Bess Wilder’s world shatters with four words from her husband Jon: “I’m so sorry, Bess.” The betrayal upends everything she built her life around—her marriage, her identity as Jon’s wife, her role as a mother. She dedicated everything to her family, and now nothing feels right and she can’t imagine how life will ever feel normal again. What do you do when the foundation of your entire existence cracks apart?
Perfect Olivia Birmingham has been maintaining an elaborate facade for years, pretending her marriage is fine while dealing with crushing loneliness behind closed doors. She can handle the private pain as long as nobody knows the truth—it’s the public shame she couldn’t bear. But when her marital problems explode at the worst possible moment in the most public way imaginable, Olivia’s carefully constructed image crumbles and she’s forced to actually deal with her reality whether she’s ready or not.
Deb Sterling tries to be strong for her best friend Bess while privately reeling from the betrayal herself. The situation hits especially hard because Deb’s own marriage is precarious—her husband has been living in London, thousands of miles away, and Deb feels the distance pulling them apart. She’s terrified that if things don’t change, she’ll end up suffering the same fate as Bess. How do you support your friend through a crisis when you’re quietly experiencing your own?
Julia Clemens explores how three women on Whisling Island navigate the aftermath of betrayal, the complexity of long marriages, and the question of whether relationships can be rebuilt or if moving on is the only answer. Each woman’s story reflects different aspects of marital struggle—Bess dealing with fresh betrayal, Olivia finally confronting years of denial, and Deb trying to prevent her marriage from reaching that breaking point. The island setting provides both isolation and community as these women figure out their next chapters. ️
What makes this special: Thoughtful women’s fiction about three friends navigating betrayal, broken marriages, and the difficult question of what comes next when your life falls apart.
Archaeologist David Preston’s life takes an impossible turn when Ariyl Moro and her companion Jon Ludlo present him with a baseball supposedly signed by Ty Cobb in 1908. The problem? The ball is signed with a ballpoint pen that wasn’t invented until 1938, using ink that tests as several centuries older. It’s a paradox that shouldn’t exist—but then again, neither should Ariyl and Ludlo as they’ve presented themselves. ⚾
Ariyl turns out to be a six-foot-three tourist from a 22nd-century paradise where time travel has become the latest vacation craze. She’s gorgeous, she’s from the future, and she has absolutely no idea that her traveling companion Ludlo is actually a psychopath whose thefts throughout history are starting to alter the timeline in catastrophic ways. In a world where even small changes can cause civilization-ending consequences, Ludlo’s actions threaten to destroy everything. ⏰
To stop Ludlo and prevent the complete destruction of the future, David and Ariyl must solve a mystery that spans multiple timelines: Bronze Age swordsmen, modern Nazis, a steampunk alternate world, Albert Einstein, highly skeptical Founding Fathers, and a Golden Age Hollywood where the murder of a beloved movie star will doom civilization. Each stolen artifact is another thread pulled from the fabric of history, and David and Ariyl are running out of time to weave it back together.
Doug Molitor delivers time travel adventure that embraces the inherent fun of the genre while acknowledging the serious consequences of timeline manipulation. The eclectic mix of historical periods and scenarios keeps the plot unpredictable—you never know if the next chapter will involve ancient warriors or Hollywood starlets. Ariyl works as both love interest and fish-out-of-water character, while David provides the grounded perspective necessary to anchor the wilder time-hopping elements.
Why I’m including this: Inventive time travel romp where an archaeologist and a future tourist must stop a psychopath from destroying history one stolen artifact at a time, featuring everyone from Einstein to Bronze Age warriors. ⚡
Top chef Nora Ashcroft just died. Instead of the afterlife she expected, she wakes up in the magical town of Eastwind where witches, vampires, and the grim reaper (please call him Ted) are just everyday neighbors. That’s weird enough, but then she stumbles upon a fresh murder in the diner and suddenly every wand in town is pointing at her as the prime suspect. Death was supposed to be restful—this is decidedly not that.
The Clue reference in the opening line is accurate: someone killed the werewolf in the diner with the frying pan, and Nora needs to figure out who before she takes the fall for a murder she didn’t commit. The problem is she’s dealing with a snarky hellhound familiar she never asked for and brand-new psychic powers she has zero idea how to control. Can a chef who’s excellent with knives but terrible with magic exonerate herself?
Nova Nelson blends paranormal cozy mystery with genuine humor, creating a world where death is just a gateway to a new (magical) life. The setup—newly dead chef accused of murder in a supernatural town—provides plenty of fish-out-of-water comedy alongside the mystery. Nora’s culinary expertise translates surprisingly well to detective work, and the hellhound familiar adds snark without being annoying.
The Eastwind setting offers all the cozy mystery charm (quirky townspeople, local businesses, community dynamics) with the added twist that everyone’s magical. The murder mystery follows classic cozy conventions while the supernatural elements keep it fresh. Plus, any book that names the grim reaper Ted deserves points for commitment to the bit.
What makes this special: Paranormal cozy where a dead chef with untrained psychic powers and an unwanted hellhound familiar must solve a werewolf murder to clear her name in magical Eastwind.
13 Things Mentally Strong Parents Don’t Do: Raising Self-Assured Children and Training Their Brains for a Life of Happiness
Amy Morin takes the counterintuitive approach that made her first book successful and applies it to parenting: instead of telling you what to do, she focuses on what not to do. The premise is that today’s culture of safe spaces and trigger warnings might be accidentally creating kids who lack the resilience to handle life’s inevitable challenges. As a psychotherapist, foster parent, and teen therapy expert, Morin has seen firsthand what happens when children develop genuine mental strength versus when they’re perpetually shielded from discomfort.
The “don’t do” framework is refreshingly practical because it’s easier to stop doing something than to add seventeen new parenting techniques to your already overwhelming list. Morin isn’t advocating for tough-love parenting or deliberately making kids suffer—she’s pointing out how our well-intentioned protective instincts can backfire. When we rush to solve every problem, we accidentally communicate that we don’t trust our kids to handle challenges. When we shield them from every disappointment, we rob them of opportunities to build genuine coping skills.
The book draws from Morin’s professional experience, which includes foster care—a context where resilience isn’t optional but essential. This gives her insights unusual depth; she’s not theorizing about building mental strength, she’s worked with kids who desperately needed it. The strategies she recommends aren’t about creating perfect children but about equipping them with tools to handle failure, disappointment, and uncertainty without falling apart.
What makes this especially timely is the cultural conversation about whether we’re over-protecting kids in ways that ultimately harm them. Morin threads the needle between legitimate safety concerns and overreaction, offering parents a framework for distinguishing between protecting kids from genuine danger and protecting them from valuable struggle. The goal isn’t tough kids but flexible ones—children who can adapt, recover, and keep going when things get hard.
Why I’m including this: Practical parenting advice that addresses real cultural concerns about raising resilient kids, from someone with serious credentials and real-world experience.
ESPN started in 1979 as a modest idea: a cable channel covering local Connecticut sporting events. Today it’s arguably the most successful network in modern television history, spanning eight channels globally and fundamentally changing how America consumes sports. But the full inside story of its rise—including all the scandals, rivalries, triumphs, and off-screen battles—has never been told until now. James Miller and Tom Shales assembled over 500 interviews with the biggest names in ESPN history and some of the world’s greatest athletes to pull back the curtain completely.
This is oral history done right: letting the actual people who built ESPN tell their own stories in their own words. You get unknown producers and business visionaries alongside the most famous faces on television, creating a comprehensive view that captures both the strategic decisions that built the empire and the personality clashes that made it entertaining. The format keeps the narrative moving while providing multiple perspectives on the same events—often revealing that people remember things very differently.
What makes the book compelling beyond sports fan appeal is that it’s really a business and media story. How does a startup cable channel focused on something as niche as Connecticut sports become a cultural juggernaut? The answer involves risk-taking, innovation, personality, timing, and no small amount of chaos. The scandals and rivalries aren’t salacious gossip tacked on—they’re integral to understanding how ESPN’s competitive culture drove its success while also creating serious problems.
The authors don’t just chronicle ESPN’s victories; they dig into the controversies, the battles between on-air talent, the corporate power struggles, and the moments when the network’s judgment was seriously questionable. This balanced approach makes the story more credible and more interesting than a simple celebration of ESPN’s greatness. The network transformed sports media, but that transformation came with costs and casualties worth examining.
What makes this essential: The definitive behind-the-scenes story of how ESPN changed sports forever, told by the people who actually did it, scandals and all. ⚾
Five years after the accident that killed her love, artist Feyi Adekola is finally ready to try being alive again rather than just surviving. Her best friend Joy pushes her toward the dating scene, which leads to a steamy rooftop encounter that cascades into the kind of summer she never imagined: luxury tropical islands, glamorous celebrity chef dinners, a major curator interested in her art. She even starts dating someone perfect—until she realizes the person she’s actually drawn to is the one person absolutely off-limits: his father. Now she has to figure out who she’s ready to become and how far she’ll go for a second chance at love.
Akwaeke Emezi writes grief with brutal honesty—this isn’t prettified mourning but the messy reality of rebuilding yourself after catastrophic loss. Feyi’s not just sad; she’s had to become an entirely new person because the one who existed before the accident can’t survive without her partner. The novel respects that transformation while acknowledging how terrifying it is to start wanting things again, to let joy back in when you know how completely it can be taken away.
The forbidden attraction setup sounds potentially trashy, but Emezi handles it with surprising nuance. This isn’t about scandal for scandal’s sake—it’s about Feyi confronting what she actually wants versus what feels safe or socially acceptable. The father-son dynamic forces her to examine whether she’s building a new life or just constructing a more comfortable prison. The luxury setting (tropical islands, celebrity chef culture) provides necessary escapism while the emotional core remains grounded in real grief and desire.
What sets this apart from typical romance is Emezi’s refusal to make anything simple. Grief doesn’t disappear because you fall in love again. Desire doesn’t follow neat ethical guidelines. Art doesn’t heal trauma, though it might help you live with it. The novel asks genuinely difficult questions about honoring your past while embracing your future, about whether you can release grief without betraying what you lost. ️
Why I’m including this: Lush, complicated romance that actually grapples with grief and desire’s complications, from a bold writer unafraid to make things messy and real. ✨
… See the rest of today ‘s Book Picks here on page 3Page 3