Spring New Releases

Book Recommendations for the World Traveler Reader Type

For the World Traveler Reader Type, spring offers an exciting selection of new books that explore the world through travel and history. These book recommendations offer both captivating journeys to distant lands and deep dives into the past that will inspire your next adventure.

With fresh releases coming in March, April, and May, these spring new books will expand your horizons and enrich your understanding of the world.

may new books

Mark Twain

by Ron Chernow

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain

Before he was Mark Twain, he was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Born in 1835, the man who would become America's first, and most influential, literary celebrity spent his childhood dreaming of piloting steamboats on the Mississippi. But when the Civil War interrupted his career on the river, the young Twain went west to the Nevada Territory and accepted a job at a local newspaper, writing dispatches that attracted attention for their brashness and humor. It wasn't long before the former steamboat pilot from Missouri was recognized across the country for his literary brilliance, writing under a pen name that he would immortalize.

The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland

by Michelle Young

A riveting and stylish saga set in Paris during World War II, The Art Spy uncovers how an unlikely heroine infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the world's most treasured masterpieces.

On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans' final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the truth--a story that would mean nothing less than saving humanity's cultural inheritance?

Based on troves of previously undiscovered documents, The Art Spy chronicles the brave actions of the key Resistance spy in the heart of the Nazi's art looting headquarters in the French capital. A veritable female Monuments Man, Valland has, until now, been written out of the annals, despite bearing witness to history's largest art theft. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Valland, his undercover adversary, secretly worked to stop him.

At every stage of World War II, Valland was front and center. She came face to face with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, passed crucial information to the Resistance network, put herself deliberately in harm's way to protect the museum and her staff, and faced death during the last hours of Liberation Day.

By the Second Spring: Seven Lives and One Year of the War in Ukraine

by Danielle Leavitt

An intimate, affecting account of life during wartime, told through the lives that have been shattered.

Even as scores of Americans rally to the Ukrainian cause and adopt Volodymyr Zelensky as a hero, the lives of Ukrainians remain opaque and mostly anonymous. In By the Second Spring, the historian Danielle Leavitt goes beyond familiar portraits of wartime heroism and victimhood to reveal the human experience of the conflict. An American who grew up in Ukraine, Leavitt draws on her deep familiarity with the country and a unique trove of online diaries to track a diverse group of Ukrainians through the first year of Russia's full-scale invasion.

Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger During World War II

by Becky Aikman

"A bold and soaring work of history . . . whip-smart, deeply researched, and beautifully written." -Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of King: A Life

"A soaring narrative."-Keith O'Brien, New York Times bestselling author of Fly Girls

The heart-pounding true story of the daring American women who piloted the most dangerous aircraft of World War II through the treacherous skies of Britain.

The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo

by Karen Babine

"A truly fascinating and heartwarming travelogue that beautifully points us in bold directions."--Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders

One woman's cross-country journey to explore the hold family history has on our lives, and the power of new stories to shape what lies ahead.

In her mid-thirties and happily single, Karen Babine hitches up her tiny Scamp camper and sets out with her two unenthusiastic cats, Galway and Maeve, on a journey from her home in Minnesota to Nova Scotia to explore the place where her French-Acadian ancestors settled in North America some four centuries ago.

Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal

by Samuel Marquis

A breakneck adventure of war, romance, and politics in the golden age of piracy.

Captain William Kidd stands as one of the most notorious "pirate" outlaws ever, but his legend is tainted by a bed of lies. Having captivated imaginations for more than three hundred years and inspired many stories about pirates, troubling questions remain. Was he really a criminal or is the truth more inconvenient: that he was a buccaneer's worst nightmare, a revered pirate hunter turned fall guy for scheming politicians?

april new book recommendations

Women of War: The Italian Assassins, Spies, and Couriers Who Fought the Nazis

by Suzanne Cope

The gripping, true, and untold history of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during World War II, told through the stories of four spectacularly courageous women fighters

From underground soldiers to intrepid spies, Women of War unearths the hidden history of the brave women who risked their lives to overthrow the Nazi occupation and liberate Italy. Using primary sources and brand new scholarship, historian Suzanne Cope illuminates the roles played by women while Italians struggled under dual foes: Nazi invaders and Italian fascist loyalists.

Remember Us: American Sacrifice, Dutch Freedom, and a Forever Promise Forged in World War II

by Robert M Edsel - Bret Witter

"An intimate, moving look at the war that extracts deep meaning from the carnage and loss." - Publishers Weekly

What happens when you lose your freedom and the people who eventually get it back for you are no longer alive to thank?

Remember Us, by Robert Edsel--#1 New York Times bestselling author of The Monuments Men--begins in the pre-dawn hours of Hitler's invasion of Western Europe on May 10, 1940, when his forces rolled into the small rural province of Limburg in the Netherlands shattering more than 100 years of peace. Their freedom gone, the Dutch lived through four-and-a-half years of occupation until American forces reached Limburg in September 1944, the last portion of Western Europe liberated by the Allies before their advance on Nazi Germany slammed to a halt.

The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780

by Rick Atkinson

In the second volume of the landmark American Revolution trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of The British Are Coming, George Washington's army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat.

The first twenty-one months of the American Revolution--which began at Lexington and ended at Princeton--was the story of a ragged group of militiamen and soldiers fighting to forge a new nation. By the winter of 1777, the exhausted Continental Army could claim only that it had barely escaped annihilation by the world's most formidable fighting force.

Two years into the war, George III is as determined as ever to bring his rebellious colonies to heel. But the king's task is now far more complicated: fighting a determined enemy on the other side of the Atlantic has become ruinously expensive, and spies tell him that the French and Spanish are threatening to join forces with the Americans.

The Six: The Untold Story of the Titanic's Chinese Survivors

by Steven Schwankert

"A historian who has spent the last quarter-century exploring China's lakes, rivers, and seas, and plunging into the country's rich maritime history, Schwankert and his team solved what was an enduring mystery - the identity and fate of Titanic's six Chinese survivors." --James Cameron from the foreword

A moving exploration of the origins and fate of the little-known Chinese passengers aboard the Titanic--and how they survived against all odds.

When RMS Titanic sank on a cold night in 1912, barely seven hundred people escaped with their lives. Among them were six Chinese men. Arriving in New York, these six were met with suspicion and slander. Fewer than twenty-four hours later, they were expelled from the country and vanished.

March New Release

The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing

by Joshua Hammer

A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world--from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.

It was one of history's great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE--as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements--a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia's mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then...the meaning of the characters was lost.

The Maverick's Museum: Albert Barnes and His American Dream

by Blake Gopnik

A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America's soul

From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America's first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs Barnes. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs. His vast art collection--181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos--was dedicated to enriching their cultural lives. A miner was more likely to get access than a mine owner.

Super-Italian: More Than 110 Indulgent Recipes Using Italy's Healthiest Foods; A Cookbook

by Giada de Laurentiis

Discover the Italian approach to healthful eating--where nothing is off the menu--with 100 delicious, superfood-packed recipes from New York Times bestselling author Giada De Laurentiis.

From the day Giada De Laurentiis started cooking professionally, her fundamental formula for making meals memorable has not changed: Good Cooking = Technique + Ingredients + Ambience. This same formula is the key to good health when you choose ingredients that promote wellness, cook them simply, and eat them joyfully. In her skillful hands, a pantry of Italian superfoods is the starting point to better health and longevity.

Super-Italian helps you stock your shelves with healthy Italian superfoods and create meals that are nutritionally dense, supportive of health, and still downright craveable.

Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in XI Jinping's China

by Emily Feng

An intimate, deeply reported investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping's definition of who is "Chinese," from an award-winning NPR correspondent.

The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there - and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression.

Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS

by Lisa Rogak

The incredible untold story of four women who spun the web of deception that helped win World War II.

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

The Next One Is for You: A True Story of Guns, Country, and the Ira's Secret American Army

by Ali Watkins

From New York Times reporter and Pulitzer finalist Ali Watkins, the long-buried story of how a group of Philadelphia gunrunners armed the IRA at the height of the Troubles--a true-crime saga that illuminates Irish America's central role in the conflict and its legacy.

Northern Ireland, 1975. Violence has erupted on the streets of Belfast. After years as a sleepy, guerilla army, the IRA is clashing with Loyalist gangs and heavily armed British soldiers. But the Troubles have spilled beyond the small island: An ocean away, in the heart of Philadelphia's Irish enclave, a teenage girl finds a letter in her mailbox. Inside is a bullet, and the message is clear: The next one is for you or your family.

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