Author: Natalia Heroux

Sponsored by Grand Central Publishing

From the author of The Notebook and The Return comes a novel about the enduring legacy of first love and the decisions that haunt us forever. Renowned travel photographer Maggie Dawes is unexpectedly grounded over Christmas, struggling to come to terms with a sobering medical diagnosis. Increasingly dependent on a young assistant, she finds herself becoming close to him. And as they count down the last days of the season together, she begins to tell him the story of another Christmas, decades earlier—and the love that set her on a course she never could have imagined.

Sponsored by Things are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann (Biblioasis)

Things Are Against Us is a rollicking new collection of satirical essays from Lucy Ellmann, the author of the Goldsmiths Prize-winning and Booker-shortlisted blockbuster Ducks, Newburyport. These satirical essays jauntily tackle the obstinacy, incorrigibility, and recalcitrance of things. They also cover the first suggestion the internet offers when you look up the word ‘women’ (spoiler: it’s shoes) and other annoyances of male supremacy, the nobility of buttons, and what the rejection of tourists by Jordanian donkeys should mean for global travel.

Sponsored by National Geographic Books

A glorious new volume of Sartore’s signature animal portraits, this time highlighting the fascinating shapes, patterns, and expressions of animals both familiar and little known. Joel Sartore, on a mission to photograph all the animal species in human care, now delights us with more photographs, this time selected to represent the amazing diversity of the world’s animals. Animal lovers young and old will get lost in the pages of this book, delighted by the spectacular diversity among these creatures and the wit of the photographer chronicling them.

Sponsored by Algonquin Young Readers

“This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.” —Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist

Black history began long ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on a journey across Africa to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built a continent and shaped the world. Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson’s brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for middle-grade readers to return to again and again.