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THE SNOWMAN CODE

It’s March, but the heavy snow shows no signs of melting. Even worse, winter sometimes makes her mom so sad that Blessing has to stay with other families while she recovers in the hospital. Blessing has been skipping school to avoid her bullies, and one afternoon, while she’s hiding in Victoria Park, she meets an […]

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THE REST OF OUR LIVES

Published in the U.K. earlier this year, now shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Markovits’ 12th novel establishes the unstudied and confiding voice that carries it so compellingly forward in the first sentence: “When our son was twelve years old, my wife had an affair with a guy called Zach Zirsky, whom she knew from synagogue.” […]

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THE DREAM BUILDER’S BLUEPRINT

The key lines and uplifting sentiments chosen for this “erasure poem” sometimes show their age, but they still make inspiring reading. The text floats on Lewis’ evocative images of opening doorways and marching footsteps, of small figures standing on a mountaintop or rising through clouds, and of hands shaping a heart or holding a tool. […]

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THE SPIRITS OF ’76

After the tragic deaths of her parents, Emmeline, who’s gifted with the ability to see the future, is separated from her sister and forced into the service of the cruel and abusive Mr. Chitwood. He disguises the 11-year-old girl as a boy and forces her to perform a fortune-telling act for wealthy clients. Its success […]

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DIQUE DOMINICAN

The author was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Section-8 housing in Brooklyn; he moved from poverty to the ivory towers of academia to become a professor of English at the University of Toledo. While his account is a deeply personal story of survival, brilliance, and grit, he also connects his autobiography to […]

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A LITTLE BUZZED

Scout Porter has vowed to never let love distract her from work, but she never said anything about lust. As the head engineer for BuzzCorp, a sex-toy manufacturer, there’s not much that can make Scout blush—that is, until Hudson Bailey comes along. He’s BuzzCorp’s handsome new contracted software engineer, which means that Scout has to […]

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YOU BETTER BELIEVE I’M GONNA TALK ABOUT IT

In this revealing and dishy memoir, Rinna leads with intense family trauma, describing the tragic losses of her beloved mother, Lois, from a stroke in 2021, as well as intimately detailing her father’s assisted suicide and her half-sister’s accidental overdose at age 21. Rinna attributes her Season 12 departure from Bravo’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to […]

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A SPEEDY LITTLE CHEETAH ON THE BIG BLUE EARTH

Elevating the view as it goes, this perspective broadener invites viewers to join a trio of bright-eyed young cheetahs chasing a gazelle over a grassy plain, then to peer over distant hills to examine a neatly laid out city bustling with traffic and brown-skinned shoppers. From there, a glimpse of a smaller village leads to […]

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THE WATER YOU’RE SWIMMING IN

One month ago, 16-year-old Jamie left Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, to earn a living playing the fiddle in Halifax. Noah’s parents spend their evenings driving to Halifax to look for Jamie, so Noah’s grandmother arrives from Cape Breton Island, soothing Noah with warm hugs, serving him chocolate cake for breakfast, and tending to his cold […]

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WHO NEEDS FRIENDS

Actor-turned-author McCarthy, now in his 60s, begins with a comment from a young son who says, offhandedly, “You don’t really have any friends, do you, Dad?” McCarthy thinks, well, he has friends, but he doesn’t see them often. The resolve, then, that drives this narrative was to go seek out friends from his hell-raising, bibulous […]