Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, however, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In NO RIGHT TO AN HONEST LIVING, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.

Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, however, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In NO RIGHT TO AN HONEST LIVING, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.

A “sensitive, immersive, and exhaustive” portrait of Black workers and white hypocrisy in 19th-century Boston, from “a gifted practitioner of labor history and urban history” (Tiya Miles, National Book Award–winning author of ALL THAT SHE CARRIED).

Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, however, the city was far from a beacon of equality.

In NO RIGHT TO AN HONEST LIVING, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.

Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston --- and the United States --- from securing true equality for all.

When brutish miner Hugo Mitchum is found murdered on the frozen shore of a North Country lake, the local officials and town gossips of Beau Caelais are quick to blame Marietta Abernathy, an outspoken environmental activist and angry, witchy recluse. But Marietta herself has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Living on an isolated island with her father, Marietta’s 16-year-old daughter, Lena, begins sifting through her mother’s journals and collected oddities in an attempt to find her. While her father’s grief threatens to consume him and her adoptive aunt Bea reckons with guilt and acceptance, it is the haunting town outcast Ellis Olsen who might have the most to lose if Lena fails to find her mother.

When brutish miner Hugo Mitchum is found murdered on the frozen shore of a North Country lake, the local officials and town gossips of Beau Caelais are quick to blame Marietta Abernathy, an outspoken environmental activist and angry, witchy recluse. But Marietta herself has disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Living on an isolated island with her father, Marietta’s 16-year-old daughter, Lena, begins sifting through her mother’s journals and collected oddities in an attempt to find her. While her father’s grief threatens to consume him and her adoptive aunt Bea reckons with guilt and acceptance, it is the haunting town outcast Ellis Olsen who might have the most to lose if Lena fails to find her mother.

In this dark and ethereal debut novel, a young woman tries to make sense of strange artifacts and unsettling memories in an effort to find her mother --- missing since being accused of murder.

When brutish miner Hugo Mitchum is found murdered on the frozen shore of a North Country lake, the local officials and town gossips of Beau Caelais are quick to blame Marietta Abernathy, an outspoken environmental activist and angry, witchy recluse. But Marietta herself has disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Living on an isolated island with her father, Marietta’s 16-year-old daughter, Lena, begins sifting through her mother’s journals and collected oddities in an attempt to find her. While her father’s grief threatens to consume him and her adoptive aunt Bea reckons with guilt and acceptance, it is the haunting town outcast Ellis Olsen who might have the most to lose if Lena fails to find her mother.
 
A Nordic eco-noir shot through with magical realism, THINGS WE FOUND WHEN THE WATER WENT DOWN examines power, identity and myth in a story that asks us to explore what it means to heal --- or not --- after violence.

Audiobook available, read by Ann Richardson

Philippa Gregory's Fairmile series continues as the fiercely independent Alinor and her family find themselves entangled in palace intrigue and political upheaval in 17th-century England.

Philippa Gregory's Fairmile series continues as the fiercely independent Alinor and her family find themselves entangled in palace intrigue and political upheaval in 17th-century England.

The “superb” (People) Fairmile series from #1 New York Times bestselling author Philippa Gregory continues as the fiercely independent Alinor and her family find themselves entangled in palace intrigue and political upheaval in 17th-century England.

It is 1685, and England is on the brink of a renewed civil war. King Charles II has died without an heir, and his brother, James, is to take the throne. But the people are bitterly divided, and many do not welcome the new king or his young queen. Ned Ferryman cannot persuade his sister, Alinor, that he is right to return from America with his Pokanoket servant, Rowan, to join the rebel army. Instead, Alinor and her daughter, Alys, have been coaxed by the manipulative Livia to save the queen from the coming siege. The rewards are life-changing: the family could return to their beloved Tidelands, and Alinor could rule where she was once lower than a servant.

Alinor’s son is determined to stay clear of the war, but in order to keep his own secrets in the past, Livia traps him in a plan to create an imposter Prince of Wales --- a surrogate baby to the queen.

From the last battle in the desolate Somerset Levels to the hidden caves on the slave island of Barbados, this third volume of an epic story follows a family from one end of the empire to another, to find a new dawn in a world that is opening up before them with greater rewards and dangers than ever before.

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel, WANT, as “a defining novel of our age” (Vulture), Lynn Steger Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends and strangers can support each other through the gaps.

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel, WANT, as “a defining novel of our age” (Vulture), Lynn Steger Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends and strangers can support each other through the gaps.

It’s December 22nd, and siblings Henry, Kate and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel, WANT, as “a defining novel of our age” (Vulture), Lynn Steger Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends and strangers can support each other through the gaps. FLIGHT is a novel of family, ambition, precarity, art and desire, one that forms a powerful next step from a brilliant chronicler of our time.

THE LAST PARTY is a delicious blend of police procedural and psychological thriller about the homicide of a local celebrity in small-town Wales --- a man everyone in the village had good cause to murder.

THE LAST PARTY is a delicious blend of police procedural and psychological thriller about the homicide of a local celebrity in small-town Wales --- a man everyone in the village had good cause to murder.

At midnight, one of them is dead. By morning, all of them are suspects.

It's the party to end all parties…but not everyone is here to celebrate.

On New Year's Eve, Rhys Lloyd has a house full of guests. His vacation homes on Mirror Lake are a success, and he's generously invited the village to drink champagne with their wealthy new neighbors.

But by midnight, Rhys will be floating dead in the freezing waters of the lake.

On New Year's Day, Ffion Morgan has a village full of suspects. The tiny community is her home, so the suspects are her neighbors, friends and family --- and Ffion has her own secrets to protect.

With a lie uncovered at every turn, soon the question isn't who wanted Rhys dead…but who finally killed him.

In a village with this many secrets, murder is just the beginning.