The Excellent Lombards

Jane Hamilton

Grand Central Publishing

Mary Frances "Frankie" Lombard is deeply in love with her family's sprawling apple orchard and the tangled web of family members who inhabit it. Content to spend her days planning capers with her brother William, one-upping her bratty cousin Amanda, and expertly tending the orchard, Frankie desires nothing more than for the rhythm of life to continue undisturbed. But change is inevitable, and threats of urbanization, disinheritance, and college applications shake the foundation of Frankie's roots. As Frankie is forced to shed her childhood fantasies and face the possibility of losing the idyllic future she had envisioned for her family, she must decide whether loving something means clinging tightly or letting go.

The Last Mile

David Baldacci

Grand Central Publishing

Convicted murderer Melvin Mars is counting down the last hours before his execution--for the violent killing of his parents twenty years earlier--when he's granted an unexpected reprieve. Another man has confessed to the crime. Amos Decker, newly hired on an FBI special task force, takes an interest in Mars's case after discovering the striking similarities to his own life: Both men were talented football players with promising careers cut short by tragedy. Both men's families were brutally murdered. And in both cases, another suspect came forward, years after the killing, to confess to the crime. A suspect who may or may not have been telling the truth. The confession has the potential to make Melvin Mars--guilty or not--a free man. Who wants Mars out of prison? And why now? But when a member of Decker's team disappears, it becomes clear that something much larger--and more sinister--than just one convicted criminal's life hangs in the balance. Decker will need all of his extraordinary brainpower to stop an innocent man from being executed.

Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice

Curtis Sittenfeld

Random House

A bold literary experiment, Eligible is a brilliant, playful, and delicious saga for the twenty-first century. This version of the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy is one that you have and haven't met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray. Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master's degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won t discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane's fortieth birthday fast approaches. Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show "Eligible." At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip's friend neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.

Mothering Sunday: A Romance

Graham Swift

Knopf Publishing Group

A luminous, intensely moving tale that begins with a secret lovers assignation in the spring of 1924, then unfolds to reveal the whole of a remarkable life. Twenty-two-year-old Jane Fairchild has worked as a maid at an English country house since she was sixteen. For almost all of those years she has been the clandestine lover to Paul Sheringham, young heir of a neighboring house. The two now meet on an unseasonably warm March day Mothering Sunday a day that will change Jane's life forever. As the narrative moves back and forth from 1924 to the end of the century, what we know and understand about Jane about the way she loves, thinks, feels, sees, remembers expands with every vividly captured moment.

Callings: A StoryCorps Book: A Celebration of Lives of Purpose and Passion

Dave Isay

Penguin Press

In Callings, Dave Isay, Founder of StoryCorps presents unforgettable stories from people doing what they love.Some found their paths at a very young age, others later in life; some overcame great odds or upturned their lives in order to pursue what matters to them. Many of their stories have never been broadcast or published by StoryCorps until now. We meet a man from the "barrios" of Texas whose harrowing experiences in a family of migrant farmers inspired him to become a public defender. We meet a longtime waitress who takes pride in making regulars and newcomers alike feel at home in her Nashville diner. We meet a young man on the South Side of Chicago who became a teacher in order to help at-risk teenagers like the ones who killed his father get on the right track. We meet a woman from Little Rock who helps former inmates gain the skills and confidence they need to rejoin the workforce. Together they demonstrate how work can be about much more than just making a living, that chasing dreams and finding inspiration in unexpected places can transform a vocation into a calling. Their shared sense of passion, honor, and commitment brings deeper meaning and satisfaction to every aspect of their lives.

Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad

Terry Jennings and David Thomas with Forward by Willie Nelson

Hachette Books

In a signed copy of his autobiography, Texas-born country Outlaw icon Waylon Jennings penned a personal note to his son Terry: "I did my best. Now it's your turn." Two decades later, Terry Jennings finally completes the true story of his father's remarkable, unvarnished life with Waylon: Tales of My Outlaw Dad. Born when Waylon was only nineteen, Terry came of age just as Waylon's career hit the stratosphere with hits like "I've Always Been Crazy" and "Good Hearted Woman," one of his famous Willie Nelson duets. Terry dropped out of high school and joined his dad on tour, and the two became more like brothers than father and son. On the road, they toured with legends like Nelson, Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and Jessi Colter, Waylon's fourth and final wife. Together father and son led a hard-partying lifestyle centered around music, women, and drugs. Waylon's success--critical acclaim, bestselling albums, sold-out tours, and even TV stardom on The Dukes of Hazzard--was at times eclipsed by his demons, three divorces, crippling debt, and a depression that Terry traces to the premature death of Buddy Holly. (Waylon was supposed to be on Holly and Ritchie Valens's doomed flight.) Through it all, Terry worked on the touring crew, helped manage Waylon's career, and became one of his father's closest confidantes. Debunking myths and sharing incredible never-before-told stories, this book is a son's loving and strikingly honest portrait of his father, "the greatest Outlaw country musician to grace this earth" and an unlikely but devoted family man.

Chasing the Last Laugh: Mark Twain's Raucous and Redemptive Round-The-World Comedy Tour

Richard Zacks

Doubleday Books

Mark Twain, the highest-paid writer in America in 1894, was also one of the nation's worst investors. There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate, he wrote. When he can't afford it and when he can. The publishing company Twain owned was failing; his investment in a typesetting device was bleeding red ink. After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars back when a beer cost a nickel, he found himself neck-deep in debt. His heiress wife, Livy, took the setback hard. I have a perfect "horror" and heart-sickness over it, she wrote. I cannot get away from the feeling that business failure means disgrace. But Twain vowed to Livy he would pay back every penny. And so, just when the fifty-nine-year-old, bushy-browed icon imagined that he would be settling into literary lionhood, telling jokes at gilded dinners, he forced himself to mount the platform again, embarking on a round-the-world stand-up comedy tour. No author had ever done that. He cherry-picked his best stories such as stealing his first watermelon and buying a bucking bronco and spun them into a ninety-minute performance.

The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War Against Hitler's U-Boats

William Geroux

Viking

One of the last unheralded heroic stories of World War II: the U-boat assault off the American coast against the men of the U.S. Merchant Marine who were supplying the European war, and one community's monumental contribution to that effort Mathews County, Virginia, is a remote outpost on the Chesapeake Bay with little to offer except unspoiled scenery but it sent an unusually large concentration of sea captains to fight in World War II. The Mathews Men tells that heroic story through the experiences of one extraordinary family whose seven sons (and their neighbors), U.S. merchant mariners all, suddenly found themselves squarely in the cross-hairs of the U-boats bearing down on the coastal United States in 1942.

You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir

Felicia Day

Touchstone Books

When Felicia Day was a girl, all she wanted was to connect with other kids (desperately). Growing up in the Deep South, where she was home-schooled for hippie reasons, she looked online to find her tribe. The Internet was in its infancy and she became an early adopter at every stage of its growth finding joy and unlikely friendships in the emerging digital world. Her relative isolation meant that she could pursue passions like gaming, calculus, and 1930's detective novels without shame. Because she had no idea how uncool she really was. But if it hadn t been for her strange background the awkwardness continued when she started college at sixteen, with Mom driving her to campus every day she might never have had the naive confidence to forge her own path. Like when she graduated as valedictorian with a math degree and then headed to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting despite having zero contacts. Or when she tired of being typecast as the crazy cat-lady secretary and decided to create her own web series before people in show business understood that online video could be more than just cats chasing laser pointers. Felicia's rags-to-riches rise to Internet fame launched her career as one of the most influential creators in new media. Ever candid, she opens up about the rough patches along the way, recounting battles with writer's block, a full-blown gaming addiction, severe anxiety, and depression and how she reinvented herself when overachieving became overwhelming.