Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection.

From A to Z, discover the people, places, and pleasures that make the United States of America a place to be proud of.

Bouncing poetry and fast facts are accompanied by rich illustrations and stunning photography, engaging young readers with both the history and present of our country. With America celebrating its 250th anniversary in 2026, Land of the Free: America's ABC is perfect pick for families, schools, and libraries.

Includes and afterward from author, Devin Scillian.

In this propulsive debut, a Buffalo Bills cheerleader will stop at nothing to solve the disappearance of her best friend and teammate, navigating the dark underbelly of a hardscrabble city, the grime and glamour of professional cheerleading, and her own tangled family history.

“A nuanced, incisive exploration of the world of NFL cheerleading—and the complex power of sisterhood, both familial and chosen.”—Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

Virginia is a Jill—a cheerleader for the NFL’s Buffalo Bills—living the life of her dreams: she spends her weekdays practicing, her weekends cheering, and her nights hopping between bars and clubs with her teammates, including the fearless, charismatic Jeanine, whose friendship has given Virginia confidence in spades and helped her forget her troubled past with her estranged sister, Laura.

One Sunday, Jeanine fails to show up for a game, and calls and texts to her go unanswered. Virginia embarks on an investigation into Jeanine’s disappearance, aided by a network of Jills, ex-boyfriends, seedy fixtures of Buffalo’s criminal underground, and unexpected figures from her past. But as her search grows increasingly dangerous and spirals into obsession, disturbing questions about who Jeanine really was begin to emerge.

Soon, Virginia finds herself wondering how well she knew her best friend, if she can trust the people she thought were protecting her, and whether—when trying to save the ones she loves most—she’s capable of saving herself, too.

Part bingeable mystery, part character-driven tale of a woman discovering her own strength in a system built by and for men, The Jills is a page-turning novel that brims with wit and heart while reminding us of the healing power of sisterhood.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

A propulsive debut novel following a has-been reality TV star and a disgraced producer who get one last shot at redemption on a show set on a remote island, only to discover that the plot twists are beyond what they ever imagined.

Everyone gets the story arc they deserve.

Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory—to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type—Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest—but everyone is more than they appear. 

The contestants’ goals seem simple—survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc.

As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.

The deepest dive yet into the heart and soul, secret affairs, unexplored alliances, and bitter feuds of a generally worshipped, intermittently reviled American icon.

Perhaps no founding father is as mysterious as Thomas Jefferson. The author of the Declaration of Independence was both a gifted wordsmith and a bundle of nerves. His superior knowledge of the human heart is captured in the impassioned appeal he brought to the Declaration. But as a champion of the common man who lived a life of privilege on a mountaintop plantation of his own design, he has eluded biographers who have sought to make sense of his inner life. In Being Thomas Jefferson, acclaimed Jefferson scholar Andrew Burstein peels away layers of obfuscation, taking us past the veneer of the animated letter-writer to describe a confused lover and a misguided humanist, too timid to embrace antislavery.

Jefferson was a soft-spoken man who recoiled from direct conflict, yet a master puppeteer in politics. Whenever he left Monticello, where he could control his environment, he suffered debilitating headaches that plagued him for decades, until he finally retired from public life. So, what did it feel like to be Thomas Jefferson? Burstein explains the decision to take as his mistress Sally Hemings, the enslaved half-sister of his late wife, who bore him six children, none of whom he acknowledged. Presenting a society that encouraged separation between public and private, appearance and essence, Burstein paints a dramatic picture of early American culture and brings us closer to Jefferson's life and thought than ever before.

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Designing Your Life return with a groundbreaking guide to transforming your daily routine into one brimming with joy, purpose, and meaning.

In a world grappling with major societal shifts and increasing isolation, it’s easy to feel like nothing you do matters. Even when we’re at the top of our game in our careers and have reached the personal milestones we’ve always dreamed about, so many of us still feel like something is missing, disconnected, and stuck. There must be more to life than simply surviving each day—but how do we uncover it?

Bestselling authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the “empowering” (Publishers Weekly) visionaries behind Stanford’s renowned Life Design Lab, have already inspired millions of readers to use design thinking principles to craft lives and careers they love. Now, in How to Live a Meaningful Life, they take on the most profound design problem of all: how to make a life rich with meaning and purpose. Evolving their revolutionary framework, Burnett and Evans present the latest research on what makes life worth living, showing us how to bring wonder, coherence, flow, and community into our everyday experiences. Instead of cramming more into an already packed life, they give us the steps we need to extract more out of it, moment by moment.

Through actionable insights and with Burnett and Evans’s signature compassion and warmth, How to Live a Meaningful Life equips you with the tools to turn your ordinary days into an extraordinary life today.

What would you do with a second chance at your first time? Following a bad breakup, Willow Lewis tackles a re-do list with the help of her brother’s best friend in this sweet and sexy new romance from USA Today bestselling author Denise Williams.

Willow experienced all her big firsts with her high school sweetheart. Now, reeling from their very public breakup, she wants to get a re-do on those important moments. While dog-sitting for her brother during his deployment, she has a chance to start over and spending time with his best friend gives her the confidence to start checking items off her “Re-Do list.”

Deacon promised his best friend two things when Cruz left for a deployment: that he’d look out for Willow, and that he’d keep his hands off Cruz’s baby sister. “Operation Re-Do” is innocent enough at first: Deacon likes Willow and he’s willing to help her out any way he can. But when the list of firsts turns from a first dance to first kisses and more, Deacon can’t deny the connection he feels to Willow.

As Deacon’s and Willow’s firsts turn to seconds, thirds, and fourths, this pair can’t get enough of each other—and they support each other through new challenges. But they are both aware there’s an end date to Willow’s time in town… and even if she were to stay, Deacon doesn’t know how to choose between his loyalty to his closest friend and the woman he’s fallen in love with. With no more romantic moments on her list for them to re-do, can these two still find a way to stay together?

The #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Designing Your Life return with a groundbreaking guide to transforming your daily routine into one brimming with joy, purpose, and meaning.

In a world grappling with major societal shifts and increasing isolation, it’s easy to feel like nothing you do matters. Even when we’re at the top of our game in our careers and have reached the personal milestones we’ve always dreamed about, so many of us still feel like something is missing, disconnected, and stuck. There must be more to life than simply surviving each day—but how do we uncover it?

Bestselling authors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, the “empowering” (Publishers Weekly) visionaries behind Stanford’s renowned Life Design Lab, have already inspired millions of readers to use design thinking principles to craft lives and careers they love. Now, in How to Live a Meaningful Life, they take on the most profound design problem of all: how to make a life rich with meaning and purpose. Evolving their revolutionary framework, Burnett and Evans present the latest research on what makes life worth living, showing us how to bring wonder, coherence, flow, and community into our everyday experiences. Instead of cramming more into an already packed life, they give us the steps we need to extract more out of it, moment by moment.

Through actionable insights and with Burnett and Evans’s signature compassion and warmth, How to Live a Meaningful Life equips you with the tools to turn your ordinary days into an extraordinary life today.

*The limited deluxe edition will have designed edges*

From New York Times bestselling author Meghan Quinn comes a sizzling sports romance full of flamingo feathers, slow-burn heat, and one grump-meets-sunshine love story that's anything but fake.

They're faking it for the cameras. But what if the sparks are real?

Graydon St. John doesn't do drama--or public appearances. The brooding defensive end for the San Francisco Foghorns prefers silence, solitude, and avoiding headlines. But when a league-wide PR scandal forces him into a media stunt at the city zoo, he's suddenly face-to-face with squawking birds, nosy fans, and the zookeeper who seems to hate his guts on sight.

Maple Baker loves her flamingos. Loud, pink, messy? Sure. But they're hers. And the last thing she needs is a grumpy football player stomping into her sanctuary with a bad attitude and a bigger ego. Unfortunately, they've been paired for the zoo's new public outreach program, and the cameras are already rolling.

The banter is sharp. The tension is electric. And the more they pretend to play nice for the press, the more their fake flirtation starts to feel like something dangerously real.

But when family secrets, viral fame, and a PR romance gone off-script threaten everything Maple's worked for, Graydon must decide if he's willing to fight for love--or let it slip away to protect her.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey is back with an all-new marriage of convenience, friends-to-lovers sports romance about a baseball catcher and the burlesque club owner he can't get out of his head.

Madden Donahue, the newest catcher for the Yankees, has been in love with Eve Mitchell since high school, but for some mysterious reason, the burlesque club owner always turns him down. That never stopped him from being her self-appointed protector. Case in point, now that Eve's sister has left Eve with her two children indefinitely, Madden steps in with a proposition--marry him for the much needed health benefits.

Eve has secretly harbored feelings for Madden all along, but there's one problem--her best friend Skylar called dibs on him when they were fourteen. Eve has always put their friendship above all else, and she's not willing to risk losing Skylar over a man. Raised by the local strip club owner, Eve is woefully short on friends and treasures the ones she has. But with Skylar happily paired off, Eve finds herself accepting Madden's proposal--on the condition that their marriage remains strictly private. She's not about to let her unique profession and maligned reputation destroy Madden's shiny new career.

Madden won't let Eve get away that easily, though. What starts as a marriage of convenience soon ignites into something much hotter, and now it's up to Madden to convince Eve that their connection is far more than a business arrangement. As the passion builds, can their fake marriage become the real deal?

Radically open-minded, formidably strong, and unusually clear-eyed about herself and others, Evelyn Bednarz has always been a misfit. She's easily bored, unsuited to life at school, asks odd questions about faith and time, and sees through conventions others take for granted. Seeking to be true to herself, she hitchhikes across the American West taking odd jobs.

In distant Tibet, another life unfolds as remote from Evelyn's as can be: the life of a boy named Tsering, raised as a Buddhist monk in the mountains of Tibet, who eventually becomes a high lama.

And yet, their lives are strangely linked--as Evelyn discovers when a trio of Buddhist lamas show up at her door to announce that her five-year-old son Cliff is the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Norbu Rinpoche, recently deceased. The lamas' visit sets off a family crisis and a media firestorm over Cliff's future.

Written in a spare, precise style of extraordinary beauty, full of surprising humor and luminosity, Evelyn in Transit delivers much-needed insight and compassion about humanity's strivings for transcendence, and what it might mean to "live the right way."

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “After his spectacular Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders returns . . . with a new novel even more spectacular than the last.”—Los Angeles Times

A “daring” (Time) novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and Tenth of December, taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next

“Vibrant, fiendishly clever . . . Vigil is pure Saunders: the death of empathy, he insists, is greatly exaggerated.”—The Boston Globe 

Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.

She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?

Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.

With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.

Darby Kane, author of the #1 international bestseller Pretty Little Wife, returns with a gripping domestic thriller in which a family goes missing and a long-buried family mystery resurfaces.

Fifteen years ago, the Tanner family vanished without a trace, leaving behind a chilling scene: half-eaten meals, a bloodstain by the door, and a smoldering fire consuming their business across town.

The once-vibrant home stands untouched, a haunting relic of the past. As rumors fade into local folklore, the mystery of their disappearance seems destined to remain unsolved--until Aubrey Tanner returns.

Now a hardened thirty-year-old, Aubrey arrives in town with secrets etched in her silence. Why did she come back? Was she a victim of the night that changed everything, or does she hold the truth of what happened to her family? The town is rife with theories, but three women share a dangerous bond: they know more than they've ever confessed.

As the past resurfaces, old alliances fray. A teacher, a café owner, and a psychologist are drawn together by memories they'd rather forget. Each holds a piece of the puzzle--and a dark secret of their own. When a new disappearance sends shock waves through the town, blackmail begins, and the stakes climb higher.

In a race against time, these women must confront the truth or risk becoming the next victims of a past they cannot escape. With tension rising and danger lurking, one thing is clear: someone is destined to kill again.

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by Vulture, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, The Times (UK), Our Culture, and Harper's Bazaar

“I can’t remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard or feel so much tenderness for its characters.” —Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

“Madeline Cash is a voice like no other.” —Lena Dunham

“I’ve read entire books that contain less wit and inventiveness than a single one of Cash’s sentences.” —Eric Puchner, New York Times-bestselling author of Dream State

“With a big surge of energy, Lost Lambs splits the nucleus of the American family.” —Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection

Rippling with humor, warmth, and style, Lost Lambs is a new vision of the charms and pitfalls of family dysfunction. 

The Flynn family is coming undone. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its breaking point as their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone—or something—is monitoring the town’s citizens.

Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a billionaire shipping magnate. Rumors of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with a mysterious shipping container sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy—one that may just bring them closer together.

Irreverent and addictive, pinging between the voices of the Flynn family and those of the panorama of characters around them, Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a debut novel of quick-witted observation and surprising tenderness. With it, Cash has crafted a family saga for the twenty-first century, all held together with crazy glue.

An illuminating, hilarious, and practical guide to 99 of the most terrifying ways to die and how to avoid them from an emergency medicine doctor.

Dr. Ashely Alker is a self-described death escapologist—or, in more familiar terms, an emergency medicine doctor. She has seen it all, from flesh-eating bacteria to the work of a serial killer to the more mundane but no less deadly, and her work outwitting the end has uniquely prepared her to write this book.

Dr. Alker manages to shock readers while making them laugh, educating them on how to outsmart a wide range of deadly situations and conditions. Many of the chapters include stories from her experiences in life and medicine, at times heartwarming, others heartbreaking. Sections include explorations of sex, poison, drugs, biological warfare, disease, animals, crime, the elements, and much more.

An Anthony Bourdain-style greatest hits tour of death, 99 Ways to Die is entertaining while it informs. Full of valuable advice and wild stories, this riveting read might just save your life.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of I’m Glad My Mom Died comes “a thorny examination of power, lust, shame and rage” (Los Angeles Times) from “a writer able to capture some of the darkest parts of human nature with unflinching honesty and devastating humor” (NPR)

“Unapologetic and undeniable . . . If there was ever any doubt whether the narrative command that Jennette McCurdy displayed in her bestselling memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died might translate to fiction, let it henceforth be put to rest.”—Elle

Waldo is ravenous. Horny. Blunt. Naive. Wise. Impulsive. Lonely. Angry. Forceful. Hurting. Perceptive. Endlessly wanting. And the thing she wants most of all: Mr. Korgy, her creative writing teacher with the wife and the kid and the mortgage and the bills, with the dead dreams and the atrophied looks and the growing paunch. She doesn’t know why she wants him. Is it his passion? His life experience? The fact that he knows books and films and things that she doesn’t? Or is it purer than that, rooted in their unlikely connection, their kindred spirits, the similar filter with which they each take in the world around them? Or, perhaps, it’s just enough that he sees her when no one else does. 

Startlingly perceptive, mordantly funny, and keenly poignant, Half His Age is a rich character study of a yearning seventeen-year-old who disregards all obstacles—or attempts to overcome them—in her effort to be seen, to be desired, to be loved.