"Vaclav Smil is my favorite author."—Bill Gates

An indispensable analysis of how the world really produces and consumes its food—and a scientist's exploration of how we can successfully feed a growing population without killing the planet

We have never had to feed as many people as we do today. And yet, we misunderstand the essentials of where our food really comes from, how our dietary requirements shape us, and why this impacts our planet in drastic ways. As a result, in our economic, political, and everyday choices, we take for granted and fail to prioritize the thing that makes all our lives possible: food.

In this ambitious, myth-busting book, Smil investigates many of the burning questions facing the world today: why are some of the world’s biggest food producers also the countries with the most undernourished populations? Why do we waste so much food and how can we solve that? Could the whole planet go vegan and be healthy? Should it? He explores the global history of food production to understand why we farm some animals and not others, why most of the world’s calories come from just a few foodstuffs, and how this might change in the future.

How to Feed the World is the data-based, rigorously researched guide that offers solutions to our broken global food system.

NOW A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024 

A gorgeously composed look at the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth

Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary efforts of their leafy counterparts. It has been the constant growth of plants that have allowed so many of our favorite, fascinating prehistoric creatures to evolve, oxygenating the atmosphere, coaxing animals onto land, and forming the forests that shaped our ancestors’ anatomy. It is impossible to understand our history without them. Or, our future.

Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.

The revelatory true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown.

“In the pantheon of American history, it’s very hard to find compelling, original stories, and even harder to find authors worthy of them. In The Fifteen, William Geroux delivers the goods.”—John U. Bacon, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Halifax Explosion

The American government was faced with an unprecedented challenge: where to house the nearly 400,000 German prisoners of war plucked from the battlefield and shipped across the Atlantic. On orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Department of War hastily built hundreds of POW camps in the United States. Today, traces of those camps—which once dotted the landscape from Maine to California—have all but vanished. Forgotten, too, is the grisly series of killings that took place within them: Nazi power games playing out in the heart of the United States.

Protected by the Geneva Convention, German POWs were well-fed and housed. Many worked on American farms, and a few would even go on to marry farmers’ daughters. Ardent Nazis in the camps, however, took a dim view of fellow Germans who befriended their captors.

Soon, the killings began. In camp after camp, Nazis attacked fellow Germans they deemed disloyal. Fifteen were sentenced to death by secret U.S. military tribunals for acts of murder. In response, German authorities condemned fifteen American POWs to the same fate, and, in the waning days of the war, Germany proposed an audacious trade: fifteen German lives for fifteen American lives.

Drawing on extensive research, journalist and author William Geroux shines a spotlight on this story of murder and high-stakes diplomacy, and on the fifteen American lives that hung in the balance—from a fearless P-51 Mustang fighter pilot to a hot-tempered lieutenant colonel nicknamed “King Kong.”

Propulsive and vividly rendered, The Fifteen reminds us that what happens to soldiers after they exit the battlefield can be just as harrowing as what they experience on it.

A tense, propulsive drama set in Shanghai, about a fractured American family, secret lives, and the unbreakable bond between two sisters, from the New York Times bestselling author of Mercy Street

Four years after their bitter divorce, Claire and Aaron Litvak get a phone call no parent is prepared for: their 22-year-old daughter Lindsey, teaching English in China during a college gap year, has been critically injured in a hit and run accident. At a Shanghai hospital they wait at her bedside, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. 

The accident unearths a deeper fissure in the family: the shocking event that ended the Litvaks' marriage and turned Lindsey against them. Estranged from her parents, she has confided only in her younger sister, Grace, adopted as an infant from China. As Claire and Aaron struggle to get their bearings in bustling, cosmopolitan Shanghai, the newly prosperous "miracle city," they face troubling questions about Lindsey's life there, in which nothing is quite as it seems.

With Jennifer Haigh's trademark psychological acuity, Rabbit Moon is a taut, suspenseful story about the ties of marriage that no divorce can sever, and the fabled red thread that pulls two sisters together across time and space. Haigh proves yet again that she is "an expertly nuanced storyteller...her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive" (New York Times).
 

From the author of Under the Rainbow, a hilarious, emotional love story about an anxious publicist who's tasked with keeping an extremely gay starlet in the closet--but ends up falling for her instead.​

It's 2005, and Ali is a publicist for Hollywood's biggest stars. Part of her job entails keeping gay celebrities in the closet--which is pretty ironic, since she's a lesbian. When Ali is assigned a new gay client, Cara Bisset, who's breaking onto the scene with a (hetero) romantic blockbuster, keeping Cara's sexuality under wraps becomes Ali's biggest challenge yet.

Cara is unruly and unpredictable, and hates that she has to hide her identity. After a series of increasingly close calls, Ali is sent on the worldwide promotional tour for the movie to help keep Cara in line. Instead, she finds herself drawn to Cara's confidence and bravery. For the past year, Ali has been mired in grief after losing her partner in a freak accident. But with Cara, Ali's fears about the world subside, and she begins to question the Hollywood closeting system she's helped perpetuate. 

As Cara's fame continues to rise, both Ali and Cara have to decide which is more important: maintaining the status quo, or risking it all for another chance at love.

NYPD Detective Michael Bennett will stop at nothing to protect family: his wife, his kids--and his fellow officers--in the latest psychological thriller from bestselling author James Patterson.

At every death scene, Bennett says a prayer over the victim. 
But recently, too many of the departed have been fellow cops. 
"I want you to look at these deaths on special assignment," NYPD Inspector Celeste Cantor says. "Report only to me."
Bennett excels as a solo investigator. But he's chasing a killer who feeds on isolation... and paranoia.

“Veteran bakers will be rewarded.” –Publishers Weekly

“A master class in patisserie for fledgling pastry chefs, as well as an aspirational guide to the subject for ambitious home bakers.” —Library Journal?, STARRED Review

“Known for giving French classics a Japanese twist.” –Condé Nast Traveller 

Step into the world of Gâteaux, a celebration of Japanese refinement and French pastry. Sweet creations extend beyond the titular gateaux, occasionally adding subtle elements of innovation from Mori Yoshida’s homeland.

Encouraging the enjoyment of pastries at nearly every opportunity, Gâteaux presents recipes for different times of the day, from breakfast pains au chocolat to the indulgent Mont-blanc in the evening. Step-by-step line drawing sequences accompany many recipes to provide clear guidance for assembly.

Originating from a Parisian pastry shop, the European outpost of an award-winning Japanese pastry chef, Gâteaux features timeless favorites like vanilla flan and chocolate éclairs and revisits classics inspired by the land of the rising sun, such as Paris-Brest with black sesame and Japanese fraisier.

"This is historical fiction at its best." --Book Reporter

Based on the true story of a famous trial, this novel is Law and Order: 1800, as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr investigate the shocking murder of a young woman who everyone--and no one--seemed to know.

At the start of a new century, a shocking murder transfixes Manhattan, forcing bitter rivals Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr to work together to save a man from the gallows.

Just before Christmas 1799, Elma Sands slips out of her Quaker cousin's boarding house--and doesn't come home. Has she eloped? Run away? No one knows--until her body appears in the Manhattan Well.

Her family insists they know who killed her. Handbills circulate around the city accusing a carpenter named Levi Weeks of seducing and murdering Elma.

But privately, quietly, Levi's wealthy brother calls in a special favor....

Aaron Burr's legal practice can't finance both his expensive tastes and his ambition to win the 1800 New York elections. To defend Levi Weeks is a double win: a hefty fee plus a chance to grab headlines.

Alexander Hamilton has his own political aspirations; he isn't going to let Burr monopolize the public's attention. If Burr is defending Levi Weeks, then Hamilton will too. As the trial and the election draw near, Burr and Hamilton race against time to save a man's life--and destroy each other.

Part murder mystery, part thriller, part true crime, The Girl From Greenwich Street revisits a dark corner of history--with a surprising twist ending that reveals the true story of the woman at the center of the tale.

After the murder of her best friend, a librarian's search for answers leads back to her own dark secrets in this "searing and timely" novel about a woman transformed by war, family, vengeance, and love, from the author of the beloved bestseller The Life We Bury (Kristin Harmel, author of The Paris Daughter).

"Fans of Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale or Kate Quinn's books will be caught up in this story of a courageous woman."―Library Journal (starred review)

"Exquisitely written, profoundly affecting, and undoubtedly one of the best books I will read this year."―Louise Fein, author of The London Bookshop Affair

Hana Babic is a quiet, middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who wants nothing more than to be left alone. But when a detective arrives with the news that her best friend has been murdered, Hana knows that something evil has come for her, a dark remnant of the past she and her friend had shared.

Thirty years before, Hana was someone else: Nura Divjak, a teenager growing up in the mountains of war-torn Bosnia--until Serbian soldiers arrived to slaughter her entire family before her eyes. The events of that day thrust Nura into the war, leading her to join a band of militia fighters, where she became not only a fierce warrior but a legend--the deadly Night Mora. But a shattering final act forced Nura to flee to the United States with a bounty on her head.

Now, someone is hunting Hana, and her friend has paid the price, leaving her eight-year-old grandson in Hana's care. To protect the child without revealing her secret, Hana must again become the Night Mora--and hope she can find the killer before the past comes for them, too.
 

Actress and empowerment counselor Tina Lifford guides readers on connecting with their authentic Self--the source of personal power, greater health, and joyful wellbeing--in this follow-up to The Little Book of Big Lies, an inspiring and hands-on guide in the tradition of Yasmine Cheyenne's The Sugar Jar and Tabitha Brown's Seen, Loved & Heard.

For more than four decades, Tina Lifford has been on a mission. First, in her own life, and now in the world as the founder of The Inner Fitness Project. Her goal To make "inner fitness" as well understood and actionable as physical fitness.

What we know for sure is physical fitness strengthens the body and supports wellness. However, wellness and wellbeing are not the same.

Yes, wellness addresses the physical body.

Wellbeing stems from the Self inside the body--the health of our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs and the actions and reactions they cause.

Now, Tina takes readers into a much deeper and profound understanding of the Inner Fitness Project. This book is about proactively acknowledging and connecting with your inner Self--your source of personal power and inner health and wellbeing. Like physical fitness, inner fitness is an ongoing process of development

But exercise does not resolve our internal problems, eliminate feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness, or make us emotionally resilient long-term, nor does exercise administer forgiveness or assuage guilt, help us navigate loss or anxiety, or the thousands of ways we disconnect and drift away from ourselves.

Lifford's latest book aims to help you see your Self in new ways and elevate your relationship with your Self. Whether you are feeling broken, lost, stuck, or overwhelmed, or want to move into a new life chapter, or you are tired of beating yourself up or giving yourself away to everything and everyone in your life, or you want to stop living life as one big competition, soften your hardened heart, and trust life more, every imaginable constriction and problem will change for the better as you practice the art of becoming your whole Self.

Every page of The Inner Fitness Revolution supports getting to know yourself and skillfully working with yourself to build a strong, healthy, and resilient inner you that can flourish and thrive despite the challenges and overwhelm that comes with life.

Lifford offers 14 Practices that will lead you to a wiser, more whole Self, providing insights and directions for addressing any life situation and feeling empowered and aligned with your Self. The Inner Fitness Revolution will strengthen and help anyone navigate daily life more peacefully and effectively.

This is the perfect book to transform your life and allows you to become your best version of yourself.