Books published by publisher Random House Inc

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead.Don’t miss the hourlong Netflix special Brené Brown: The Call to Courage! NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BLOOMBERG Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In this new book, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BS style that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.”Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Ali Wong’s heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters (the two she put to work while they were still in utero) cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad.“Fierce, feminist, and packed with funny anecdotes.”—Entertainment WeeklyNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • Variety • Chicago Tribune • Glamour • New York In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, an eight-month pregnant Ali Wong resonated so strongly that she even became a popular Halloween costume. Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women, and why you never see new mom comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads. The sharp insights and humor are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal single life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco, and parenting war stories. Though addressed to her daughters, Ali Wong’s letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all.Praise for Dear Girls “[Wong] spins a volume whose pages simultaneously shock and satisfy. . . . Dear Girls is not so much a real-talk handbook as it is a myth-puncturing manifesto.”—Vogue “[A] refreshing, hilarious, and honest account of making a career in a male-dominated field, dating, being a mom, growing up, and so much more…Yes, this book is addressed to Wong’s daughters, but every reader will find nuggets of wisdom and inspiration and, most important, something to laugh at.”—Bustle

If you're looking to get married and you're not, there's most likely a very good reason: you. Not that you're a bad person - you're certainly not! It's just that you haven't yet become the woman you need to be in order to have the partnership you want. So how can you grow into someone who is ready to say "I do" and to attract the same in a mate? You start with this book. Based on her wildly popular Huffington Post article - one of the site's most-viewed of all time - Why You're Not Married . . . Yet dishes out straightforward, no-holds-barred practical and proven advice for women hoping to head down the aisle or just have a great relationship. With sisterly insight, razor-sharp wit, and refreshing candor, McMillan points out the things that might be in your blind spot: unhelpful attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs so easy to identify in others, but much more difficult to see in yourself. Then she shows you how to adjust them to get the relationship you deserve. Like a no-nonsense but loving best friend, McMillan meets you right where you are to help you get where you're going - with clarity and honesty. And she'll make you laugh out loud along the way. More than just a relationship manual, Why You're Not Married . . . Yet will help you diagnose what's preventing you from getting what you want. Do any of these chapter headings sound familiar? You're a Bitch: How defensiveness and anger can hide behind a tough, take-charge exterior, and why being nice is never a sign of weakness. You're a Liar: How to stop lying to men - and get honest with yourself - about the kind of relationship you really want. It's the only way. You're Shallow: Being a woman who insists on a tall guy is no different from being a man who demands big boobs. Learn why you should let go of trying to get what you think you should have and focus on getting what you need. You're Selfish: The big secret about marriage: It's about giving something, not getting it. The other big secret: You will have to go first. Why You're Not Married . . . Yet isn't so much about getting a husband as it is about shifting your perspective on being a wife. Here's a funny, insightful guide to becoming a more loving woman and creating a more loving marriage - even if you're already partnered. It's a book that will change your life and the way you think about relationships, and it may very well lead you down the aisle.

At last, a book that shows you how to build - design - a life you can thrive in at any age or stage. Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home - at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create lives that are both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of whom or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise. PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

An Instant New York Times Best Seller "Ambitious and brilliantly written." (Jane Smiley, The Washington Post) "Outstanding...[the] literary love child of Jonathan Franzen and Anne Tyler." (The Guardian) "Everything about this brilliant debut cuts deep: the humor, the wisdom, the pathos. Claire Lombardo writes like she's been doing it for a hundred years, and like she's been alive for a thousand." (Rebecca Makkai, author of The Great Believers) When Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, they are blithely ignorant of all that's to come. By 2016, their four radically different daughters are each in a state of unrest: Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator-turned-stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt when the darkest part of her past resurfaces; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant with a baby she's not sure she wants by a man she's not sure she loves; and Grace, the dawdling youngest daughter, begins living a lie that no one in her family even suspects. Above it all, the daughters share the lingering fear that they will never find a love quite like their parents'. As the novel moves through the tumultuous year following the arrival of Jonah Bendt - given up by one of the daughters in a closed adoption 15 years before - we are shown the rich and varied tapestry of the Sorensons' past: years marred by adolescence, infidelity, and resentment, but also the transcendent moments of joy that make everything else worthwhile. Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the quintessential American backdrop of Chicago and its prospering suburbs, Lombardo's debut explores the triumphs and burdens of love, the fraught tethers of parenthood and sisterhood, and the baffling mixture of affection, abhorrence, resistance, and submission we feel for those closest to us. In painting this luminous portrait of a family's becoming, Lombardo joins the ranks of writers such as Celeste Ng, Elizabeth Strout, and Jonathan Franzen as visionary chroniclers of our modern lives.

Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas (business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others) struggle to make their ideas "stick". Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished educators and idea collectors Chip and Dan Heath tackle head-on these vexing questions. Inside, the brothers Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the "human scale principle", using the "Velcro Theory of Memory", and creating "curiosity gaps". In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds (from the infamous "kidney theft ring" hoax to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship, to a new-product vision at Sony) draw their power from the same six traits. Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It includes a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures), such as the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass full of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers, the charities who make use of "the Mother Teresa Effect", and the elementary school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

A beautiful new edition of “the greatest dessert book in the history of the world” (Bon Appétit), featuring 175 timeless recipes from Gramercy Tavern’s James Beard Award–winning pastry chef.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Atlantic • Food Network Claudia Fleming is a renowned name in the pastry world, acclaimed for having set an industrywide standard at New York City’s Gramercy Tavern with her James Beard Award–winning desserts. With The Last Course, dessert lovers everywhere will be able to re-create and savor her impressive repertoire at home. Fleming’s desserts have won a range of awards because they embody her philosophy of highly satisfying food without pretension, a perfect balance for home cooks. Using fresh, seasonal ingredients at the peak of their flavor, Fleming creates straightforward yet enchanting desserts that are somehow equal to much more than the sum of their parts. She has an uncanny ability to match contrasting textures, flavors, and temperatures to achieve a perfect result—placing something brittle and crunchy next to something satiny and smooth, and stretching the definition of sweet and savory while retaining an elemental simplicity. The Last Course contains 175 mouthwatering recipes that are organized seasonally by fruits, vegetables, nuts, herbs and flowers, spices, sweet essences, dairy, and chocolate. In the final chapter, Fleming suggests how to combine and assemble desserts from the previous chapters to create the ultimate composed desserts. And each chapter and each composed dessert is paired with a selection of wines. Recipes include Raspberry–Lemon Verbena Meringue Cake, Blueberry–Cream Cheese Tarts with Graham Cracker Crust, Cherry Cheesecake Tart with a Red Wine Glaze, Concord Grape Sorbet, Apple Tarte Tatin, Chestnut Soufflés with Armagnac-Nutmeg Custard Sauce, Buttermilk Panna Cotta with Sauternes Gelée, Warm Chocolate Ganache Cakes, and more. Beautifully illustrated with more than eighty color photographs throughout, The Last Course is a timeless, one-of-a-kind collection filled with original recipes that will inspire dessert enthusiasts for years to come.Praise for The Last Course “While I must admit to being particularly partial to Claudia’s Buttermilk Panna Cotta, every dessert in The Last Course made me salivate. Claudia’s inspired recipes are so beautifully transcribed that even the most nervous of home cooks will feel comfortable trying them and will be a four-star chef for the day.”—Daniel Boulud “The Goddess of New American Pastry.”—Elle

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. It is the story of 11-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

"Are you happy with your life?" Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend." In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible. Is it this world or the other that's the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined - one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe. From the author of the best-selling Wayward Pines trilogy, Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human - a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.

New York Times best seller. An award-winning guide to the sometimes erratic and confusing behavior of teenage girls that explains what's going on, prepares parents for what's to come, and lets them know when it's time to worry. Look for Under Pressure, the companion guide to coping with stress and anxiety among girls, available now. In this sane, highly engaging, and informed guide for parents of daughters, Dr. Damour draws on decades of experience and the latest research to reveal the seven distinct - and absolutely normal - developmental transitions that turn girls into grown-ups, including parting with childhood, contending with adult authority, entering the romantic world, and caring for herself. Providing realistic scenarios and welcome advice on how to engage daughters in smart, constructive ways, Untangled gives parents a broad framework for understanding their daughters while addressing their most common questions, including: My 13-year-old rolls her eyes when I try to talk to her and only does it more when I get angry with her about it. How should I respond? Do I tell my teen daughter that I'm checking her phone? My daughter suffers from test anxiety. What can I do to help her? Where's the line between healthy eating and having an eating disorder? My teenage daughter wants to know why I'm against pot when it's legal in some states. What should I say? My daughter's friend is cutting herself. Do I call the girl's mother to let her know? Perhaps most important, Untangled helps mothers and fathers understand, connect, and grow with their daughters. When parents know what makes their daughter tick, they can embrace and enjoy the challenge of raising a healthy, happy young woman. Books for a Better Life Award winner. "Finally, there's some good news for puzzled parents of adolescent girls, and psychologist Lisa Damour is the bearer of that happy news. [Untangled] is the most down-to-earth, readable parenting book I've come across in a long time." (The Washington Post) "Anna Freud wrote in 1958, 'There are few situations in life which are more difficult to cope with than an adolescent son or daughter during the attempt to liberate themselves.' In the intervening decades, the transition doesn't appear to have gotten any easier which makes Untangled such a welcome new resource." (The Boston Globe)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational MemoirAt the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

New York Times best-seller. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.... When the Emperor and his notorious apprentice, Darth Vader, find themselves stranded in the middle of insurgent action on an inhospitable planet, they must rely on each other, the Force, and their own ruthlessness to prevail. "It appears things are as you suspected, Lord Vader. We are indeed hunted." Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight, is just a memory. Darth Vader, newly anointed Sith Lord, is ascendant. The Emperor's chosen apprentice has swiftly proven his loyalty to the dark side. Still, the history of the Sith Order is one of duplicity, betrayal, and acolytes violently usurping their Masters - and the truest measure of Vader's allegiance has yet to be taken. Until now. On Ryloth, a planet crucial to the growing Empire as a source of slave labor and the narcotic known as "spice", an aggressive resistance movement has arisen, led by Cham Syndulla, an idealistic freedom fighter, and Isval, a vengeful former slave. But Emperor Palpatine means to control the embattled world and its precious resources - by political power or firepower - and he will be neither intimidated nor denied. Accompanied by his merciless disciple, Darth Vader, he sets out on a rare personal mission to ensure his will is done. For Syndulla and Isval, it's the opportunity to strike at the very heart of the ruthless dictatorship sweeping the galaxy. And for the Emperor and Darth Vader, Ryloth becomes more than just a matter of putting down an insurrection: When an ambush sends them crashing to the planet's surface, where inhospitable terrain and an army of resistance fighters await them, they will find their relationship tested as never before. With only their lightsabers, the dark side of the Force, and each other to depend on, the two Sith must decide if the brutal bond they share will make them victorious allies or lethal adversaries. Praise for Lords of the Sith: "A compelling tale [that] gives us new insight into the relationship between Darth Vader and his master, Emperor Palpatine." (New York Daily News) "Endlessly fascinating...a tale [that is] not just compelling but completely thrilling." (Big Shiny Robot) "The best novel so far in this new era of official canon Star Wars stories." (IGN) "Packed with action...hard to put down." (Seattle Geekly)