June 2014




I Just Graduated... Now What?
By Katherine Schwarzenegger


The new go-to book of advice for graduates, with insightful advice from: Eva Longoria "Your degree is just a stepping-stone." John Legend "It's not wrong to be afraid." Bear Grylls "The path less traveled always makes for a more interesting journey." Andy Cohen "When I got my first job, I felt like a success." Lauren Bush Lauren "It may take three or four jobs to discover your true career path." Blake Mycoski "When you are good at something, the money always follows." And many more . . . Graduation is a time of tough questions whose answers we don't--and sometimes can't--know the day we receive our diploma. Determined to power through the uncertainty of post-gradua­tion, bestselling author Katherine Schwarzenegger embarked on a yearlong quest to gather the best guid­ance possible from more than thirty highly success­ful people working in fields like business, media, fashion, technology, sports, and philanthropy. Along the way, Katherine uncovered the essential and often surprising advice they have for graduates, including answers to questions like: * How do I find my first job in a tough economy?* How do I decide between a career that pays well and one that I'm passionate about? * How do I balance work with friends, relationships, and family?* Should I take a "gap year" before starting my first job? * What should I do about my student loan debt?Drawing on the stories and real-life experi­ences of contributors such as Anderson Cooper, Eva Longoria, Blake Mycoskie of TOMS shoes, Lauren Bush Lauren, Andy Cohen, Meghan McCain, Gayle King, and more, Katherine has written the must-have guide for recent and soon-to-be gradu­ates as they prepare to seek success and fulfillment in their work, relationships, and lives.


Brothers Forever
By Tom Sileo

Four weeks after Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden, the President of the United States stood in Arlington National Cemetery. In his Memorial Day address, he extolled the courage and sacrifice of the two young men buried side by side in the graves before him: Travis Manion, a fallen US Marine, and Brendan Looney, a fallen US Navy SEAL. Although they were killed three years apart, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, these two best friends and former roommates were now buried together-"brothers forever." Award-winning journalist Tom Sileo and Travis's father, former Marine colonel Tom Manion, tell the intimate and personal story of how these Naval Academy roommates defined a generation's sacrifice after 9/11, and how Travis and Brendan's loved ones overcame heartbreak to carry on in their memory. From Travis's incredible heroism on the streets of Fallujah to Brendan's anguished Navy SEAL training in the wake of his friend's death and his own heroism in the mountains of Afghanistan, Brothers Forever is a remarkable story of friendship, family, and war.

Finding Me
By Michelle Knight

Michelle was a young single mother when she was kidnapped by a local school bus driver named Ariel Castro. For more than a decade afterward, she endured unimaginable torture at the hand of her abductor. In 2003 Amanda Berry joined her in captivity, followed by Gina DeJesus in 2004. Their escape on May 6, 2013, made headlines around the world. Barely out of her own tumultuous childhood, Michelle was estranged from her family and fighting for custody of her young son when she disappeared. Local police believed she had run away, so they removed her from the missing persons lists fifteen months after she vanished. Castro tormented her with these facts, reminding her that no one was looking for her, that the outside world had forgotten her. But Michelle would not be broken. In Finding Me, Michelle will reveal the heartbreaking details of her story, including the thoughts and prayers that helped her find courage to endure her unimaginable circumstances and now build a life worth living. By sharing both her past and her efforts to create a future, Michelle becomes a voice for the voiceless and a powerful symbol of hope for the thousands of children and young adults who go missing every year.


Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 
By Francine Prose

A richly imagined and stunningly inventive literary masterpiece of love, art, and betrayal, exploring the genesis of evil, the unforeseen consequences of love, and the ultimate unreliability of storytelling itself Paris in the 1920s. It is a city of intoxicating ambition, passion, art, and discontent, where louche jazz venues like the Chameleon Club draw expats, artists, libertines, and parvenus looking to indulge their true selves. It is at the Chameleon where the striking Lou Villars, an extraordinary athlete and scandalous cross-dressing lesbian, finds refuge among the club's loyal denizens, including the rising photographer Gabor Tsenyi, the socialite and art patron Baroness Lily de Rossignol, and the caustic American writer Lionel Maine. As the years pass, their fortunes; and the world itself; evolve. Lou falls in love and finds success as a race car driver. Gabor builds his reputation with vivid and imaginative photographs, including a haunting portrait of Lou and her lover, which will resonate through all their lives. As the exuberant twenties give way to darker times, Lou experiences another metamorphosis that will warp her earnest desire for love and approval into something far more sinister: collaboration with the Nazis. Told in a kaleidoscope of voices, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 evokes this incandescent city with brio, humor, and intimacy. A brilliant work of fiction and a mesmerizing read, it is Francine Prose's finest novel yet.


The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street
By Susan Jane Gilman

In 1913, little Malka Treynovsky flees Russia with her family. Bedazzled by tales of gold and movie stardom, she tricks them into buying tickets for America. Yet no sooner do they land on the squalid Lower East Side of Manhattan, than Malka is crippled and abandoned in the street. Taken in by a tough-loving Italian ices peddler, she manages to survive through cunning and inventiveness. As she learns the secrets of his trade, she begins to shape her own destiny. She falls in love with a gorgeous, illiterate radical named Albert, and they set off across America in an ice cream truck. Slowly, she transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, "The Ice Cream Queen" -- doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a celebrated television personality. Lillian's rise to fame and fortune spans seventy years and is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself, from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. Yet Lillian Dunkle is nothing like the whimsical motherly persona she crafts for herself in the media. Conniving, profane, and irreverent, she is a supremely complex woman who prefers a good stiff drink to an ice cream cone . And when her past begins to catch up with her, everything she has spent her life building is at stake.


The Hurricane Sisters
By Dorothea Benton Frank

Filled with her trademark wit, sassy, heartwarming characters, and the steamy Southern atmosphere and beauty of her beloved Carolina Lowcountry, The Hurricane Sisters is New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank's enchanting tale of the ties and lies between generations. Beloved New York Times bestselling author Dorothea Benton Frank once again takes us deep in the heart of the magical Lowcountry-a sultry land of ancient magic, glorious sunsets, and soothing coastal breezes, where three generations of strong women wrestle with the expectations of family while struggling to understand their complicated relationships with each other. Best friends since the first day of classes at The College of Charleston, Ashley Anne Waters and Mary Beth Smythe, now 23 years old, live in Ashley's parents' beach house rent free. Ashley is a gallery assistant who aspires to become an artist. Mary Beth, a gifted cook from Tennessee, works for a caterer while searching for a good teaching job. Though they both know what they want out of life, their parents barely support their dreams and worry for their precarious finances. While they don't make much money, the girls do have a million-dollar view that comes with living in that fabulous house on Sullivans Island. Sipping wine on the porch and watching a blood-red sunset, Ashley and Mary Beth hit on a brilliant and lucrative idea. With a new coat of paint, the first floor would be a perfect place for soireés for paying guests. Knowing her parents would be horrified at the idea of common strangers trampling through their home, Ashley won't tell them. Besides, Clayton and Liz Waters have enough problems of their own. A successful investment banker, Clayton is too often found in his pied-à-terre in Manhattan-which Liz is sure he uses to have an affair. And when will Ashley and her brother, Ivy, a gay man with a very wealthy and very Asian life partner-ever grow up? Then there is Maisie, Liz's mother, the family matriarch who has just turned eighty, who never lets Liz forget that she's not her perfect dead sister, Juliet. For these Lowcountry women, an emotional hurricane is about to blow through their lives, wreaking havoc that will test them in unexpected ways, ultimately transforming the bonds they share.



The Secret Life of Violet Grant
By Beatriz Williams

Passion, redemption, and a battered suitcase full of secrets: then New York Times-bestselling author of A Hundred Summers returns with another engrossing tale. Manhattan, 1964. Vivian Schuyler, newly graduated from Bryn Mawr College, has recently defied the privilege of her storied old Fifth Avenue family to do the unthinkable for a budding Kennedy-era socialite: break into the Mad Men world of razor-stylish Metropolitan magazine. But when she receives a bulky overseas parcel in the mail, the unexpected contents draw her inexorably back into her family's past, and the hushed-over crime passionnel of an aunt she never knew, whose existence has been wiped from the record of history. Berlin, 1914. Violet Schuyler Grant endures her marriage to the philandering and decades-older scientist Dr. Walter Grant for one reason: for all his faults, he provides the necessary support to her liminal position as a young American female physicist in prewar Germany. The arrival of Dr. Grant's magnetic former student at the beginning of Europe's fateful summer interrupts this delicate détente. Lionel Richardson, a captain in the British Army, challenges Violet to escape her husband's perverse hold, and as the world edges into war and Lionel's shocking true motives become evident, Violet is tempted to take the ultimate step to set herself free and seek a life of her own conviction with a man whose cause is as audacious as her own. As the iridescent and fractured Vivian digs deeper into her aunt's past and the mystery of her ultimate fate, Violet's story of determination and desire unfolds, shedding light on the darkness of her years abroad . . . and teaching Vivian to reach forward with grace for the ambitious future--and the love--she wants most.


The Setup Man
By T. T. Monday

"A throwback Southern California mystery in modern pinstripes . . . A treat for readers of mystery or baseball novels."--KIRKUS REVIEWS
Johnny Adcock is an aging Major League pitcher with the perfect retirement plan--he moonlights as a private investigator. Major League Baseball, as it turns out, is a prime source of employment for a philosophically inclined, discreet detective who has both the brains and the brawn to handle the unique problems of professional athletes. Those infamous baseball salaries attract gangsters, hustlers, and predators of every persuasion who prey on the outsized egos of primetime stars. When players, coaches, agents, or wives have a problem they can't make public, they call Johnny Adcock. On the team bus after a game, teammate Frankie Herrera confides in Adcock that he has a "problem with his wife." What sounds like the standard story of a pro athlete's marriage gone sour quickly turns into the most dangerous case of Adcock's second career when Frankie is killed in a car accident, leaving far too many questions unanswered. The investigation takes Adcock into uncharted territory, drawing him into a deadly ring of murder, porn, Mexican cartels, and a conspiracy that threatens to become the biggest scandal to hit baseball since HGH and steroids. A new heavy hitter on the thriller scene, T. T. Monday takes readers inside a rich and highly entertaining world where crime and baseball intersect and delivers a debut that moves like a 96-mile-an-hour fastball.


Save the Date
By Mary Kay Andrews

A savannah florist is about to score the wedding of a lifetime--one that will solidify her career as the go-to-girl for society nuptials. Ironically, Cara Kryzik doesn't believe in love, even though she creates beautiful flower arrangements to celebrate them. But when the bride goes missing and the wedding is in jeopardy, Cara must find the bride and figure out what she believes in. Maybe love really does exist outside of fairy tales after all. Told with Mary Kay Andrews' trademark wit and keen eye for detail, mark your calendars for Save the Date!


Carsick
By John Waters

A cross-country hitchhiking journey with America's most beloved weirdo John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads "I'm Not Psycho," he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash? Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker's unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette. Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion--and a celebration of America's weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.