Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned--Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

A circus, titled Le Cirque des Reve, comes to town out of the blue and without warning. Within its tents, young magicians Celia and Marco compete to be the best, having done so since childhood. However, under the backdrop of their intense rivalry, a blossoming romance develops.

Coralie appears as the Mermaid in her father's 'museum,' alongside performers like the Wolfman, the Butterfly Girl. One night Coralie stumbles upon a striking young man photographing moonlit trees in the woods off the Hudson River. The dashing photographer is Eddie Cohen. When Eddie captures with his camera the devastation on the streets of New York following the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, he becomes embroiled in the mystery behind a young woman's disappearance.

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell." But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body. From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state--called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo--a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul. Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices--living and dead, historical and invented--to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

The painter's wife has left him for a younger man. Taking some time away from Tokyo, he starts looking after the empty house of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. Not long after he moves in, a scraping sound in the attic leads him to find a carefully wrapped canvas, labelled 'Killing Commendatore'. This unusual painting leads him to delve into Amada's life story and those of his neighbors. It also brings him into contact with a strange parallel universe, from which the Commendatore himself emerges. When his neighbour's daughter vanishes, the painter must embark on a quest that leads him back to a tragedy in his own past. A profound engagement with art and its creation, Killing Commendatore asks whether confronting the past can ever bring comfort, or just more pain? Ambitious, haunting, and multi-layered, it is reminiscent of Murakami's masterpiece The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and takes his narrative art in new and exciting directions.

Jackie Kennedy was beautiful, sophisticated, and contemplating leaving her ambitious young senator husband. Life in the public eye with an overly ambitious and unfaithful man who could hardly be coaxed to return from a vacation after the birth of a stillborn child was breaking her spirit. So when she's offered a holiday on the luxurious yacht owned by billionaire Ari Onassis, she says yes to a meeting that will ultimately change her life. Maria Callas is at the height of her operatic career and widely considered to be the finest soprano in the world. Then she's introduced to Aristotle Onassis, the world's richest man, and her fellow Greek. Stuck in a childless, sexless marriage, and with pressures on all sides, she finds her life being turned upside down by this hyper-intelligent and impeccably charming man. Little by little, Maria's and Jackie's lives begin to overlap, and they come closer and closer until everything they know about the world changes on a dime.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Marriage can be a real killer. On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's beautiful and clever wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media -- as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents -- the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter-- but is he really a killer?

At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Simon's memoir reveals her remarkable life, beginning with her storied childhood as the third daughter of Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, her musical debut as half of The Simon Sisters performing folk songs with her sister Lucy in Greenwich Village, to a meteoric solo career that would result in thirteen top 40 hits, including the number one song 'You're So Vain.' She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, for her song 'Let the River Run' from the movie Working Girl. The memoir recalls a childhood enriched by music and culture, but also one shrouded in secrets that would eventually tear her family apart.

From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live ; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor ; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon, comedian Tina Fey reveals all, and proves that you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. In these stories, Sedaris shops for rare taxidermy, hitchhikes with a lady quadriplegic, and spits a lozenge into a fellow traveler’s lap. He drowns a mouse in a bucket, struggles to say 'give it to me' in five languages, and hand-feeds a carnivorous bird. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms--at long last--with the other. Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected--it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder--but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. But it is the American commander-in-chief who stands foremost -- Washington, who had never before led an army in battle.

"Dr. Sanjay Gupta offers insights from top scientists all over the world, whose cutting-edge research can help heighten and protect brain function and maintain cognitive health at any age. He debunks common myths about aging and cognitive decline, explores whether there's a 'best' diet or exercise regimen for the brain, and explains whether it's healthier to play video games that test memory and processing speed or to engage in more social interaction. Discover what we can learn from 'super-brained' people who are in their 80s and 90s with no signs of slowing down and whether there are truly any benefits to drugs, supplements, and vitamins. Dr. Gupta also addresses brain disease, particularly Alzheimer's, answers questions about the signs and symptoms, and shows how to ward against it and stay healthy while caring for a partner in cognitive decline. He likewise provides a personalized twelve-week program featuring practical strategies to strengthen the brain every day."

"In this groundbreaking book, world-renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tackles the world's thorniest philosophical conundrums, armed with wit, wisdom, and cutting edge science. Together with distinguished physicist James Trefil, Tyson presents questions that have preoccupied humanity for millennia. Then, using the latest theories, from the Big Bang to string theory and the multiverse, he explores the answers, bolstered with stunning images and the latest insights from missions to planets, moons, asteroids, and beyond. Filled with paradigm-shifting concepts arising from the ideas of astrophysics today, this enlightening book will inspire readers of all ages, offering new ways to understand the complexities of life and the universe we inhabit."

A captivating blend of personal history detailing Eleanor Roosevelt's struggle with issues of marriage, motherhood, financial independence, and femininity, and a vibrant portrait of one of the most famous neighborhoods in the world, this unique work examines the ways that the sensibility, mood, and various inhabitants of the neighborhood influenced the First Lady's perception of herself and shaped her political views over four decades, up to her death in 1962.

The Academy, Tony, and Emmy Award-winning actor and trailblazer tells her stunning story, looking back at her life and six-decade career.
"'In her long and extraordinary career, Cicely Tyson has not only succeeded as an actor, she has shaped the course of history.' --President Barack Obama, 2016 Presidential Medal of Honor ceremony. 'Just As I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. In these pages, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.'