When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens’ Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she’ll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign—but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide.

Big Little Lies meets The Witches of Eastwick—a gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers—putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, Margo Millet's always known she’d have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can’t imagine how she’ll ever make a living. She’s still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor—and while the affair is brief, it isn’t brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone’s advice, she decides to keep the baby, mostly out of naiveté and a yearning for something bigger.

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself.

Every day Iona, a larger-than-life magazine advice columnist, travels the ten stops from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station by train, accompanied by her dog, Lulu. Every day she sees the same people, whom she knows only by nickname: Impossibly-Pretty-Constant-Reader and Terribly-Lonely-Teenager. Of course, they never speak. Seasoned commuters never do. Then one morning, the man she calls Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader chokes on a grape right in front of her. He’d have died were it not for the timely intervention of Sanjay, a nurse, who gives him the Heimlich maneuver.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship. Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own.

With its ensemble of warm and unforgettable characters, The Faculty Lounge shows listeners a different side of school life. It all starts when an elderly substitute teacher at Baldwin High School is found dead in the faculty lounge. After a bit of a stir, life quickly returns to normal. But when, a week later, the spontaneous scattering of his ashes on the school grounds catches the attention of some busybody parents, it sets in motion a year that can only be described as wild, bizarre, tragic, mundane, beautiful, and humorous all at once.

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

Julia Ames, after a youth marked by upheaval and emotional turbulence, has found herself on the placid plateau of mid-life. But Julia has never navigated the world with the equanimity of her current privileged class. Having nearly derailed herself several times, making desperate bids for the kind of connection that always felt inaccessible to her, she finally feels, at age fifty seven, that she has a firm handle on things. She’s unprepared, though, for what comes next.

Frederick Fife was born with an extra helping of kindness in his heart. If he borrowed your car, he’d return it washed with a full tank of gas. The problem is there’s nobody left in Fred’s life to borrow from. At eighty-two, he’s desperately lonely, broke, and on the brink of homelessness. But Fred’s luck changes when, in a bizarre case of mistaken identity, he takes the place of grumpy Bernard Greer at the local nursing home. Now he has warm meals in his belly and a roof over his head—as long as his poker face is in better shape than his prostate and that his look-alike never turns up.

When sixty-three-year-old Sylvia finds her husband in bed with the floozy of their Boca retirement community, she’s shocked and furious . . . at first. By the time her head stops spinning, Sylvia realizes that actually, this isn’t what she wants anymore anyway. So she enlists her best friend, the glamorous older widow Evie, to join her in setting up a new life in Manhattan. Sylvia’s ex-husband may have lost her life savings, but Sylvia and Evie are scrappy and determined, unopposed to pawning jewelry and roughing it in tiny apartments.

For fifty years, Venetia Hargreaves’s world revolved around her husband. She built their life around his big career, with dinner on the table at six, a lovely home, and a dutiful son just as business-minded as his father. Now Venetia’s a wealthy widow left with a beautiful but empty home, an enviable bank balance, and a distinct feeling that she missed the boat. Once upon a time, she was a dance instructor who dreamed of opening her own ballroom school with a fellow teacher who won her heart. Instead, Venetia chose the safer path.

Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore⁠ - beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer father and a swimming pool in her backyard. Michael⁠⁠ - with a ponytail down his back and a septum piercing⁠ - lives with his aunt in the cramped stucco cottage next door. When Bunny catches Michael smoking in her yard, he discovers that her life is not as perfect as it seems. At six foot three, Bunny towers over their classmates.

Separated by 10 years, 3,000 miles, and the unrelenting stresses of adulthood, best friends Janet and Serena plan a 40th birthday girls’ trip to reconnect. But after a massive crash, they’re the only survivors to wash ashore on an uncharted Caribbean Island. Armed with only the clothes on their backs and zero survival skills, they fight to overcome hunger, thirst, deadly wildlife—and most terrifyingly—decades of accrued resentment. Can they find their way home, or will they kill each other first?

In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.

A bad best man’s speech can ruin a wedding. Why do we plan every detail of a perfect day and then give the groom’s idiot best friend five minutes of total power? Enter Nate (Glen Powell), a speechwriter-for-hire who helps people write incredible best man speeches. To keep the best man from embarrassing himself (and the newlyweds), Nate uses his list of don’ts: Don’t mention the exes, don’t be rated R, and don’t bum everyone out. Nate’s system never fails. That is, until he meets Dan (Nicholas Braun).

Traumatized by the bombing of Dresden at the time he had been imprisoned, Pilgrim drifts through all events and history, sometimes deeply implicated, sometimes a witness. He is surrounded by Vonnegut's usual large cast of continuing characters (notably here the hack science fiction writer Kilgore Trout and the alien Tralfamadorians, who oversee his life and remind him constantly that there is no causation, no order, no motive to existence).

Alice's journey begins as all good journeys do: hitting on the sales guy at REI. After a tumultuous breakup, a quick career transition, family upheaval, and a sobriety journey that didn't fix her life quite as much as she expected it to, Alice decides that the only way to solve all her problems is to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. But as she begins preparing for the months-long quest, she realizes the answers she's seeking might not be on top of a snow-covered mountain. Especially since she just learned there was snow in California.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

Big Little Lies meets The Witches of Eastwick—a gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers—putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town.

From the award-winning author of The One-in-a-Million Boy comes a heartfelt, uplifting novel about a chance encounter at a bookstore, exploring redemption, unlikely friendships, and the life-changing power of sharing stories.

All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving. With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club.

1927. Olivia "Livy" West is a fearless young pilot with a love of adventure. She yearns to cross oceans and travel the skies. When she learns of the Dole Air Race—a high-stakes contest to be the first to make the 2,400 mile Pacific crossing from the West Coast to Hawai'i—she sets her sights on qualifying. But it soon becomes clear that only men will make the cut. In a last-ditch effort to take part, Livy manages to be picked as a navigator for one of the pilots, before setting out on a harrowing journey that some will not survive.

Esther Larson has been cooking for funerals in the Northwoods of Wisconsin for seventy years. Known locally as the “funeral ladies,” she and her cohort have worked hard to keep the mourners of Ellerie County fed—it is her firm belief that there is very little a warm casserole and a piece of cherry pie can’t fix. But, after falling for an internet scam that puts her home at risk, the proud Larson family matriarch is the one in need of help these days.

Ruth’s childhood was a happy one, and her family—on her mother’s side—large and loving. But her father’s French origins have always remained a mystery. Now, with aged relatives beginning to die, Ruth decides to research her father’s family before it’s too late. When she discovers a series of long-lost cassettes, everything she thought she knew about them shatters. The tapes expose an unimaginable truth–an epic wartime story of hidden love and sacrifice, stretching back to occupied France.

Once happily married, Jenna Jones is about to turn 40, and this year for her birthday - lucky her - she’s getting a divorce. She’s barely able to support herself and her teenage daughter. Her aging aunt Edie is finding it difficult to keep up her business running The Driftwood Inn, so she invites Jenna to come live with her and run the place. It looks like Jenna’s financial problems are solved! Or not. The town is a little more run-down than Jenna remembers, but that’s nothing compared to the ramshackle state of The Driftwood Inn.

From the author of The School for German Brides, this captivating historical novel set in nineteenth-century and post-World War II Paris follows two fierce women of the same family, generations apart, who find that their futures lie in the four walls of a simple bakery in a tiny corner of Montmartre.

In a small pocket of London, between the houses of No.77 and No.79 Eastbourne Road, lies a neglected community garden. It was a beautiful thing once, a little oasis in a bustling city for neighbors by day and the local foxes at twilight. Now it’s overgrown and neglected, an empty patch of greenery lost to time.

Planning the perfect prom is one last “to do” on ultra-organized Charlotte Wu’s high school bucket list. So far, so good, if not for a decorating accident that sends Charlotte crash-landing off a ladder, face-first into her obnoxiously ripped archnemesis J. T. Renner. Worse? When Charlotte wakes up, she finds herself in an unfamiliar bed at thirty years old, with her bearded fiancé, Renner, by her side.

Mack Anders will do anything for his wife, Daisy. Even die. With the woman he loves fading away from Alzheimer’s, Mack fakes his own passing. The insurance makes certain that Daisy will be taken care of with dignity and comfort until the end. In a lonesome cabin in the Wyoming wilderness, he lives off the grid with nothing but thoughts of the past to keep him company and the belief that Daisy is better off without him.

Iowa, 1967. Nursing school roommates BettyKay and Kitty don’t have much in common. A farmer’s daughter, BettyKay has risked her family’s disapproval to make her dreams come true away from her small rural town. Cosmopolitan Kitty has always relied on her beauty and smarts to get by and to hide a devastating secret from the past that she can’t seem to outrun. Yet the two share a determination to prove themselves in a changing world, forging an unlikely, powerful bond on a campus unkind to women.

We read to escape, to learn, to find love, to feel seen. We read to encounter new worlds, to discover new recipes, to find connection across difference, or simply to pass a rainy afternoon. No matter the reason, books have the power to keep us safe, to challenge us, and perhaps most importantly, to make us more fully human. Shannon Reed, a longtime teacher, lifelong reader, and New Yorker contributor, gets it. With one simple goal in mind, she makes the case that we should read for pleasure above all else.

Nora November is alive—but she wasn't always. She was once clinically dead, having spent several minutes under water after a terrible surfing accident she doesn't remember. What she does remember from her time in a coma is her grandfather, who passed away over a year ago. And a beautiful garden. And the most delicious tomato she ever tasted. Now that she's awake again her life has been cleaved in two. In the Before, Nora lived like a ghost, drowning under the weight of her parents' expectations. In the After, she's determined to accomplish the things she left undone before she died.