W. W. Norton & Company

How many of us have walked to gain clarity or intention or to break through the boundaries of our space? In Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women, Annabel Abbs follows the footsteps of extraordinary women, such as Georgia O’Keeffe and Simone de Beauvoir, who saw walking as a path to freedom. Through this book, walk a mile in their shoes and then grab your own pair and head outside.

—Casey

I’m a huge fan of the New York Times cooking app, so I was excited to delve into more recipes from the Times. What I found was even better: one woman’s wonderful and wry journey through American cooking history. The Essential New York Times Cookbook is an atlas for the cooks who are endlessly curious and are interested in everything from the history of the gin fizz to the countless ways immigrants have shaped the food we eat. Happy cooking!

—Jax

What a beautifully insightful and reflective book. Between the covers of Taste Makers, you will meet seven immigrant women who used food to retain their identity and recreated a sense of connection and belonging to their home country. Mayukh Sen, the son of immigrant parents, is known for his nuanced, award-winning profiles of food personalities. This collection of stories is rich with history, culture, and the strength of women. Read one story a night and in a week, you'll have seven lifetimes and a world of knowledge, understanding, and curiosity about the origin of food in America.—Jenny

Mary Roach is back and is proving once again that she truly is “America’s funniest science writer.” In her latest book, Roach delves into the world of human–nature conflict. She travels the world, speaking with experts and joining them in the field as she learns about everything from invasive rodents to trampling elephants. With her trademark wit, Roach investigates the many ways that people have tried to change the course of nature for their own comfort and/or profit, generally with disastrous results. As always, she excels at taking unfamiliar scientific concepts and presenting them in a way that’s both easy and enjoyable to absorb. —Jade

For almost half of the 16th century, four women shaped Europe in powerful and irreparable ways. Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, Mary Stuart, and Catherine de Medici are often portrayed as bitter rivals, but revisionist historian Quiligen uses letters and records of gifts to untangle the web of patriarchal views of these women. Each one has a complicated history with the others and I loved diving deep into their shared bonds. It certainly made me look at them all in a different light.

—Ivy

In this far-ranging yet deeply personal book, Farah Jasmine Griffin has gifted us with a richly experiential Black literature survey, all without sitting in a lecture hall or in front of a computer. As the chair of the Department of African American & African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University, Griffin knows how to thematically frame her course, but the heart of the book and her passion comes from her father whose cherished presence lives on in the library, music, and inquisitive nature he bequeathed her as a child.

—Melinda

Reading poet laureate Joy Harjo’s memoir is like soaking in peaceful, healing waters. We're introduced to the Poet Girl and stanza by stanza, chapter by chapter, we come to know her as the Poet Warrior. Through the telling of her own historical trauma, Harjo gently, with great understanding and wisdom, helps us to see how we can sit with and talk to the broken parts of our own story and retell it to ourselves as an act of grieving, healing, and maybe even strength. I will give this book to my sisters and my friends knowing that what is experienced in reading this book is more than I could ever say myself, and everything I want them to know.—Jenny

The Heroine with 1001 Faces takes the Joseph Campbell classic book, The Hero with 1000 Faces, and asks the question, “What does the hero’s journey look like when women are the main characters?” Tatar uses familiar heroic women like Persephone, Nancy Drew, and Carrie Bradshaw to show us how the familiar hero’s journey changes when the “feminine” strengths of empathy and community are at the forefront of the story. —Jae

I am admittedly not an experienced reader of espionage, but I might just become one, having gobbled up this remarkable debut thriller. McCloskey, a former CIA analyst himself, writes a fascinating world of modern spycraft, with empathy in its scope and a driving story of CIA officer Sam Joseph and his asset Mariam Haddad, as they operate within the network of Assad’s Syrian Palace. There’s a bit of everything here, from forbidden romance to betrayal, loyalty to revenge; well-written and compelling to the end—I couldn’t get enough. 

—Melinda

“Let it be said, while in the midst of horror, we fed on beauty—and that, my love, is what sustained us.” Rita Dove’s newest collection of poetry is a prayer for our collective future. Whether musing on love through the eyes of a cricket or investigating the wounds of racialized trauma, Dove writes with clever honesty and radical vulnerability. Playlist for the Apocalypse is the kind of book you clutch to your chest upon finishing, and pray that not a single word of it will be forgotten. 

—Holly