Start with Yourself is a game-changing, no-BS guide for anyone seeking meaningful success on their own terms. It’s an essential framework that will give you the tools and mindset to unlock your full potential in life and business—straight from a woman who defied all the odds to become a serial entrepreneur, a cofounder of culture-defining global businesses, a nonprofit champion, and the host of the Aspire with Emma Grede podcast. All while raising a family of four children.Based on the factors of her early life—she’s the child of a working-class single mother and grew up in a rough neighborhood in East London and dropped out of high school—you’d never guess that Emma Grede would go on to become one of America’s richest self-made women. This makes Grede unique, but she’s convinced you can do it, Start with Yourself is a blueprint to her mindset and how she thinks about business and life, structured in easy takeaways, so you can immediately apply her philosophy to what you’re trying to build and create. Among her most blazing insights, Grede identifies what she calls “Old Thoughts”: stale thinking, outdated ideas; set-in-stone rules ingrained into the culture about work-life balance, the crassness of money, and the unseemliness of ambition—that aren’t actually rules at all. They’re biases, Grede insists, system errors, and we must strike them from our minds so that we can gain a greater sense of control, even mastery, over our day-to-day and long-range goals. Ultimately, this is a book for everyone tired of feeling like a bystander or passenger in their own life. Grede offers tangible and applicable-right-now solutions to create a mindset, an overall system of thought to manage emotions, clarify ideas, and illuminate the right next step—while always staying positive. It’s about gathering yourself after failure. It’s about being accountable but also forgiving yourself. It’s about not expecting shortcuts while never being bashful about grabbing them when they appear. It’s about pushing hard for wins and never apologizing for your dreams. Above all, Grede offers a new vision for work and life that encourages readers everywhere to take responsibility for their own thinking in order to achieve personal and professional success at the highest levels.

One of the world’s greatest bassists lays down the heart of Black music, revealing how its rhythmic structures and the long history of the African diaspora made it the world’s most popular form Why do Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone move us the way they do? What drives the worried notes of the Delta blues? What makes Beyoncé’s triumph Cowboy Carter inescapably great? As Melvin Gibbs shows in How Black Music Took Over the World, it is the musical inheritance of Africa. Beginning with two rhythmic building blocks he calls the cell and the frame, Gibbs shows how those tools can transport listeners to “a realm where sounds become vehicles for human movement.” Reforged in the African diaspora in the Americas, they are played today on church organs, electric guitars, computers, telephones, or a simple gourd. Kool & the Gang called Black musicians the “scientists of sound”—and Gibbs shows how they discovered the world’s music. Gibbs’s vantage is unique. A world-class musician fluent in many genres, Gibbs is as comfortable in an old-school Times Square record shop as he is breaking down mathematics and music theory with university professors. Imbued with his own journey and a sharp eye for the sins and triumphs of history, How Black Music Took Over the World is an unforgettable revelation of one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

Wisdom and musings on creativity and life from one of the world’s most beloved musicians, producers, and mentors—the legendary multi-award-winner Quincy Jones 12 Notes is a self-development guide that will affirm that creativity is a calling that can and should be answered, no matter your age or experience. Drawing from his own life, and those of his many creative collaborators past and present, Quincy Jones presents readers with lessons that are hardworking and accessible yet speak to the passion of self-expression. He includes sections as deep as how to transform grief into power, and as practical as how to set goals and articulate intentions through daily affirmations. Weaving his story throughout, Jones lets readers in on his own creative process, as well as the importance of letting honesty, hard work, and good relationships drive your career.

This heartwarming and swoon-worthy second chance romance about childhood friends reconnecting as adults is the highly anticipated debut novel from BookTok icon Haley Pham. Blair and Declan were inseparable growing up—best friends who knew each other better than anyone else. But when an impulsive kiss took them from friends to something more, everything changed. Just as quickly as their romance started, one moment shattered it all, leaving them with nothing but heartbreak and silence. Now, four years later, Blair is back in their coastal hometown of Seabrook to support her mom and care for her great-aunt Lottie as her health declines. To make ends meet, Blair applies to work at a coffee shop—only to discover it’s managed by none other than Declan. The boy she loved. The boy she lost. The boy who still makes her heart race. As Blair’s path keeps crossing with Declan’s, old wounds resurface, secrets are revealed, and sparks reignite. But could their future ever be free of their past? Told in dual timelines that unravel the magic and pain of first love, Just Friends is a moving, romantic story about second chances, the weight of dreams, and finding your way back to the people who feel like home.

One of the world’s greatest bassists lays down the heart of Black music, revealing how its rhythmic structures and the long history of the African diaspora made it the world’s most popular form Why do Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone move us the way they do? What drives the worried notes of the Delta blues? What makes Beyoncé’s triumph Cowboy Carter inescapably great? As Melvin Gibbs shows in How Black Music Took Over the World, it is the musical inheritance of Africa. Beginning with two rhythmic building blocks he calls the cell and the frame, Gibbs shows how those tools can transport listeners to “a realm where sounds become vehicles for human movement.” Reforged in the African diaspora in the Americas, they are played today on church organs, electric guitars, computers, telephones, or a simple gourd. Kool & the Gang called Black musicians the “scientists of sound”—and Gibbs shows how they discovered the world’s music. Gibbs’s vantage is unique. A world-class musician fluent in many genres, Gibbs is as comfortable in an old-school Times Square record shop as he is breaking down mathematics and music theory with university professors. Imbued with his own journey and a sharp eye for the sins and triumphs of history, How Black Music Took Over the World is an unforgettable revelation of one of humanity’s greatest achievements.