Bookshop Santa Cruz staff recommendation:

Where is your hearth? What do you return to over and over, to ground yourself, to center your community? What happens when your hearth is lost or is endangered? What can we carry with us? This inspiring anthology explores these questions through pieces by Terry Tempest Williams, Pico Iyer, Luís Alberto Urrea, Chigozie Obioma, Sebastião Salgado, and more—each bringing their own truths to the table, to warm at the fire. What is created is sacred, hopeful, and communal, at a time we need it most. - Melinda

When I think of who we need to make sense of the challenges facing our democracy, the preeminent presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin is at the top of my list. Chronicling the leadership of her best-studied subjects—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson—Goodwin masterfully details the commonalities that linked their leadership even with their widely differing upbringings and challenges. Ultimately, Goodwin showcases the moral purpose and resilience necessary to shepherd our nation forward. - Casey

Nicole Chung’s clear and introspective memoir brings new light to the search for identity and navigating both the past and the future when surrounded by the complexity of those who love you. As a transracial adoptee, the incongruity of growing up happy yet uncomfortably different leads her to search out the truth about her birth parents when she is on the brink of becoming a parent herself. This unique, difficult, and often surprising journey considers what one needs most in the world to belong. - Melinda

One part coming-of-age parable, one part psychological horror, this book combines dark fantasy with contemporary magical realism. Beautifully translated from its original Russian, Vita Nostra brilliantly explores the period in early adulthood in which we consider the price we’re willing to pay to discover our full potential and learn how we make ourselves vulnerable when we strive for outside approval. - Ilana