You Wanna Be on Top?: A Memoir of Makeovers, Manipulation, and Not Becoming America's Next Top Model

Sarah Hartshorne

In this revealing memoir, a fan favorite America’s Next Top Model contestant pulls back the curtain on the iconic but deeply flawed reality competition show, exposing the manipulation and chaos behind the scenes.Tyra Banks’s America’s Next Top Model was a cultural phenomenon with over six million weekly viewers at its peak. Over its fifteen-year run, the show captured the glitz of the early aughts as well as its most toxic attitudes—from the glamorous but often questionable photo shoots to the cutting feedback from its highly respected if out-of-touch judges. Watching ANTM now, it feels impossible to imagine a show like this airing today, and as its fans have grown up, they’ve also begun to reckon with the enduring ways that the show has affected their body image and self-esteem.Sarah Hartshorne would have never guessed that her first foray into modeling would start with being blindfolded alongside three dozen other girls on a charter bus winding through Puerto Rico. In You Wanna Be On Top?, Cycle 9’s only plus-size contestant takes us into the heart of the unforgiving auditions; the labyrinthian cruise ship the girls weren’t allowed to enjoy; and, of course, the L.A. “Model House” teeming with hidden cameras and elaborately constructed tensions. As the season unfolds and the producers’ interview questions about her weight and her opinions of the other girls become increasingly pointed, Hartshorne uncovers the destabilizing methods employed to film “reality.”Drawing on her experience as well as interviews with other contestants and production crew, Hartshorne answers the questions you always wanted to Why didn’t the house have a microwave or a dishwasher? Why did girls regularly faint during eliminations? Which judge was the meanest off-camera? Why is it that the girls had their most meaningful conversations in closets? ( It was the one place camera crews couldn’t fit.)With tender honesty and sharp wit, Hartshorne dissects the iconic show with an unflinching gaze that refuses to smize.

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Cold Clay

Juneau Black

The second book in the "Shady Hollow" series, in which some long-buried secrets come to light, throwing suspicion on a beloved local denizen. It's autumn in Shady Hollow, and residents are looking forward to harvest feasts. But then a rabbit discovers a grisly crop: the bones of a moose. Soon, the owner of Joe's Mug is dragged out of the coffeeshop and questioned by the police about the night his wife walked out of his life--and Shady Hollow--forever. It seems like an open-and-shut case, but dogged reporter Vera Vixen doesn't believe gentle Joe is a killer. She'll do anything to prove his innocence... even if it means digging into secrets her neighbors would rather leave buried.

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The Geographer's Map to Romance

India Holton

Geography professors in a failed marriage of convenience inconveniently reconnect for an emergency mission in this swoony historical-fantasy rom-com. Professor Elodie Tarrant is an expert in magic disasters. Nothing fazes her--except her own personal disaster, that is: Professor Gabriel Tarrant, the grumpy, unfriendly man she married for convenience a year ago, whom she secretly loves. Gabriel is also an expert in magic disasters. And nothing fazes him either--except the walking, talking tornado that is his wife. They've been estranged since shortly after their wedding day, but that hasn't stopped him from stoically pining for her. When magic erupts in a small Welsh village, threatening catastrophe for the rest of England, Elodie and Gabriel are accidentally both assigned to the case. With the fate of the country in their hands, they must come together as a team in the face of perilous conditions like explosions, domesticated goats, and only one bed. But this is easier said than done. After all, there's no navigational guide for the geography of the heart.

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The Girl Who Fell Through Time

Katherine Macdonald

Selene Duskbriar is like any other young noblewoman—elegant, pampered, and wholly unprepared for betrayal. But when her ambitious husband steals her birthright, sparks a war, and ultimately causes her death, Selene’s life takes an unexpected turn. Sent back in time to the day of her engagement, she seizes her second chance to rewrite her fate. In a desperate move, Selene marries Lord Dorian Nightbloom, a kind but unassuming lord, and flees to his quiet country estate, determined to hide from the schemes of her former husband, Duke Drakefell. Surrounded by Dorian’s gentle nature and the loyal warmth of his household, Selene’s heart begins to open in ways she never expected, drawing her toward a new life—and love—that she never knew she could want. However, Duke Drakefell hasn’t forgotten his plans, and with her unique knowledge of the future, Selene may be the only one who can thwart his deadly ambitions. But will love and courage be enough to stop a war—and can she finally become the heroine of her own story?

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The Knight and the Moth

Rachel Gillig

From New York Times bestselling author Rachel Gillig comes a sensational romantasy, a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a young prophetess forced on an impossible quest with the one knight whose future is beyond her sight. Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams. Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god.

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