Spinning At The Edges 

Elizabeth Poliner 

HarperCollins

Set in two time periods, winter of 1941 in Amsterdam, and winter of 2000 in the U. S.—in Washington, DC and smalltown Connecticut—Spinning At The Edges is about a fourteen-year-old girl who loses her beloved older sister to the destruction of the Nazi era. In the U.S., the story features the same person, Ruth Pearl, now 72-years-old, whose long-closed heart finally opens after she helps to save the life of a troubled teenage boy. Healing, Ruth learns, comes in unexpected ways. The novel also includes Ruth’s parents and her adult daughter, the teenage boy’s mother, and a local judge who helps Ruth with the boy. At its heart the story concerns inherited trauma—how silence, grief, and survival become part of a family’s legacy. It asks what it means to carry that history forward and shows how it’s possible to reclaim a sense of connection and compassion despite it.

Loss of Life 

Mark Farrington 

Legacy Book Press

In a Virginia hospital, forty-one-year-old Matthew Winton awakens from a car accident with no memory of his life after the age of thirteen. Over time, he learns that he is a college professor who lives alone and has no family. He is also a writer, and he turns first to his writing, hoping it will show him his past. But he has written primarily fiction, and he struggles to separate the blurred lines between fiction and fact. Then he comes upon something he’d written shortly before the crash that disturbs him greatly and leads him to travel to Massachusetts, where he spent the first thirty years of his life, in search of ghosts from his past. Throughout, he’s been troubled by questions raised by the car accident. What was he doing out on a deserted country road at two o’clock on a Sunday morning? Was the crash even an accident?

Summerland Cove

Ellen Baker 

Mariner Books 

Lindy has the summer of a lifetime planned at her family’s beloved cottage in Summerland Cove, Maine, where she’s spent summers all her life and where she and her husband David met as teenagers. She’s slated big events three weekends in a row: David’s fiftieth birthday party, her parents’ fiftieth anniversary party, and her oldest daughter Hailey’s wedding. But when David doesn’t show up for his own party and the shattered family sets out looking for him, long-buried details of the family’s past begin to surface, offering distressing clues. Meanwhile, Lindy’s mother harbors secrets of her own, and Hailey wrestles with whether she should get married at all. A richly drawn novel of mothers, marriages, and one endearingly messy family, Summerland Cove beautifully evokes the crisp air and rocky beaches of coastal Maine, while poignantly revealing how complicated histories can shape the present in unexpected ways.

The Architects of Control: A Political Thriller 

Harold Greene 

Black Trumpet Press 

Six weeks before the general election, Deputy Robert Pures finds five AI engineers hiding in a fishing camp along the Allagash River. Within days, his partner is shot and a deepfake destroys his reputation. The trail leads to BrightLeaf, a remote solar facility that promised green energy and jobs. But the site is not generating power. It is consuming enormous amounts of it to run Project Sunstone, a covert AI data center designed to manipulate voter behavior on a national scale. Joined by his daughter Lucy, Norwegian election observer Tormund Oddland, and former intelligence analyst Willa Black, Robert uncovers a web of shell companies, privatized surveillance, and political operatives reaching into the highest levels of government. Hunted by federal forces, the group retreats to a cabin in the Allagash Woods to expose Project Sunstone before the vote–and the country–is decided for them.

Insect Safari 

Margie Patlak

Workman/Hachette 

Lavishly illustrated with the author’s closeup photos, Insect Safari: Exploring the Wondrous World of Everyday Bugs by Margie Patlak reveals the amazing superpowers and behaviors of the many six-legged critters hiding in plain sight wherever there are green spaces. You don’t need a passport to encounter extraordinary creatures because they’re all around you! Lauded by Doug Tallamy for being “uncommonly well-researched, unusually well-written, and unexpectedly entertaining,” Insect Safari introduces readers to common backyard bugs that use tools, do math, recognize themselves in mirrors, tend to injured brethren, see and navigate by starlight, survive being run over by a car, and mull over their mating choices. Each chapter explores the lifestyle and capabilities of a specific insect Patlak has personally met and its kin. She also delves into some of the bigger questions these tiny animals raise, like whether maternal behavior is instinctual, or whether altruism is possible without tribal atrocities.

In Season 

Lisa Steele 

Harper Celebrate  

Bright, vibrant, and packed with flavor, these simple seasonal recipes are your ultimate go-to for delicious, feel-good meals that won’t break the bank. Lisa Steele—cookbook author, fifth-generation chicken keeper, Maine Master Gardener, and founder of Fresh Eggs Daily—is back with fresh, flavorful recipes that are simple to make and anything but basic. With her bold, seasonal flavors and beautifully crafted meals, Lisa brings her celebrated no-fuss, high-impact cooking style, inspired by the best each season has to offer. From the light and bright dishes of spring and summer to warm, comforting recipes for fall and winter, every recipe highlights nature’s best and feels like a treat. Expect colorful salads, satisfying soups, vibrant veggies, delicious sides, delectable desserts, creative cocktails, and mocktails.

'Paused. 

Susan A. Miele

Publish Your Purpose 

Blending memoir, theory, and storytelling, ‘Paused. offers a candid exploration of identity—how it is built, dismantled, and continually remade. Drawing from lived experience and research, Miele explores how moments of rupture, whether professional, personal, or biological, reshape our sense of self and illuminate the narratives that no longer hold us. ‘Paused. illustrates the universal struggle to find meaning when certainty disappears, showing that wholeness is never permanent but provisional, something we create, lose, and reassemble again and again. Clear, candid, and deeply relatable, this book invites readers to reflect on their own evolving identities and consider how meaning, purpose, and self-understanding can be rewritten at every stage of life.

I Live You Forever  

Meredith Rutter Marple 

Atmosphere Press  

Drawing from her journaling, Meredith Rutter Marple captures the intimacy of conversations and the daily negotiations of love, anger, denial, and acceptance between partners bound together by decades of shared life. With honesty and compassion, she illuminates the dual tragedy of spousal dementia in hopes that her husband’s and her story will encourage other couples to discuss the what-ifs of their own aging. Kirkus Reviews highly recommends I Live You For Ever as “a beautiful memoir and a fierce testimony to the sacrifices we make in the name of love.”

Is That An Åga?

Written by Emily Louina Cook (Illustrated by Joanne F. Almajose)

University of Guam Press

A child from the island of Luta wants to see an Åga, but finding this special crow is harder than it seems. With the help of an elder, they learn about some of Luta’s birds and discover the importance of looking carefully.