Eighty-year-old Bette Justice has one request for her favorite hairstylist Amanda Wright: convince her stubborn grandson Tyler that Marietta is her real home and she’s not moving to Texas. Amanda can’t say no to Bette—so when Tyler arrives in Marietta convinced that the young woman his grandmother keeps mentioning is taking advantage of an old woman’s generosity, he’s walking directly into a situation considerably more complicated than he planned for. Jane Porter opens *Take a Chance on Me* with the small-town Montana romance premise that earns its specific warmth from an eighty-year-old matchmaker who knows exactly what she’s doing. 💙
Tyler is a successful game designer with a one-track mind about his grandmother’s wellbeing, and his intention to put the salon owner in her place evaporates the moment smart, kind Amanda starts doing something unexpected to his certainties. Porter develops the shift from suspicion to connection with the emotional intelligence that her Montana series is consistently praised for—the Marietta community backdrop gives the romance its specific warmth and the family secret that surfaces adds the narrative tension that lifts the novel beyond its simple setup. 💕
Porter is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author whose Marietta, Montana world has developed one of small-town romance’s most devoted readerships. The community has been built across many interconnected novels, and returning readers find familiar faces while new readers find an instantly welcoming fictional world. Bette Justice as the catalyst is a specific delight—a woman who has lived long enough to recognize what her grandson needs and resourceful enough to arrange for it to happen. ⭐
Why this warms you: An eighty-year-old who won’t leave Marietta, her grandson who arrives certain the hairstylist is taking advantage, and a family secret that changes everything—Jane Porter’s beloved Montana small-town romance, free.
Former FBI agent Benny James was fired for inadvertently sleeping with the perp in a murder case—a professional distinction that follows him to his houseboat retirement, from which he does not have what it takes to actually rest. He opens a discreet investigations service. Then a body is found crucified near his marina and the local police request his help, with the chief giving him ten days before the FBI gets called in. If Benny can catch the killer, redemption is his. Jason Deas opens the Benny James Mystery series with the private investigator premise that stacks its protagonist’s specific damage with real narrative intelligence. 🔍
The cast that assembles around the case gives the novel its specific dark comic texture: a media goddess whose arrival adds spice to an already flavorful mix, an ex-convict fresh from a thirty-year murder rap arriving with revenge on his mind, and a young man raised by deaf-mute parents in the Ozark Mountains, drawn to town by an old newspaper clipping and a dark secret. Deas develops the convergence of these figures around the crucifixion murders with the plotting intelligence that the mystery format requires and the atmospheric specificity that distinguishes Southern crime fiction at its best. 💙
The killer’s specific signature—dead birds arranged at each murder site with an artist’s deliberate attention—gives the investigation its dark atmospheric center. Deas writes the Benny James series with the dry wit and genuine character investment that has built a devoted following. The ten-day countdown before the FBI arrives gives the investigation its ticking clock urgency. ⭐
Why this grips you: A disgraced FBI agent, a crucifixion murder near his marina, ten days to solve it before his old employers take over, and a killer who arranges dead birds as an artist might—Birdsongs is Southern private investigator mystery with real atmospheric darkness.
Published in 1884, Edwin Abbott Abbott’s *Flatland* remains one of the most inventive and philosophically rich short novels in the English language—a satirical novella set in a two-dimensional universe populated by geometric shapes, narrated by A Square, a respectable member of Flatland society who encounters the existence of higher dimensions and finds that reality is considerably larger and more complicated than his flat world ever suggested. Abbott uses the mathematical conceit to make one of literature’s sharpest arguments about perception, social hierarchy, and the limits of what any consciousness can understand from inside its own framework. ✨
The satire runs through every dimension of the world Abbott constructs: in Flatland, social class is determined by the number of sides a shape has, women are straight lines with no angles and therefore no status, and the establishment’s response to evidence of higher dimensions is suppression rather than inquiry. The mathematics is real and the geometry is precise, and the philosophical argument they carry—that we are all limited by the dimensions we can perceive and tend to punish those who perceive more—has lost none of its sharpness in the century and a half since publication. 🌟
*Flatland* has influenced generations of mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, and writers, and its specific combination of rigorous mathematical imagination and pointed social satire makes it genuinely accessible to readers with no mathematics background and genuinely rewarding for those with extensive background. As a free classic it is among the most valuable offerings available—a short, brilliant, endlessly discussable book that repays multiple readings across a lifetime. ⭐
Why this endures: A two-dimensional world, a square who discovers higher dimensions, and one of literature’s sharpest arguments about perception and the punishment of those who see too much—Edwin Abbott’s 1884 classic, free.
Drawing Digital
Lisa Bardot—the artist and teacher behind the popular @BardotBrush platform—has built her following by making digital drawing genuinely accessible to people who would otherwise find the technology intimidating. *Drawing Digital* is her comprehensive guide to getting started with a tablet and Procreate or another drawing app: twelve step-by-step projects covering still life, plants, animals, self-portraits, characters, and city scenes, with complete instructions and Bardot’s signature vibrant artwork accompanying each one. The promise the book makes—that it will give you the tools to draw anything—is one she delivers on with characteristic practical clarity. 🎨
The projects span the range that a beginner needs to develop real confidence: a snake plant and cacti for the botanically inclined, a dog and a school of fish for animal subjects, self-portraits and characters for figure work, city scenes for environment and perspective. Each project builds specific skills while producing a finished piece, which is the specific pedagogical approach that distinguishes drawing instruction that builds lasting capability from instruction that teaches recipes. The foundational sections on tools, app basics, lines and shapes, layering, and duplicating give the technical grounding that projects alone cannot provide. 🌟
Bardot writes with the warmth and directness that has made her platform so trusted—she understands the specific anxieties of people coming to digital art without a traditional drawing background, and she addresses them with the reassurance of genuine competence. Tips for finding creative inspiration run throughout, making the book useful well beyond its twelve projects. At $3.99, marked down from $24.99, this is exceptional value for a beautifully illustrated digital drawing guide. ⭐
Why this inspires: Twelve step-by-step iPad drawing and painting projects from the creator of BardotBrush—plants, animals, self-portraits, cities—with the tools and techniques to draw anything after you finish them, for $3.99.
Fred Minnick is one of the most respected voices in American whiskey writing—a spirits journalist and historian who has spent years documenting bourbon’s full story, from the Irish, Scottish, and French settlers setting up stills in the New World in the 1700s through the near-death of the industry in the twentieth century to today’s extraordinary boom. *Bourbon* traces the complete arc with the historical rigor and narrative engagement that the subject deserves, answering along the way the question that bourbon enthusiasts have debated for generations: who actually invented it. 🥃
The candidates Minnick examines—including Daniel Boone’s cousin and Baptist minister Elijah Craig, who has held the title in popular mythology for decades—are assessed against new research and never-before-seen documentation, and Minnick’s conclusion gives the mystery the specific resolution that serious bourbon history has been waiting for. The political and cultural history running alongside the distillery story—Congress passing whiskey-protection laws, consumers standing in line for Pappy Van Winkle, the specific role bourbon has played in American identity across three centuries—gives the book its breadth. 🌟
Minnick is an award-winning spirits author whose work is consistently praised for the combination of accessible prose, genuine scholarly research, and the specific enthusiasm of someone who loves what he’s writing about. More than 100 illustrations and photos give the book its visual richness. For bourbon drinkers, American food history enthusiasts, or anyone curious about the full story of the spirit that most completely symbolizes the country that produced it, this is the essential starting point. At $3.99, marked down from $26, this is exceptional value. ⭐
Why this endures: The full history of bourbon—who invented it, how it nearly died, why it came back, and what it says about America—Fred Minnick’s award-winning definitive history, marked down from $26 to $3.99.
USA Today’s description—”disastrously hilarious”—captures the specific tonal register Shropshire maintains throughout: genuine affection for the absurdity, no sentimentality about the baseball, and the specific insider access of a beat writer who was there for all of it and survived to write it down. For baseball history readers, Texas Rangers fans of any era, or anyone who enjoys sports writing that treats the sport’s human comedy with the respect it deserves, this is essential. At $2.99, marked down from $17.99, this is exceptional value. ⭐
Why this entertains: The worst team in baseball history, Whitey Herzog, Billy Martin, and a Fort Worth sportswriter who survived all three seasons to write the funniest baseball book you’ve never read—Seasons in Hell for $2.99.
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3