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The Singular Life of Aria Patel

For fans of You've Reached Sam and See You Yesterday, this captivating and mind-bending second-chance romance explores what it means to love--even across the multiverse.

Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It's why she's so into science. It's why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that's already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.

But there's no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there's no formula that can save her. She can't explain why she's been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.

As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan...but it's not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she'll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own. 



This whirlwind novel from New York Times bestselling author Samira Ahmed will whisk you through worlds unknown, all while putting a multiverse spin on one of BookTok's favorite tropes: second chance romance.

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Salvación

"A heartfelt, swashbuckling, standout novel." - Kirkus (starred review)

In this Latinx YA fantasy inspired by El Zorro, Lola de La Peña becomes the masked heroine Salvación in order to save her family and town from a man who would destroy it for the magic it contains...if she doesn't fall in love with a boy in his company first.

Lola de La Peña yearns to be free from the societal expectations of a young Mexican lady of her station. She spends her days pretending to be delicate and proper while watching her mamá cure the sick and injured with sal negra (black salt), a recently discovered magic that heals even the most mortal of sicknesses and wounds. But by night, she is Salvación, the free-spirit lady vigilante protecting the town of Coloma from those who threaten its peace and safety among the rising tension in Alta California after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

But one night, a woman races into Coloma, barely alive, to tell the horrifying tale of how her town was obliterated by sal roja (red salt), a potent, deadly magic capable of obliterating anything it comes into contact with, and about the man who wields it: Damien Hernández. So when Hernández arrives the next day with a party of fifty strong and promises of returning Alta California to México, Lola knows it’s only a matter of time before he brings the region under his rule—all Hernández needs is the next full moon and the stolen, ancient amulet he carries to mine enough sal roja to conquer the land. Determined to protect everything she loves, Lola races against time as Salvación to stop his plans. What she didn’t count on was the distracting and infuriating Alejandro, who travels with Hernández but doesn't seem to share his ambitions. With the stakes higher than ever and Hernández getting closer to his goals, Lola will do anything to foil his plans, even teaming up with Alejandro—who she doesn’t fully trust but can’t help but fall in love with.

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Celestial Banquet

Iron Chef meets The Hunger Games in Roselle Lim's dazzling YA fantasy debut, following a young noodle chef who competes in a cutthroat cooking competition for the gods.

"Celestial Banquet is a magical and delectable adventure through a culinary landscape rich in East Asian tradition. It is also a very real look at family, home, and how food ties into both, with an empowered and resilient teen girl at the center. Equal parts action-packed and heartfelt, I cannot wait for readers to devour it." --Ayesha Curry, Sweet July Books

Once every generation, the Major Gods hold a Celestial Banquet, inviting chefs from all over the Continent to prepare mouthwatering fantastical feasts. The winner is awarded the fabled Peaches of Immortality, along with a lifetime of fame and fortune. The losers perish per the whims of the fickle gods.

Hot-headed noodle chef Cai enters the competition with dreams of owning her own restaurant and supporting her impoverished Peninsula town. Along with the drunken Minor God Kama, her childhood crush-turned-friend Bo, and dreamy noble Seon, Cai must now compete against the Continent's finest culinary masters in trials that range from hunting and serving up mystical sea serpents to preparing a magical omurice from the eggs of the legendary Jian bird.

Battling impossible odds and inconvenient feelings for both Bo and Seon, Cai is determined to prepare a feast fit for the gods--even if she loses her life. Set in a spectacular world inspired by Chinese and Southeast Asian folklore, Celestial Banquet is an ode to food, home, and family, wrapped in an epic and thrilling adventure.

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The Optimist

On November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company's board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI--artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being--and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board.

The episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman's power to bend reality to his will. In The Optimist, the Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman's rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham's protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman's bitter opponent.

Hagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman's family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction--yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called "the intelligence age."

Altman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it.

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Project Mind Control

The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.

Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous—even deadly—experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, torturing mental patients through sensory deprivation, and steering the movements of animals via electrodes implanted into their brains. His goal was to develop methods of mind control that could turn someone into a real-life “Manchurian candidate.” 

In conjunction with MKULTRA, Gottlieb also plotted the assassination of foreign leaders and created spy gear for undercover agents. The details of his career, however, have long been shrouded in mystery. Upon retiring from the CIA in 1973, he tossed his files into an incinerator. As a result, much of what happened under MKULTRA was thought to be lost—until now.

Historian John Lisle has uncovered dozens of depositions containing new information about MKULTRA, straight from the mouths of its perpetrators. For the first time, Gottlieb and his underlings divulge what they did, why they did it, how they got away with it, and much more. Additionally, Lisle highlights the dramatic story of MKULTRA’s victims, from their terrible treatment to their dogged pursuit of justice.

The consequences of MKULTRA still reverberate throughout American society. Project Mind Control is the definitive account of this most disturbing of chapters in CIA history.

Firebird

Firebird

DELUXE EDITION—featuring beautiful original illustrated stenciled edges with a foil case stamp, and designed endpapers!

An instant New York Times bestseller!

House of the Dragon meets From Blood and Ash in this epic, scorching dark romantasy.

A conqueror captivated...
A witch prophesied to save them all...
An unforgiving world where dragons rule Rome.

Julian Dakkia, Roman general and nephew to the emperor, has played his role as conqueror well. Yet, the moment he laid eyes on Malina, he was enthralled by the Dacian dancer. Years later, the fierce beauty stands before him, a captive on a scarred battlefield, her life in danger. He instinctively shifts into his fierce dragon form to save her, an action that may mean his head on the imperial gate. 

The rules of their world dictate that he is the conqueror and she is the captured. But he and his dragon know one thing: their bond has nothing to do with the laws of mighty Rome. She belongs to them. And they belong to her.

Fierce and powerful, twenty-one-year old Malina has survived the loss of her family and she is determined to fight until her dying breath. Still, she can’t believe that the centurion who had once bestowed a secret talisman on her is the Roman general of legendary brutality...and now holds her life in his hands. Nor can she deny how her soul has always seemed to answer his. Slowly she learns that Julian is caught in his mad uncle’s machinations for domination, and helps him plot the downfall of the empire itself.

As they navigate a world where flying deathriders conquer and burn, their love will ignite a firestorm that can only end in heartbreak or death. Or both.

Firebird is an adult romantasy novel that contains dark themes, including slavery in Ancient Rome, which may be uncomfortable for some readers.

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The Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club

Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women in this spectacular novel inspired by true events, from the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls.

“A dreamy beach book that also sizzles with tension . . . another winner by one of the best historical fiction writers around.”—Fiona Davis, author of The Stolen Queen

2016: Thirty-four-year-old Mari Starwood is still grieving after her mother’s death as she travels to the storied island of Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. She’s come all the way from California with nothing but a name on a piece of paper: Elizabeth Devereaux, the famous but reclusive Vineyard painter. When Mari makes it to Mrs. Devereaux’s stunning waterfront farm under the guise of taking a painting class with her, Mrs. Devereaux begins to tell her the story of the Smith sisters, who once lived there. As the tale unfolds, Mari is shocked to learn that her relationship to this island runs deeper than she ever thought possible.

1942: The Smith girls—nineteen-year-old aspiring writer Cadence and sixteen-year-old war-obsessed Briar—are faced with the impossible task of holding their failing family farm together during World War II as the U.S. Army arrives on Martha’s Vineyard. When Briar spots German U-boats lurking off the island’s shores, and Cadence falls into an unlikely romance with a sworn enemy, their quiet lives are officially upended. In an attempt at normalcy, Cadence and her best friend, Bess, start a book club, which grows both in members and influence as they connect with a fabulous New York publisher who could make all of Cadence’s dreams come true. But all that is put at risk by a mysterious man who washes ashore—and whispers of a spy in their midst. Who in their tight-knit island community can they trust? Could this little book club change the course of the war . . . before it’s too late?