Rival ornithologists hunt through England for a rare magical bird in this historical-fantasy rom-com reminiscent of Indiana Jones but with manners, tea, and helicopter parasols. Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, capturing both her bird and her imagination like a villain. Albeit a handsome and charming villain, but that's beside the point. As someone highly educated in the ruthless discipline of ornithology, Beth knows trouble when she sees it, and she is determined to keep her distance from Devon.  For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Professor Beth Pickering. She's so pretty, so polite, so capable of bringing down a fiery, deadly bird using only her wits. In other words, an angel. Devon understands he must not get close to her, however, since they're professional rivals.  When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning. Now keeping their distance becomes a question of one bed or two. But they must take the risk, because fowl play is afoot, and they can't trust anyone else—for all may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology.

A pair of Gothic novelists trade rivalry for love in this swoony, steamy, sapphic Regency by USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Vasti.Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she’s also acquired an the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana’s own manuscripts. What’s a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course.But unmasking doesn’t go according to plan—because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler’s daughter and object of Georgiana’s very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation.Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty. The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can’t seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival—including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together. In between ghostly moans and spectral staff, Cat and Georgiana come face-to-face with real the scorching passion that’s been haunting their rivalry all along.

Although acceptance of difference is on the rise in America, it’s the rare gay or lesbian person who has not been demeaned because of his or her sexual orientation, and this experience usually starts at home, among family members.Whether they are excluded from family love and approval, expected to accept second-class status for life, ignored by mainstream arts and entertainment, or abandoned when intervention would make all the difference, gay people are routinely subjected to forms of psychological and physical abuse unknown to many straight Americans.“Familial homophobia,” as prizewinning writer and professor Sarah Schulman calls it, is a phenomenon that until now has not had a name but that is very much a part of life for the LGBT community. In the same way that Susan Brownmiller’s Against Our Will transformed our understanding of rape by moving the stigma from the victim to the perpetrator, Schulman’s Ties That Bind calls on us to recognize familial homophobia. She invites us to understand it not as a personal problem but a widespread cultural crisis. She challenges us to take up our responsibilities to intervene without violating families, community, and the state. With devastating examples, Schulman clarifies how abusive treatment of homosexuals at home enables abusive treatment of homosexuals in other relationships as well as in society at large.Ambitious, original, and deeply important, Schulman’s book draws on her own experiences, her research, and her activism to probe this complex issue—still very much with us at the start of the twenty-first century—and to articulate a vision for a more accepting world.

A young royal from the far north is sent south for a political marriage in an empire reminiscent of imperial China. Her brothers are dead, her armies and their war mammoths long defeated and caged behind their borders. Alone and sometimes reviled, she must choose her allies carefully. Rabbit, a handmaiden, sold by her parents to the palace for the lack of five baskets of dye, befriends the emperor's lonely new wife and gets more than she bargained for. At once feminist high fantasy and an indictment of monarchy, this evocative debut follows the rise of the empress In-yo, who has few resources and fewer friends. She's a northern daughter in a mage-made summer exile, but she will bend history to her will and bring down her enemies, piece by piece.

Subverting convention, award-winning creators M. T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin pair up for an anarchic, outlandish, and deeply political saga of warring elf and goblin kingdoms. Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission: survive being catapulted across the mountains into goblin territory, deliver a priceless peace offering to their mysterious dark lord, and spy on the goblin kingdom — from which no elf has returned alive in more than a hundred years. Brangwain’s host, the goblin archivist Werfel, is delighted to show Brangwain around. They should be the best of friends, but a series of extraordinary double crosses, blunders, and cultural misunderstandings throws these two bumbling scholars into the middle of an international crisis that may spell death for them — and war for their nations. Witty mixed media illustrations show Brangwain’s furtive missives back to the elf kingdom, while Werfel’s determinedly unbiased narrative tells an entirely different story. A hilarious and biting social commentary that could only come from the likes of National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson and Newbery Honoree Eugene Yelchin, this tale is rife with thrilling action and visual humor . . . and a comic disparity that suggests the ultimate victor in a war is perhaps not who won the battles, but who gets to write the history.

"A gleeful, poetic book…Like the best natural histories, Dirt is a kind of prayer." ― Los Angeles Times Book Review "You are about to read a lot about dirt, which no one knows very much about." So begins the cult classic that brings mystery and magic to "that stuff that won't come off your collar." John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Saint Phocas, Darwin, and Virgil parade through this thought-provoking work, taking their place next to the dung beetle, the compost heap, dowsing, historical farming, and the microscopic biota that till the soil. Whether William Bryant Logan is traversing the far reaches of the cosmos or plowing through our planet’s crust, his delightful, elegant, and surprisingly soulful meditations greatly enrich our concept of "dirt," that substance from which we all arise and to which we all must return.

From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth. Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best. Then one of them is murdered. It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in. If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen. We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth—its abundance of sweet, juicy berries—to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution insures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, “Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is “a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world.” The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that “hoarding won’t save us, all flourishing is mutual.”

2021 LODESTAR AWARD for BEST YOUNG ADULT BOOK Fourteen-year-old Mona isn’t like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can’t control lightning or speak to water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt’s bakery making gingerbread men dance. But Mona’s life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona’s city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona’s worries…