This sophisticated and entertaining first novel presents the story of a young woman whose life is on the brink of transformation. On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve. With its sparkling depiction of New York’s social strata, its intricate imagery and themes, and its immensely appealing characters, Rules of Civility won the hearts of readers and critics alike.

A kaleidoscopic journey through the secret history of hues—and the story of the obsessive genius behind the definitions of colors we use today, from the beloved author of Word by Word begonia (n.): 3 -s : a deep pink that is bluer, lighter, and stronger than average coral (see coral 3b), bluer than fiesta, and bluer and stronger than sweet william—called also gaiety What could “bluer than fiesta” possibly mean? While editing dictionaries for Merriam-Webster, Kory Stamper found herself drawn again and again to the whimsical color definitions in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary—especially when compared to the dry and impersonal entries that filled the rest of the dictionary. Stamper couldn’t help but Who was the voice behind these peculiar definitions? Meet I. H. Godlove, an erratic but brilliant up-and-coming scientist who was one of the experts Merriam-Webster hired in 1930 to help them revise the dictionary to reflect a rapidly modernizing world. His fascinating life mirrors the wild and winding journey that color science, color psychology, and color production took through the twentieth century. Stamper tracks these industries as they move into the atomic age and intertwine in strange and surprising ways, spanning two world wars and involving chemical explosions, an unexpected suicide, dramatic office politics, and an extraordinary love story. Filled with captivating facts about color words and colors themselves—did you know that the word “puke” used to be a highly fashionable color before it was associated with vomit?—and fueled by Stamper’s inexhaustible curiosity, A Trick of Light will transform the way you see the world, from black-and-white to Technicolor.

New York Admirals captain Scott Hunter takes his pregame rituals very seriously. In this case, it’s not just a lucky smoothie he’s craving—it’s the man who made it. Pro hockey star Scott Hunter knows a good thing when he sees it. So, when a smoothie made by juice bar barista Kip Grady precedes Scott breaking his on-ice slump, he’s desperate to recreate the magic...and to get to know the sexy, funny guy behind the counter. Kip knew there was more to Scott’s frequent visits than blended fruit, but he never let himself imagine being invited back to Scott’s penthouse. Or kissed with reckless abandon, never mind touched everywhere all at once. When it happens it’s red-hot, incredible and frequent, but also only on Scott’s terms and always behind his closed apartment doors. Scott needs Kip in his life, but with playoff season approaching, the spotlight on him is suddenly brighter than ever. He can’t afford to do anything that might derail his career…like introducing the world to his boyfriend. Kip is ready to go all-in with Scott—but how much longer will he have to remain a secret?

From the bestselling author of Attack of the Underwear Dragon comes the hilarious picture book introduction to Judgy Bunny, who thinks every new experience is THE WORST. Especially if she wasn't invited. Or if she might not be good at it. Or if it just looks awesome... er, terrible, that is. For this judgy bunny, nothing's worse than a day at the beach. The sun? Too bright. That view of the blue sky and gleaming sand? Awful. Sand castles? Ugh. Ice cream? Yucky. Yep. Everything is TERRIBLE. It has to be, right? There’s no way she could EVER have a good time. Not with the inexplicably friendly bunny who's offered to fly kites with her, or the ice cream cone that possibly isn't a flavor she detests, or boogie boarding, which she actually... isn't bad at??! Okay. MAYBE it's fun. But she'll be the judge of that.

From the internationally bestselling author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop comes a warm and reflective collection of essays inviting us to reflect on our relationship with reading. Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure? Rarely do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of reading. In each of the essays in Every Day I Read, Hwang Bo-reum contemplates what living a life immersed in reading means. She goes beyond the usual questions of what to read and how often, exploring the relationship between reading and writing, when to turn to a bestseller vs. browse the corners of a bookstore, the value of reading outside of your favorite genre, falling in love with book characters, and more. Every Day I Read provides many quiet moments for introspection and reflection, encouraging book-lovers to explore what reading means to each of us. While this is a book about books, at its heart is an attitude to life, one outside capitalism and climbing the corporate ladder. Lifelong and new readers will take away something from it, including a treasure trove of book recommendations blended seamlessly within.

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Word Freak, a vibrant, lively, and illuminating journey through the exotic world of Merriam-Webster, dictionaries, and language, at a time of rapid-fire change in the way we create, consume, define, and use words Words are the currency of culture—and never more than today. From selfie to doomscrolling to rizz, our hyper-connected digital world coins and spreads new words with lightning speed and locks them into mainstream consciousness with unprecedented influence. Journalist and bestselling author Stefan Fatsis embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America’s most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, to learn how words get into the dictionary, where they come from, who decides what they mean, and how we write and think about them. In so doing, as he recounts in Unabridged, he discovered the history and fascinating subculture of the dictionary and of those who curate and revere “one of the most basic features of our collective humanity.” Fatsis reveals the little-known story of how the brothers George and Charles Merriam acquired Noah Webster’s original American dictionary and reshaped the business of language forever. Merriam-Webster became America’s most successful and enduring compendium of words, withstanding intense competition and cultural controversies—only to be threatened by the power of Google and artificial intelligence today. Delving into Merriam’s legendary archives and parsing its arcane rules, Fatsis learns the painstaking precision required for writing good definitions. He examines how the dictionary has handled the most explosive slurs and the revolutionary change in pronouns. He votes on the annual Word of the Year, travels to the legendary Oxford English Dictionary, and visits the world’s greatest private dictionary collection in a Greenwich Village apartment stuffed with more than 20,000 books. Fatsis demonstrates how words are weaponized in our polarized political culture—from liberal to woke to DEI—and, in a time of insurrections and pandemics, how they can be a literal matter of life and death. Along the way, he manages to write a few definitions that crack the code and are enshrined in the pixelated dictionary. “I fell in love with the dictionary on my eleventh birthday,” Fatsis writes about the full-color college lexicon he received on that day. “The dictionary projects permanence, but the language is Jell-O, slippery and mutable and forever collapsing on itself.” Unabridged takes readers to the heart of an industry in flux, celebrating as it does the sheer thrill and wonder of words.

A celebration of the life and work of Ursula Norstrom—the groundbreaking editor of classic children’s books like Charlotte’s Web and Where the Wild Things Are—and a powerful defense of a child’s right to read Legendary Harper & Row children’s book editor Ursula Nordstrom was a trailblazer. Her books were honest, smart, emotional, and firsts of their kind. And—perhaps because they challenged the status quo—they were often censored or banned. But Nordstrom always fought back.Books Good Enough for You follows Nordstrom from childhood through her extraordinary career as book editor, literary revolutionary, and advocate. Full of anecdotes about some of Nordstrom’s most famous collaborators, like Maurice Sendak, Margaret Wise Brown, and E. B. White, this biography is a true celebration of collaboration and friendship. Many of Nordstrom’s books—from to Where the Wild Things Are to Charlotte’s Web—are now considered classics, but back in her day, these stories faced fierce opposition from those who deemed them inappropriate for children. In the face of this criticism, Nordstrom pushed back, building up her authors and proudly defending young readers’ access to literature that reflected their worlds. Filled with quotes from her eloquent, empathetic, and often sharply humorous editorial letters, Books Good Enough for You is a timely reminder that children deserve fresh, groundbreaking, and deeply human stories.

Selected by E.B. White himself, the essays in this volume span a lifetime of writing and a body of work without peer. "I have chosen the ones that have amused me in the rereading," he writes in the Foreword, "alone with a few that seemed to have the odor of durability clinging to them." These essays are incomparable; this is a volume to treasure and savor at one's leisure.

This beloved book by E. B. White, author of Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan, is a classic of children's literature that is "just about perfect." This high-quality paperback features vibrant illustrations colorized by Rosemary Wells! Some Pig. Humble. Radiant. These are the words in Charlotte's Web, high up in Zuckerman's barn. Charlotte's spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, who simply wants a friend. They also express the love of a girl named Fern, who saved Wilbur's life when he was born the runt of his litter. E. B. White's Newbery Honor Book is a tender novel of friendship, love, life, and death that will continue to be enjoyed by generations to come. This edition contains newly color illustrations by Garth Williams, the acclaimed illustrator of E. B. White's Stuart Little and Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, among many other books.

Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

For fans of Bernie Sanders and Thomas Piketty, an urgent intervention against capitalism revealing how economic models serve the extremely wealthy and powerful at the expense of ordinary people—and how we can reclaim our power to make choices about our economic lives.Capitalism isn’t inevitable, scientific, or natural—it's a relatively young system that can be replaced. In this radical rethinking of economics, Clara Mattei argues that enduring problems such as poverty, unemployment, and inflation are not bugs in the economy but core features. They are justified with pseudoscientific models, fabrications built to support a capitalist economy that unfairly rewards people with the most resources. The tools of economic experts—budget cuts, interest rate hikes, and regressive taxes—are sold as apolitical but disguise a bleak they maintain our capitalist system, reinforcing inequality. Central bankers raise interest rates knowing this will cause a recession and pain to working families. Governments slash tax collection jobs in the name of balanced budgets, which actually shields the wealthy from tax enforcement and creates budget shortfalls used to justify cuts in social services. Textbooks teach that unemployment must rise to fix inflation. But this model creates conditions that force people to accept crummy jobs and low pay. In the wake of World War I, when the world’s economy was in turmoil, economics was elevated to a scientific discipline, legitimized through mathematical formulas and new economic institutions considered too sophisticated for the average person to understand. Today’s economic institutions, from the Fed to the IMF, wield immense power over monetary policy yet are shielded from democratic scrutiny. Why should we accept a system that delegates crucial decisions that impact our lives to institutions in which we have no say? All the major problems today—from a healthcare system that prioritizes profits over well-being to the rise of ultranationalism—are rooted in an economic system that fails to serve the common good. In this revelatory manifesto, Mattei sets out a revolutionary vision that may one day allow us to achieve true economic freedom and finally escape from capitalism.

A young gay autistic travel writer takes a head-spinning detour when murder and romance unbalance his well-planned life and career in this fun, quirky debut mystery. Autism is just another fact of life for twenty-four-year-old Oliver Popp. As long as he sticks to a comfortable itinerary planned well in advance, he gets by just fine as a staff writer for Offbeat Traveler magazine. But a curve ball drops into Oliver’s budding career when his first feature assignment takes him to Washington, D.C. to chronicle the latest tourism trends. His freelance project photographer is Ricky Warner, a gregarious and impulsively adorable shot of adrenaline. If the flirty gay photographer isn’t enough to unbalance shy Oliver from the get-go, there’s also an unsettling chance encounter with old acquaintance, Elise Perkins, and a congressional hearing that’s shaking up both the Capitol and an entrepreneurial billionaire. The unexpected distractions soon collide when a speeding car kills Elise. Funny how she just stared it down like she knew it was coming. Forget the National Mall and Mt. Vernon Square. Oliver and Ricky are game for something much more: solving a mystery and a murder.