat and largely white schools, that she had years earlier as the first African American legacy student at The Taft School. Forced to reflect on her own elite educational experience, she quickly became disillusioned by America's inequitable system. In ADMISSIONS, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, from clashes with her lily-white roommate, unlearning the respectability politics she'd been raised, to a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinxbrown students of being responsible for segregation of campus. She contemplates the benefits of the education she got from Taft, which Kendra credits as playing a role in her career's success, as well as the ways it coddled her--perhaps, she now believes, too much. Through these stories, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, as well as the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture. With its combination of incisive social critique and uproarious depictions of elite nonsense, ADMISSIONS will resonate with anyone who has ever been The Only One in a room, dealt with racial micro aggressions, or even just suffered with an extreme case of homesickness.

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Therese Bohman