Books published by publisher HarperCollins B and Blackstone Audio

From The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Came Home comes a historical novel inspired by true events, and the extraordinary female lighthouse keepers of the past two hundred years.''They call me a heroine, but I am not deserving of such accolades. I am just an ordinary young woman who did her duty.''1838: Northumberland, England. Longstone Lighthouse on the Farne Islands has been Grace Darling's home for all of her twenty-two years. When she and her father rescue shipwreck survivors in a furious storm, Grace becomes celebrated throughout England, the subject of poems, ballads, and plays. But far more precious than her unsought fame is the friendship that develops between Grace and a visiting artist. Just as George Emmerson captures Grace with his brushes, she in turn captures his heart.1938: Newport, Rhode Island. Nineteen-years-old and pregnant, Matilda Emmerson has been sent away from Ireland in disgrace. She is to stay with Harriet, a reclusive relative and assistant lighthouse keeper, until her baby is born. A discarded, half-finished portrait opens a window into Matilda's family history. As a deadly hurricane approaches, two women, living a century apart, will be linked forever by their instinctive acts of courage and love.

The four co-creators of The Try Guys, one of the Internet's most popular and viral sensations, deliver their first book--an inspirational self-improvement guide that teaches you that the path to success is littered with humiliating detours, embarrassing offenses, and unexpected failures.Best friends and social media stars Eugene, Keith, Ned, and Zach are admired for their curiosity, humor, bravado, and fearlessness. But that self-confidence came from their willingness to take big risks--being open to try something new or unusual, even if they failed spectacularly in the attempt. To be our best selves, we have to challenge ourselves. In dedicating ourselves to embracing fear, foolishness, and embarrassment, we can learn to recognize the ways in which we often hold ourselves back.In The Try Guide they swap some of their best stories and offer encouragement and hard advice to help you become a Try Guy too. Whether they're experiencing what it's like to be in labor with a pain simulation machine, marching on the streets of Los Angeles in heels, learning to dance ballet (with a professional dancer and some talented tots), replicating the ancient Olympics, or trying to bake bread without a recipe--their hilarious escapades are embolded by their ""throw caution to the wind"" attitudes, encouraging readers to become their best flawed and f***ked up selves.Throughout, Eugene, Keith, Ned, and Zach open the doors to the past, showing their fans how four nerdy, timid, self-conscious boys grew up into four super-hot-mega-babes secure in their insecurities. They offer key advice on what to do when faced with impending failure--and how to push through to the other side--provide anecdotes about their experiences curating their sure-fail philosophy and introduce each of their new challenges to the reader for the first time (Ned's impossible challenges as a first-time father and Keith's goal of curbing his fried chicken habit by going vegan).The Try Guide is illustrated with 40-50 color images.

A sweeping and enchanting new novel from the widely beloved, award-winning author Elizabeth McCracken about three generations of an unconventional New England family who own and operate a candlepin bowling alleyFrom the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century--nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person--Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford's most defining landmark--with Bertha its most notable resident. When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha's defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills. In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family's myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.

[Read by Michael Kramer]The incredible true story of the men who permanently altered the nation's landscape and its global standing. -- In the tradition of The Lost City of Z and Skeleton in the Zahara, Astoria is the thrilling, true-adventure tale of the 1810 Astor Expedition, an epic, now forgotten, three-year journey to forge an American empire on the Pacific Coast. Peter Stark offers a harrowing saga in which a band of explorers battled nature, starvation, and madness to establish the first American settlement in the Pacific Northwest and opened up what would become the Oregon Trail, permanently altering the nation's landscape and its global standing. -- Six years after Lewis and Clark began their journey to the Pacific Northwest, two of the Eastern establishment's leading figures, John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson, turned their sights to founding a colony akin to Jamestown on the West Coast and transforming the nation into a Pacific trading power. Author and correspondent for Outside magazine Peter Stark recreates this pivotal moment in American history for the first time for modern readers, drawing on original source material to tell the amazing true story of the Astor Expedition. -- Unfolding over the course of three years, from 1810 to 1813, Astoria is a tale of high adventure and incredible hardship in the wilderness and at sea. Of the more than one hundred-forty members of the two advance parties that reached the West Coast--one crossing the Rockies, the other rounding Cape Horn--nearly half perished by violence. Others went mad. Within one year, the expedition successfully established Fort Astoria, a trading post on the Columbia River. Though the colony would be short-lived, it opened provincial American eyes to the potential of the Western coast and its founders helped blaze the Oregon Trail.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas, called ""the most famous undocumented immigrant in America,"" tackles one of the defining issues of our time in this explosive and deeply personal call to arms.""This is not a book about the politics of immigration. This book is not about immigration at all. This book is about homelessness, not in a traditional sense, but in the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like myself find ourselves in. This book is about lying and being forced to lie to get by; about passing as an American and as a contributing citizen; about families, keeping them together, and having to make new ones when you can't. This book is about constantly hiding from the government and, in the process, hiding from ourselves. This book is about what it means to not have a home.After twenty-five years of living illegally in a country that does not consider me one of its own, this book is the closest thing I have to freedom.""--Jose Antonio Vargas, from Dear America

In an enthralling new historical novel from national bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women -- a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947 -- are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption. 1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She's also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie's parents banish her to Europe to have her ''little problem'' taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister. 1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when shes recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she's trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the ''Queen of Spies,'' who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy's nose. Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn't heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth no matter where it leads.

Bernard Cornwell's epic story of the making of England continues in this eleventh installment in the bestselling Saxon Tales series--""like Game of Thrones, but real"" (The Observer)--the basis of the hit Netflix television series The Last Kingdom.His blood is SaxonHis heart is VikingHis battleground is England""Perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today"" (Washington Post), Bernard Cornwell has dazzled and entertained readers and critics with his page-turning bestsellers. Of all his protagonists, however, none is as beloved as Uhtred of Bebbanburg.And while Uhtred might have regained his family's fortress, it seems that a peaceful life is not to be - as he is under threat from both an old enemy and a new foe. The old enemy comes from Wessex where a dynastic struggle will determine who will be the next king. And the new foe is Sköll, a Norseman, whose ambition is to be King of Northumbria and who leads a frightening army of wolf-warriors, men who fight half-crazed in the belief that they are indeed wolves. Uhtred, believing he is cursed, must fend off one enemy while he tries to destroy the other. In this new chapter of the Saxon Tales series--a rousing adventure of courage, treachery, duty, devotion, majesty, love and battle, as seen through the eyes of a warrior straddling two worlds--Uhtred returns to fight once again for the destiny of England.

A riveting thriller reminiscent of The Hot Zone, this true story dives into the mystery surrounding one of the most controversial and misdiagnosed conditions of our time--Lyme disease--and of Willy Burgdorfer, the man who discovered the microbe behind it, revealing his secret role in developing bug-borne biological weapons, and raising terrifying questions about the genesis of the epidemic of tick-borne diseases affecting millions of Americans today.While on vacation on Martha's Vineyard, Kris Newby was bitten by an unseen tick. That one bite changed her life forever, pulling her into the abyss of a devastating illness that took ten doctors to diagnose and years to recover: Newby had become one of the 300,000 Americans who are afflicted with Lyme disease each year.As a science writer, she was driven to understand why this disease is so misunderstood, and its patients so mistreated. This quest led her to Willy Burgdorfer, the Lyme microbe's discoverer, who revealed that he had developed bug-borne bioweapons during the Cold War, and believed that the Lyme epidemic was started by a military experiment gone wrong.In a superb, meticulous work of narrative journalism, Bitten takes readers on a journey to investigate these claims, from biological weapons facilities to interviews with biosecurity experts and microbiologists doing cutting-edge research, all the while uncovering darker truths about Willy. It also leads her to uncomfortable questions about why Lyme can be so difficult to both diagnose and treat, and why the government is so reluctant to classify chronic Lyme as a disease.A gripping, infectious page-turner, Bitten will shed a terrifying new light on an epidemic that is exacting an incalculable toll on us, upending much of what we believe we know about it.

Beloved heroine Maisie Dobbs, ""one of the great fictional heroines"" (Parade), investigates the mysterious murder of an American war correspondent in London during the Blitz in a page-turning tale of love and war, terror and survival.When Catherine Saxon, an American correspondent reporting on the war in Europe, is found murdered in her London digs, news of her death is concealed by British authorities. Serving as a linchpin between Scotland Yard and the Secret Service, Robert MacFarlane pays a visit to Maisie Dobbs, seeking her help. He is accompanied by an agent from the US Department of Justice--Mark Scott, the American who helped Maisie get out of Hitler's Munich in 1938. MacFarlane asks Maisie to work with Scott to uncover the truth about Saxon's death.As the Germans unleash the full terror of their blitzkrieg upon the British Isles, raining death and destruction from the skies, Maisie must balance the demands of solving this dangerous case with her need to protect Anna, the young evacuee she has grown to love and wants to adopt. Entangled in an investigation linked to the power of wartime propaganda and American political intrigue being played out in Britain, Maisie will face losing her dearest friend--and the possibility that she might be falling in love again.

A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!Audiobook performed by Marin Ireland. I can t believe how good this book is.... It s wholly original. It s also perfect.... Wilson writes with such a light touch.... The brilliance of the novel [is] that it distracts you with these weirdo characters and mesmerizing and funny sentences and then hits you in a way you didn t see coming. You re laughing so hard you don t even realize that you ve suddenly caught fire. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, New York Times Book Review Kevin Wilson s best book yet a moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with remarkable and disturbing abilities.Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal and they ve barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help.Madison s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it s the truth.Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other and stay cool while also staying out of the way of Madison s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her urgently and fiercely. Couldn t this be the start of the amazing life she d always hoped for?With white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written his best book yet a most unusual story of parental love.

Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman! J. Michael Straczynski is, without question, one of the greatest science fiction minds of our time. -- Max Brooks (World War Z)For four decades, J. Michael Straczynski has been one of the most successful writers in Hollywood, one of the few to forge multiple careers in movies, television and comics. Yet there s one story he s never told before: his own.In this dazzling memoir, the acclaimed writer behind Babylon 5, Sense8, Clint Eastwood s Changeling and Marvel s Thor reveals how the power of creativity and imagination enabled him to overcome the horrors of his youth and a dysfunctional family haunted by madness, murder and a terrible secret.Joe's early life nearly defies belief. Raised by damaged adults a con-man grandfather and a manipulative grandmother, a violent, drunken father and a mother who was repeatedly institutionalized Joe grew up in abject poverty, living in slums and projects when not on the road, crisscrossing the country in his father s desperate attempts to escape the consequences of his past. To survive his abusive environment Joe found refuge in his beloved comics and his dreams, immersing himself in imaginary worlds populated by superheroes whose amazing powers allowed them to overcome any adversity. The deeper he read, the more he came to realize that he, too, had a superpower: the ability to tell stories and make everything come out the way he wanted it. But even as he found success, he could not escape a dark and shocking secret that hung over his family s past, a violent truth that he uncovered over the course of decades involving mass murder.Straczynski s personal history has always been shrouded in mystery. Becoming Superman lays bare the facts of his life: a story of creation and darkness, hope and success, a larger-than-life villain and a little boy who became the hero of his own life. It is also a compelling behind-the-scenes look at some of the most successful TV series and movies recognized around the world.

Timed to the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Normandy invasion, an extraordinary first-hand account of D-Day by a decorated U.S. Army medic who landed with the first wave on June 6, 1944, and saved dozens of his fellow American soldiers on Omaha Beach, despite having his back broken and being wounded at least three times.D-Day. June 6, 1944. At five a.m., U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ray Lambert worked his way through a throng of nervous soldiers to a wind-swept deck on a troopship off the coast of France. Within moments, a familiar voice cut through the wind and rumble of the ship's diesels. “Ray!"" called his brother, Bill. The two men ducked into a corner away from the wind. Ray, head of a medical team for the First Division's famed 16th Infantry Regiment, had already won a silver star for running through German lines to rescue trapped men in Africa, one of countless rescues he'd made in Tunisia and Sicily. Bill, himself a former medic, was now a company first sergeant tasked to clear the most difficult defenses on shore.“This is going to be the worst yet,"" Ray told his brother.“If I don't make it,"" said Bill. “Take care of my family.""“I will,"" said Ray. He thought a moment about his wife and son, born two years before – a boy he had yet to see. “Same for me."" The words was barely out of Ray's mouth when there was a shout below.To the landing craft!The men parted as they always did, without hugs, without another word. Their destinies lay nine miles away, on the bloodiest rocks of Normandy, a plot of Omaha Beach ironically code named “Easy Red.""Less than five hours later, after saving dozens of lives and being wounded at least three separate times, Ray would lose consciousness in the shallow water of the beach under heavy fire. He would wake on the deck of a landing ship to find his battered brother clinging to life next to him.This is the unforgettable story not only of what happened in the incredible and desperate hours on Omaha Beach in between, but of the bravery courage that preceded them, from the vast sands and green hills of Africa, through the treacherous mountain passes of Sicily, and beyond to the greatest military victory the world has ever known.