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COOKIES AND CRESCENTS

Reem lives in a bustling, tightknit urban neighborhood; the young narrator adores the community’s Eid traditions, including Mama’s delicious, buttery cookies. But Reem and Mama are moving away just before Eid, and the child is crushed. “Al harakah barakah, Reem. Movement is a blessing,” says Mama. Even with a bigger kitchen to bake in, Reem […]

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KING OF THE NORTH

For decades, biographers have focused on Martin Luther King Jr.’s successful leadership in the South while suggesting that his Northern activism failed because it lacked direction and local support. Theoharis, a professor of political science at Brooklyn College, upends this narrative by painstakingly documenting King’s relentless and impassioned battles against Northern discrimination and police brutality, […]

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THE STRATEGISTS

O’Brien, author of The Second Most Powerful Man in the World, offers an exploration of grand strategy: decisions by a supreme authority for actions beyond the command of military forces. Readers will learn more from stand-alone biographies of the author’s five subjects, but he provides solid overviews of their decision-making processes. All maintained that they […]

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FIVE-DOG EPIPHANY

Canines became a fixture in Leone’s life in 1994, when her then-6-year-old son, Jesse, made it clear he wanted a dog. The author and her husband bought him a bichon frise puppy named Goody, and they nicknamed him the “Prince of Dogs.” Twelve years later—and a few months after Jesse passed away in his sleep […]

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WISH YOU WERE HERE

As the story goes (related years later by a friend of the writer), once when Franz Kafka was walking in a Berlin park, he met a mother whose child, Saskia, was in tears. Learning that the child had lost her doll Christiana, he began bringing her postcards he’d gathered in his travels with notes from […]

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ELLIE’S DELI

Nina, who was introduced in the first book as a new addition to Ellie’s friend group, hasn’t gelled equally with all the pals and is stirring up drama. The venue where Ellie’s friend Charlie wanted to hold her bat mitzvah party closed, so she may not get to celebrate after the religious service. This leads […]

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THE KINGDOM OF HATCH

Arlo Hatch is a lawyer specializing in business litigation. Though his love for Stella, the daughter of one of his clients, is a bright spot in his life, Arlo is disenchanted with his career and yearns for a change. After Arlo is unsuccessfully mugged, Kostya Kozlov—a former client who was recently released from prison—benevolently takes […]

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DIGGING DEEP

Leah Covington, on her way home from the restaurant she runs with her uncle in Oklahoma City, survives a frightening assault. The assailant lands in jail, but Leah’s social life, even months later, has yet to recover. When she finally goes out with her little sister, Kayla, Leah reunites with the muscular, handsome police officer […]

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SQUIRE & KNIGHT

Sir Kelton, Squire, and Shadow are escorting Cade to wizard school, but they keep returning to the same marked cairn. They encounter Sir Reynholm the Bold of Upper Claxtonbury, but the group is separated when a swarm of giant mosquitoes attack. Squire relies on his wits, survival skills, and flashback memories of a conversation with […]

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THE WALL OF LIFE

Throughout her illustrious career, from her 1950s star-making Broadway debut as an understudy in Pajama Game to leading roles in acclaimed films like Some Came Running and The Apartment, Shirley MacLaine has diligently chronicled her life’s journey. Her bestselling memoirs, beginning with Don’t Fall Off the Mountain (1970) and including Out on a Limb (1983), […]