Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities.

The first of the book’s three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist, Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the “steampunk” city of “old traditions and new machinery,” but everywhere he goes he feels as if he’s in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind. Finally, he travels to the slave castles off the coast and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream.

He takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he meets an educator whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates’s own books. There he discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed by the “racial reckoning” of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths of the community—a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares.

And in Palestine, Coates discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we’ve accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians—the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young, who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him—and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

A dream vacation turns deadly when secrets from the past catch up to a married couple in Paris in this new edge-of-your-seat thriller from USA Today bestselling author, Kimberly Belle.

When Stella met Adam, she thought she had finally found a nice, normal guy—a welcome change from her previous boyfriend and her precarious jetsetter lifestyle with him. But her secure world comes crashing down when Adam goes missing after an explosion in the city square. Unable to reach him, she panics.

As the French police investigate, it’s revealed that Adam was on their radar as a dealer of rare and stolen antiquities with a long roster of criminal clients. Reeling from this news, Stella is determined not to leave Paris until she has the full story. Was Adam a random victim or the target of the explosion? And why is someone following her through the streets of Paris?

An irresistible, fast-paced read set in some of Europe’s most inviting locales, The Paris Widow explores how sinister secrets of the past stay with us—no matter how far we travel.

Searching, propulsive, and deeply spiritual, Accordion Eulogies is an odyssey to repair a severed family lineage, told through the surprising history of a musical instrument.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noé was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion.

Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family’s migration from Mexico, Álvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew. Álvarez travels across the US with his accordion, meeting makers and players in cities that range from San Antonio to Boston. He uncovers the story of an instrument that’s been central to classic American genres, but also played a critical role in indigenous Mexican history.

Like the accordion itself, Álvarez feels trapped between his roots in Mexico and the U.S. As he tries to make sense of his place in the world—as a father, a son, a musician—he gets closer to uncovering the mystery of his origins.

Harkening to Agatha Christie's classic And Then There Were None, this high-tension and ingenious thriller follows five couples trapped on a storm-swept island as a killer stalks among them—from Ruth Ware, the New York Times bestselling author who is turning out to be as ingenious and indefatigable as the Queen of Crime.

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she's pretty sure they won't extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, an aspiring actor, aren't going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him. A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla finds herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize.

But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.

A fast-paced, spellbinding thriller rife with intrigue and characters that feel so true to life, this novel proves yet again that Ruth Ware is the queen of psychological suspense.

From the nationally bestselling author of The Guncle comes the much-anticipated sequel, in which Patrick O’Hara is called back to his guncle duties…at a big, family wedding in Lake Como, Italy.

Patrick O’Hara is finally in a league of his own…professionally. Inspired by his stint as Grant and Maisie’s caretaker after their mother’s passing, Patrick has "un-stalled" his acting career with the sitcom, Guncle Knows Best. Still, some things have had to take a back seat. Looking down both barrels at fifty, Patrick is single and lonely after breaking things off with Emory. But at least he has family, right?

When his brother Greg announces his big, second wedding in Lake Como, Italy, Patrick feels pulled toward Grant and Maisie and flies to Europe to attend the lavish event, only to butt heads with a newfound Launt (Lesbian Aunt), curb his sister Clara from flirting with guests, and desperately restore himself to the favored relative status in the eyes of the kids, as they struggle to adjust to a new normal. But is it Patrick’s job to save the day? Or is simply celebrating love enough to quell the family chaos?

Gracing the page with his signature blend of humor and heart, Steven Rowley delivers the long-awaited sequel to a beloved story, all about the complicated bonds of family, love, and what it takes to rediscover yourself, even at the ripe age of fifty.

From one of the most influential writers of this generation, A Year of Last Things is Michael Ondaatje's long-awaited return to poetry. This gorgeous and surprising collection delves into memory, love, and the act of looking back.

In pieces that are sometimes wittily funny, moving, and always wise, we journey back through time by way of alchemical leaps, unearthing writings by revered masters, moments of shared tenderness, and abandoned landscapes we hold onto to rediscover the influence of every border crossed.

Moving from a Sri Lankan boarding school to Moliere's chair during his last stage performance, to Bulgarian churches and their icons, to a California coast, and his beloved Canadian rivers, Michael Ondaatje casts a brilliant eye that merges his past and present, in the way memory and the distant shores of art and lost friends continue to influence all that surrounds him.

As in this startling passage from his poem His chair, a narrow bed, a motel room, the fox:
At the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles Sam Cooke was shot dead. 'See my shadow on the wall...'
All those motels and hotels in literature and song, where X wrote this, where Y got drunk, where Z overdosed. The one Hank Williams was driven past, dead already in his car. The Slaviansky Bazaar Hotel in Lady with a Dog where Dmitri imagines their dark but hopeful future. The Hotel du Grand Miroir in Brussels where Baudelaire lived his last few months. (A decade later Verlaine shot Rimbaud there.) The Casa Verdi in Milan where retired opera singers were welcome along with the various heteronyms of Fernando Pessoa in their afterlife.

Smoke And Ashes: A Writer's Journey Through Opium's Hidden Histories is a compelling blend of travelogue, memoir, and historical essay by renowned author Amitav Ghosh. In this captivating narrative, Ghosh unravels the complex web of the opium trade's impact on global history, including its entanglement with his own family's past.

Ghosh's journey begins with the startling realization during his research for the Ibis trilogy that the lives of nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers were profoundly influenced by the currents of the Indian Ocean and the lucrative cargo they bore: opium. This revelation leads him to explore the opium trade's transformative effect on Britain, India, and China, and the role it played in the financial survival of the British Empire.

The narrative delves into the origins of some of the world's largest corporations, the fortunes of America's elite families and prestigious academic institutions, and the foundations of contemporary globalism. Ghosh's exploration is rich with insights into horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism.

Through Smoke And Ashes, Amitav Ghosh reveals the significant yet often overlooked role that the opium poppy has played in shaping our modern world—a world that now stands at the precipice of significant change.

Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability.

With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.

Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson's travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal.

Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.

A searing vacation thriller set on a remote island in Thailand following two mysterious women, a charismatic group of expats, and the one murder poised to bring their paradise crashing down.

Welcome to paradise. We hope you survive your stay...

There are three rules to follow during a vacation at the famous Koh Sang Resort:

1. Leave the past behind.

When Cass sets foot on the coast of Thailand's world-famous party island, she's searching for an escape. With dark secrets following her every move, Koh Sang becomes the perfect place to hide.

1. Always be careful of who you trust.

Now, years later, Cass is a local dive instructor alongside the Permanents, a group of expats who have claimed the island as their own. The Permanents don't linger on who they were before the island, simply because, like Cass, they all have something to outrun.

1. If someone discovers who you really are, run.

But suddenly, a dive student is found dead and paradise comes crashing down. Because this isn't the first mysterious death on the island, and it won't be the last. Someone knows who Cass is and they're ready to make sure justice is finally served.

Behind You Is the Sea fearlessly confronts stereotypes about Palestinian culture, weaving a remarkable portrait of life's intricate moments, from joyous weddings to heart-wrenching funerals, from shattered hearts to hidden truths. This is a story that challenges perceptions, offering a heartfelt glimpse into the interior lives of those who call this community home.

An exciting debut novel that gives voice to the diverse residents of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore—from young activists in conflict with their traditional parents to the poor who clean for the rich—lives which intersect across divides of class, generation, and religion.

Funny and touching, Behind You Is the Sea brings us into the homes and lives of three main families—the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars—Palestinian immigrants who've all found a different welcome in America. Their various fates and struggles cause their community dynamic to sizzle and sometimes explode: The wealthy Ammar family employs young Maysoon Baladi, whose own family struggles financially, to clean up after their spoiled teenagers. Meanwhile, Marcus Salameh confronts his father in an effort to protect his younger sister for "dishonoring" their name. Only a trip to Palestine, where Marcus experiences an unexpected and dramatic transformation, can bridge this seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two generations.

Behind You Is the Sea faces stereotypes about Palestinian culture head-on and, shifting perspectives to weave a complex social fabric replete with weddings, funerals, broken hearts, and devastating secrets.

When she's gifted a once-in-a-lifetime Antarctic cruise, Olivia has never been anywhere so spectacular.

Huge cliffs of ice loom up to the sky. The sun never sets over the sparkling sea. And there's a killer on board...

Unable to sleep in the endless eerie daylight, Olivia has no idea who she can trust. And if she can't figure it out soon, she won't make it back alive...

Arrangements in Blue is a poignant memoir that delves into the life of poet Amy Key, who, in her forties, embarks on an exploration of living without romantic love. With expectations of love shaped by Joni Mitchell's album Blue, Key reflects on a life that has unfolded differently than she imagined.

Key's journey is one of self-discovery, as she builds a home, travels solo, contemplates motherhood, and learns to recognize her personal milestones. She uncovers the often overlooked forms of connection and care, while also confronting the challenging emotions of loneliness, envy, grief, and failure.

This memoir is not just Key's story but an invitation to live and love more honestly, honoring the life one leads completely by oneself. Arrangements in Blue is a testament to the expansive potential of self-friendship and the importance of candidly embracing the full spectrum of human experience.

Maui Revealed is the finest guidebook ever written for Maui. Now you can plan your best vacation—ever. This all-new 12th edition is a candid, humorous guide to everything there is to see and do on the island. Best-selling author and longtime Hawai‘i resident, Andrew Doughty, unlocks the secrets of an island so lush and diverse that many visitors never realize all that it has to offer. Explore with him as he reveals breathtaking trails, secluded beaches, pristine reefs, delicious places to eat, colorful craters, hidden waterfalls, and so much more.

Every restaurant, activity provider, business, and resort is reviewed personally and anonymously. This book and a rental car are all you need to discover what makes Maui so exciting.

• The most accurate up-to-date information available anyplace with up-to-the-minute changes posted to our website and smartphone app.
• Frank, brutally honest reviews of restaurants, activities, and other businesses show you which companies really are the best... and which to avoid—no advertisements.
• Driving tours let you structure your trip your way, point out sights not to be missed along the way, and are complemented by 140 spectacular color photographs.
• 21 specially created maps in an easy-to-follow format with mile markers—so you’ll always know where you are on the island.
• Clear, concise directions to those hard-to-find places such as deserted beaches, hidden waterfalls, pristine rain forests, spectacular coastlines, natural lava pools, and scores of other hidden gems listed nowhere else.
• Revealing chapter on hidden sights along the Hana Highway.
• Exclusive chapter on Maui’s beaches with detailed descriptions including ocean safety.
• Over 90 pages of unique adventures and exciting activities from ATVs to ziplines.
• Fascinating sections on Hawai‘i’s history, culture, language, and legends.
• Includes information on the offshore islands of Lana‘i, Moloka‘i, and Kaho‘olawe.

Maui Revealed covers it all—from the wind-swept top of Haleakala to the sparkling underwater reefs. This is the best investment you can make for your Maui vacation. Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a longtime kama‘aina, you’ll find out more about Maui from this book than from any other source. Discover the island of your dreams with Maui Revealed.

Jenny Tough is an endurance athlete renowned for her feats in running and cycling through some of the world's most demanding events. In SOLO, she shares a narrative that is as much about personal growth as it is about physical endurance.

Her journey begins with a quest to confront the feelings and emotions that were limiting her. Running, a therapeutic and empowering practice for Jenny, becomes the foundation for an extraordinary goal: to traverse mountain ranges on six continents, alone and unaided, starting in the isolated terrains of Kyrgystan.

This book is a vivid account of her expeditions across the Tien Shan (Asia), the High Atlas (Africa), the Cordillera Oriental (South America), the Southern Alps (Oceania), the Canadian Rockies (North America), and the Transylvanian Alps (Europe). Along the way, Jenny discovers invaluable lessons in self-esteem, resilience, and courage.

The essence of SOLO is the affirmation that embarking on solo endeavors, whether grand or modest, can be exhilarating and uplifting. Jenny's call to action, urging us to find inner strength, confidence, and self-belief, serves as a powerful source of motivation for readers seeking to overcome their own barriers.

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play offers a humorous and rousing set of literal and figurative sojourns, as well as a mission statement about comprehending, protecting, and truly experiencing the outdoors. This narrative is fueled by three journeys undertaken by actor, humorist, and New York Times bestselling author Nick Offerman.

Offerman has always felt a particular affection for the Land of the Free—not just for the people and their purported ideals but for the actual land: the bedrock, the topsoil, and everything in between that generates the health of your local watershed. In this book, Nick takes a humorous, inspiring, and elucidating trip to America's trails, farms, and frontier to examine the people who inhabit the land, what that has meant to them and us, and to the land itself, both historically and currently.

In 2018, Wendell Berry posed a question to Nick, a query that planted the seed of this book. This led Nick on two memorable journeys with pals—a hiking trip to Glacier National Park with his friends Jeff Tweedy and George Saunders, as well as an extended visit to his friend James Rebanks, the author of The Shepherd's Life and English Pastoral. He followed that up with an excursion that could only have come about in 2020—Nick and his wife, Megan Mullally, bought an Airstream trailer to drive across (several of) the United States.

These three quests inspired some “deep-ish” thinking from Nick about the history and philosophy of our relationship with nature in our national parks, in our farming, and in our backyards; what we mean when we talk about conservation; and the importance of outdoor recreation, all subjects very close to Nick's heart.

With witty, heartwarming stories and keen insight into the human problems we all confront, this book is both a ramble through and a celebration of the land we all love.

Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas is an insightful and perspective-shifting journey by celebrated journalist Omar Mouallem. In the book, Mouallem explores his personal connection with Islam, delving into its influence on his values, politics, and heritage. Having grown up in a Muslim household, he later adopted atheism and used his voice to critique organized religion. However, as a father, Mouallem is confronted with the challenges his children may face due to their heritage in an increasingly nativist Western world.

Mouallem embarks on a quest to uncover the untold history of Islam across the Americas, visiting thirteen unique mosques from California to Quebec, and Brazil to Canada's icy north. Through his travels, he encounters diverse Muslim communities, each providing varied perspectives on what it means to be Muslim in the Americas. This exploration reveals the significant role Islam has played in shaping the continent, influencing everything from industrialization to political shifts.

Ultimately, Praying to the West uncovers a hidden narrative of home and belonging. It highlights the ongoing struggle for acceptance in towns and cities across the Americas, advocating for a more inclusive future for all.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She's a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she's in New York City, and he's in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven't spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she's stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Addie and her sister are about to embark on an epic road trip to a friend's wedding in the north of Scotland. The playlist is all planned and the snacks are packed.

But, not long after setting off, a car slams into the back of theirs. The driver is none other than Addie's ex, Dylan, who she's avoided since their traumatic break-up two years earlier.

Dylan and his best mate are heading to the wedding too, and they've totalled their car, so Addie has no choice but to offer them a ride. The car is soon jam-packed full of luggage and secrets, and with three hundred miles ahead of them, Dylan and Addie can't avoid confronting the very messy history of their relationship...

Will they make it to the wedding on time? And, more importantly... is this really the end of the road for Addie and Dylan?

The Rings of Saturn — with its curious archive of photographs — records a walking tour along the east coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne's skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt's "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich.

One of E. M. Forster's most celebrated novels, A Room With a View is the story of a young English middle-class girl, Lucy Honeychurch. While vacationing in Italy, Lucy meets and is wooed by two gentlemen, George Emerson and Cecil Vyse. After turning down Cecil Vyse's marriage proposals twice, Lucy finally accepts. Upon hearing of the engagement, George protests and confesses his true love for Lucy.

Lucy is torn between the choice of marrying Cecil, who is a more socially acceptable mate, and George, who she knows will bring her true happiness. A Room With a View is a tale of classic human struggles such as the choice between social acceptance or true love.

Take the ultimate West Coast road trip this summer with The Best Coast—a full-color illustrated travel guide to all the must-visit roadside attractions, beloved landmarks, hidden histories, and offbeat delights on Washington, Oregon, and California’s historic highways, including the Pacific Coast Highway!

From San Diego, California, all the way up to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, you'll find unusual facts, hidden history, epic Americana, and off-the-beaten-path adventures up and down the coast.

This Road Trip Atlas Includes:

• Route Maps - the coastal route via historic Highways 101 and 1 (the PCH) and an inland route up Highway 99
• City Guides - San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle
• 30+ Itineraries and Side Trips - Catalina Island, Joshua Tree National Park, Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks, wine country, Crater Lake National Park, the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Rainier National Park, the San Juan Islands, and Vancouver, BC.
• Travel Tips - safety, rules of the road, wise planning, and packing lists (for the traveler and for the car)
• Wildlife Checklists
• Index of places, parks, and attractions
• Resources - navigational aids, travel information, passes and permits, books, websites, and films

Hit the road with this one-of-a-kind road trip travel guide through California, Oregon, and Washington that tells the story of the diversity and depth that created the West Coast we know and love today!

The Atlas of Happiness is a fun, illustrated guide that takes us on a journey around the world, uncovering the secrets to happiness. Helen Russell, the author of The Year of Living Danishly, explores the fascinating ways that different nations search for happiness in their lives and what they can teach us about our own quest for meaning.

This charming and diverse assortment of advice, history, and philosophies includes:

• Sobremesa from Spain
• Turangawaewae from New Zealand
• Azart from Russia
• Tarab from Syria
• Joie de vivre from Canada
• and many more.

From Australia to Wales, via Bhutan, Ireland, Finland, Turkey, Syria, Japan, and many more, The Atlas of Happiness uncovers the global secrets to happiness and how they can change our lives.

Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea is a graphic novel by Guy Delisle, offering a rare glimpse into one of the world's most secretive and mysterious nations. Famously referred to as part of the "Axis of Evil", North Korea remains enigmatic in many ways.

In early 2001, Delisle, a cartoonist, became one of the few Westerners granted access to this fortress-like country. While living in the nation's capital for two months on a work visa for a French film animation company, he observed the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered.

This novel captures his findings, providing a sardonic and skeptical perspective on a place rife with propaganda. Delisle is a non-believer with a keen eye for the humor and tragedy of dictatorial whims, expressed in looming architecture and tiny, omnipresent photos of the President.

The absurd vagaries of everyday life become fodder for a frustrated animator’s musings as boredom and censorship sink in. Delisle himself is the ideal foil for North Korean spin, as he brought a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 with him into the totalitarian nation.

This is an informative, personal, and accessible look at a dangerous and enigmatic country, translated from the French by Helge Dascher.

Nomadland takes readers on a journey from the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California and Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas. Employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans, forming a growing community of nomads.

This book tells a revelatory tale of the dark underbelly of the American economy—one which foreshadows the precarious future that may await many more of us. At the same time, it celebrates the exceptional resilience and creativity of these Americans who have given up ordinary rootedness to survive, but have not given up hope.

Bella Figura: How to Live, Love, and Eat the Italian Way is one woman's story of finding beauty, and herself. Beyond being a captivating narrative, it serves as a practical guide to living a better life, the Italian way. Kamin Mohammadi, a magazine editor in London, was ostensibly living the dream. Yet, heartbreak and loneliness compounded with the stress of her demanding career were detrimental to her physical and mental well-being.

Fortune smiled upon her in the form of a redundancy package and the offer of a friend's apartment in Florence, prompting Kamin to take a transformative leap. In Italy, she quickly noticed the stark contrast in lifestyle: her new Italian neighbors prioritized enjoyment, indulging in leisurely meals and drinks, embracing a slower pace of life. This narrative is peppered with delightful encounters, from the local bartender who doubles as a love advisor, to the plumbers who not only fix her heating but also teach her the art of making pasta al pomodoro.

This book is an homage to the Italian mantra of savoring the beauty of every day—a philosophy that has been cherished by generations. It's a tale of finding love and self-love in the most unexpected of places, and an intimate portrayal of a year spent embracing the Italian way of life.

Seattle is often listed as one of the most walkable cities in the United States. With its beautiful scenery, miles of non-motorized trails, and year-round access, Seattle is an ideal place to explore on foot.

In Seattle Walks, David B. Williams weaves together the history, natural history, and architecture of Seattle to paint a complex, nuanced, and fascinating story. He shows us Seattle in a new light and gives us an appreciation of how the city has changed over time, how the past has influenced the present, and how nature is all around us—even in our urban landscape.

These walks vary in length and topography and cover both well-known and surprising parts of the city. While most are loops, there are a few one-way adventures with an easy return via public transportation. Ranging along trails and sidewalks, the walks lead to panoramic views, intimate hideaways, architectural gems, and beautiful greenways.

With Williams as your knowledgeable and entertaining guide, encounter a new way to experience Seattle.

A young woman follows winter across five continents on a physical and spiritual journey that tests her body and soul, in this transformative memoir, full of heart and courage, that speaks to the adventurousness in all of us.

Steph Jagger had always been a force of nature. Dissatisfied with the passive, limited roles she saw for women growing up, she emulated the men in her life—chasing success, climbing the corporate ladder, ticking the boxes, playing by the rules of a masculine ideal. She was accomplished. She was living The Dream. But it wasn't her dream.

Then the universe caught her attention with a sign: Raise Restraining Device. Steph had seen this ski lift sign on countless occasions in the past, but the familiar words suddenly became a personal call to shake off the life she had built in a search for something different, something more.

Steph soon decided to walk away from the success and security she had worked long and hard to obtain. She quit her job, took a second mortgage on her house, sold everything except her ski equipment and her laptop, and bought a bundle of plane tickets. For the next year, she followed winter across North and South America, Asia, Europe, and New Zealand—and up and down the mountains of nine countries—on a mission to ski four million vertical feet in a year.

What hiking was for Cheryl Strayed, skiing became for Steph: a crucible in which to crack open her life and get to the very center of herself. But she would have to break herself down—first physically, then emotionally—before she could start to rebuild. And it was through this journey that she came to understand how to be a woman, how to love, and how to live authentically.

Electrifying, heartfelt, and full of humor, Unbound is Steph's story—an odyssey of courage and self-discovery that, like Wild and Eat, Pray, Love, will inspire readers to remove their own restraining devices and pursue the life they are meant to lead.

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story is an enthralling narrative by acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston, taking readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest. This riveting account details the discovery of a lost civilization and unfolds into a stunning medical mystery.

Rumors of a lost city called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God have circulated since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés. Indigenous tribes tell of ancestors who escaped the Spanish invaders to this sacred city, a place said to curse those who enter with illness and death. In 1940, journalist Theodore Morde claimed to have found the city, returning with artifacts but tragically took his own life without disclosing the location.

Decades later, Doug Preston joined a team of scientists equipped with lidar technology to map the rainforest canopy. Their exploration revealed a sprawling metropolis, hinting at an enigmatic, lost civilization. Facing the dangers of the wilderness, the team's success was overshadowed by a horrifying discovery upon their return—contracting a mysterious and sometimes lethal disease from the ruins.

The Lost City of the Monkey God is not only a tale of historical and scientific significance but also a testament to human curiosity and the relentless pursuit of knowledge, despite the risks involved.

When Gladiator Inc, an adult toy company, expands their market to familiarize the ‘vanilla’ world with the elements of BDSM, the result is a pay-per-view reality show with video feeds streamed live to subscribers. The show, Dom Wars, is a competition to determine the Top Dom that will become the spokesperson for the company.

The contestants all wear cameras to film every moment and angle of the competition, while they complete various challenges to determine who has ultimately Dominated various elements of themselves.

The hero and heroine of the series, Lucian Bane and Tara Reese, have barely made it into the Sixth and Final Round of Dom Wars. This week-long Survival Round will determine the Top Dom, once and for all.

The contestants are taken to an uninhabited island, where they will have to cross formidable jungle terrain. First Dom to reach the boat anchored on the other side of the island wins the million dollars and the title. Seems simple.

Except Lucian’s old adversary, the Sadist Jase Duff from Round One, has been tasked with making sure none of the five teams make it to the boat. If he is successful, he wins the prize, only it's not money that Jase Duff cares about, it's revenge on Lucian and Tara. And his sadistic need to inflict pain makes it game on.

One-night stands are supposed to be with someone convenient, or wickedly persuasive, or regrettable. They aren’t supposed to be with someone like him.

But after a crazy Vegas weekend celebrating her college graduation—and terrified of the future path she knows is a cop-out—Mia Holland makes the wildest decision of her life: follow Ansel Guillaume—her sweet, filthy fling—to France for the summer and just… play.

When feelings begin to develop behind the provocative roles they take on, and their temporary masquerade adventures begin to feel real, Mia will have to decide if she belongs in the life she left because it was all wrong, or in the strange new one that seems worlds away.

Benny Lewis, the creator of the largest language learning blog in the world, www.fluentin3months.com, introduces his unconventional approach to language learning. His techniques shatter common language learning myths and introduce practical "language hacks" that leverage the skills we already have.

Fluent in 3 Months is not just a book, but a blueprint for learning new languages quickly and effectively. Lewis, a full-time "language hacker," shares his insights from mastering over ten languages through self-teaching. He makes a compelling argument that you don't need an exceptional memory or a special "language gene" to become fluent in a new language. Instead, Lewis debunks misconceptions, such as the notion that adults cannot learn languages as effectively as children.

This guide is designed to help anyone—regardless of age—speak any language from anywhere in the world, and to do so with speed, intuition, and fun.

Just One Year is the compelling companion title to the much-lauded Just One Day and follows Willem's transformative journey towards self-discovery and true love.

Picking up where Just One Day ended, Just One Year tells Willem's side of the story. After spending an amazing day and night with Allyson in Paris that ends in separation, Willem and Allyson are both searching for one another. His story of their year of quiet longing and near misses is a perfect counterpoint to Allyson's own as Willem undergoes a transformative journey, questioning his path, finding love, and ultimately, redefining himself.

The narrative takes readers on a global trek, from the Netherlands to Mexico, and then to India, crafting not only a star-crossed romance but also an inspiring tale of personal growth and adventure.

Eat, Pray, Love is the captivating memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert that chronicles her journey of self-discovery following a devastating divorce. Feeling lost and uncertain about the future, Gilbert makes a bold decision to step away from her life in America and embark on a year-long trip around the world.

In Italy, she indulges in the art of pleasure, learning to speak Italian and delighting in the country's culinary offerings. Her experience is not just about savoring good food and wine, but also about embracing joy and giving herself permission to feel good again.

India offers a stark contrast, where Gilbert dives deep into the art of devotion. It is here, in an ashram, that she commits to exploring her spiritual side, seeking peace and a sense of connection that had long eluded her.

The final leg of her journey takes her to Bali, Indonesia, where she seeks balance between the material and the spiritual. Under the guidance of an elderly medicine man and through an unexpected romance, Gilbert finds a harmony she had been missing.

An honest and transformative narrative, Eat, Pray, Love is a testament to the healing power of travel and the courage it takes to confront one's own truths. It's a story of embracing change, pursuing happiness, and discovering a life worth living on one's own terms.

A breathtaking journey toward self-discovery and true love, from the author of If I Stay.

When sheltered American good girl Allyson "LuLu" Healey first meets laid-back Dutch actor Willem De Ruiter at an underground performance of Twelfth Night in England, there's an undeniable spark. After just one day together, that spark bursts into a flame, or so it seems to Allyson, until the following morning, when she wakes up after a whirlwind day in Paris to discover that Willem has left.

Over the next year, Allyson embarks on a journey to come to terms with the narrow confines of her life, and through Shakespeare, travel, and a quest for her almost-true-love, to break free of those confines.

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about those little towns that get on the map — if they get on at all — only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi.

His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

Kate Moore is a working mother, struggling to make ends meet, to raise children, to keep a spark in her marriage, and to maintain an increasingly unbearable life-defining secret. So when her husband is offered a lucrative job in Luxembourg, she jumps at the chance to leave behind her double-life, to start anew.

She begins to reinvent herself as an expat, finding her way in a language she doesn’t speak, doing the housewifely things she’s never before done—play-dates and coffee mornings, daily cooking and unending laundry. Meanwhile, her husband works incessantly, doing a job Kate has never understood, for a banking client she’s not allowed to know. He’s becoming distant and evasive; she’s getting lonely and bored.

Then another American couple arrives. Kate soon becomes suspicious that these people are not who they claim to be, and terrified that her own past is catching up to her. So Kate begins to dig, to peel back the layers of deception that surround her. She discovers fake offices and shell corporations and a hidden gun; a mysterious farmhouse and numbered accounts with bewildering sums of money; a complex web of intrigue where no one is who they claim to be, and the most profound deceptions lurk beneath the most normal-looking of relationships. A mind-boggling long-play con threatens her family, her marriage, and her life.

Amy Curry is having a terrible year. Her mother decides to move across the country and Amy is tasked with getting their car from California to Connecticut. The problem is, since her father's death, Amy hasn't been able to drive.

Enter Roger, the nineteen-year-old son of an old family friend, who is unexpectedly cute and has his own issues to deal with. Amy anticipated a straightforward road trip, but instead finds herself on a journey filled with unexpected detours. Along the Loneliest Road in America, through the Colorado mountains, across the Kansas plains, and past diners and motels, Amy's road trip turns into an exploration of personal growth and healing.

As Amy and Roger meet new people and face the reality of her father's death, they discover that sometimes the least expected individuals have the most to offer, and that you might have to get lost to find your way back home.

Written on the brink of World War II, Rebecca West's classic examination of the history, people, and politics of Yugoslavia illuminates a region that is still a focus of international concern. A magnificent blend of travel journal, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon probes the troubled history of the Balkans and the uneasy relationships among its ethnic groups.

The landscape and the people of Yugoslavia are brilliantly observed as West untangles the tensions that rule the country's history as well as its daily life. In this breathtakingly wide-ranging journalistic work, West richly chronicles her travels throughout Yugoslavia in the 1930s, introducing vivid characters and illuminating details.

More than a travelogue, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon connects the people and places West encounters to the long history of conflict that has formed national identities in the Balkans across a millennium of shifting alliances. West writes, “I had come to Yugoslavia because I knew that the past has made the present, and I wanted to see how the process works.”

As profound, sad, and funny as when it was first published in 1941, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon interrogates the forces that continue to shape our modern world.

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris--until she meets Étienne St. Clair. Smart, charming, beautiful, Étienne has it all...including a serious girlfriend.

But in the City of Light, wishes have a way of coming true. Will a year of romantic near-misses end with their long-awaited French kiss?

In his astonishing new work, Ian Frazier, one of our greatest and most entertaining storytellers, trains his perceptive, generous eye on Siberia, the storied expanse of Asiatic Russia whose grim renown is but one explanation among hundreds for the region's fascinating, enduring appeal.

In Travels in Siberia, Frazier reveals Siberia's role in history—its science, economics, and politics—with great passion and enthusiasm, ensuring that we’ll never think about it in the same way again.

With great empathy and epic sweep, Frazier tells the stories of Siberia's most famous exiles, from the well-known—Dostoyevsky, Lenin (twice), Stalin (numerous times)—to the lesser known (like Natalie Lopukhin, banished by the empress for copying her dresses) to those who experienced unimaginable suffering in Siberian camps under the Soviet regime, forever immortalized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago.

Travels in Siberia is also a unique chronicle of Russia since the end of the Soviet Union, a personal account of adventures among Russian friends and acquaintances, and, above all, a unique, captivating, totally Frazierian take on what he calls the "amazingness" of Russia—a country that, for all its tragic history, somehow still manages to be funny.

The Butterfly Mosque tells the extraordinary story of an all-American girl's conversion to Islam and her ensuing romance with a young Egyptian man. It is a stunning articulation of a Westerner embracing the Muslim world.

When G. Willow Wilson—already an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East at just twenty-seven—leaves her atheist parents in Denver to study at Boston University, she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course that leads to her shocking conversion to Islam and sends her on a fated journey across continents and into an uncertain future.

She settles in Cairo where she teaches English and submerges herself in a culture based on her adopted religion. And then she meets Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of the Western influences in his homeland. They fall in love, entering into a daring relationship that calls into question the very nature of family, belief, and tradition.

Torn between the secular West and Muslim East, Willow records her intensely personal struggle to forge a “third culture” that might accommodate her own values without compromising the friends and family on both sides of the divide.

For many years Sierra Leone and Liberia have been too dangerous to travel through, bedevilled by a uniquely brutal form of violence from which sprang many of Africa's cruellest contemporary icons. This travel book touches on one of the most fraught parts of the globe at a different moment in its history.

Chasing the Devil tells the story of Tim Butcher's audacious expedition from Freetown at the mouth of the Sierra Leone river overland through forest-covered mountains and malarial plains to the coast of Liberia. He ventures deep into areas not visited by outsiders for years. Both nations are on a developmental cusp and Tim explores whether national and international attempts to chase away the devil of war can succeed.

Papeles falsos, primer libro de Valeria Luiselli, está compuesto por una serie de ensayos narrativos de temas diversos, donde la constante es el registro de la original mirada de la autora, siempre presta a encontrar detalles o conexiones entre ideas de muy diverso orden, ecos de un pensamiento que por fuerza obliga al lector a repensar. La escondida tumba de Brodsky en Venecia; la inclasificable y elusiva saudade portuguesa; el lenguaje como ruptura con la «infancia previa a la infancia», son algunos de los ingeniosos pretextos para el despliegue de una escritura precisa, que nos deja la impresión de estar presenciando en persona esas particularidades, guiados por un lúcido filtro que sugiere múltiples variaciones de una realidad que se transforma con el pasar de su lectura.

Seven Years in Tibet recounts the extraordinary journey of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian, who escaped from an English internment camp in India in 1943. Over the next seven years, Harrer immersed himself in the rich tapestry of Tibetan life, observing its social practices, religion, politics, and people.

This vivid memoir offers an unparalleled glimpse into a world just before the Chinese Communist takeover, presenting a fascinating narrative of adventure, resilience, and cultural exchange. Harrer's account illuminates the complexities of Tibetan society and his unique relationship with the young Dalai Lama, offering insights into the spiritual and political upheavals that would soon transform Tibet.

National Geographic leads book-loving adventurers on a whirlwind tour of 500 literary landmarks and offers practical trip-planning advice for visiting in person. Peppered with great reading suggestions and little-known tales of literary gossip, this book is the ultimate browser's delight.

Novel Destinations invites readers to follow in the footsteps of much-loved authors, discover the scenes that sparked their imaginations, glimpse the lives they led, and share a bit of the experiences they transformed so eloquently into print.

If you’re looking to indulge in literary adventure, you’ll find all the inspiration and information you need here, along with behind-the-scenes stories such as these:

• After Ernest Hemingway survived two near-fatal plane crashes during an African safari, he perused his obituaries and sipped champagne on a canal-side terrace in Venice.
• Washington Irving's wisteria-draped cottage in the Hudson Valley was once occupied by members of the Van Tassel family, immortalized in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
• A mysterious incident at a stone tower near Dublin made such a vivid impression on James Joyce that he drew on it for the opening scene of Ulysses.
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle consulted on the mystery of Agatha Christie's 1926 disappearance before she resurfaced under an assumed name in northern England.
• Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables was inspired by a seaside manse in Salem, Massachusetts, infamous witch trials in which his ancestor played a role.

Amy and Dan Cahill have been located once again, this time in the company of the notoriously unreliable Alistair Oh. Could they have been foolish enough to make an alliance?

Spies report that Amy and Dan seem to be tracking the life of one of the most powerful fighters the world has ever known. If this fearsome warrior was a Cahill, his secrets are sure to be well-guarded... and the price to uncover them just might be lethal.