Category: Audio Books

Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey

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“Everyone drifts from their path once in a while. But your path is still there waiting. It’s a perfectly good one.”
― Tessa Bailey, Fangirl Down

Fangirl Down is the first book in the Big Shots series by Tessa Bailey. Wells Whitaker used to be golf’s biggest, and hottest, rising star, but lately his game has been of and his attitude is trash. Instead of amassing wins, he’s gathering hangovers, a stash of broken clubs, and is left with one lonely supporter. His last fan is a gorgeous redhead who is positive no matter how badly Wells plays. The angrier he gets, the perkier and louder she cheers. Wells’ frustration hits its peak, leaving him to quit the game forever in a flurry of rage. He speaks angrily to his last fan and she finally leaves him. As soon as they are separated, Wells knows he has messed up and regrets his actions, but doesn’t know what to do.

Josephine Doyle has believed in Wells for as long as she can remembers. She can see the promise in this cantankerous golfer even when he doesn’t believe in himself. When he finally quits and treats her so poorly, Josephine is left to wonder if her belief was misguided. Making her way home, Josephine is left to work in her family’s shop, but when an act of nature destroys the shop, Josephine isn’t sure what she will find the money to rebuild her family’s dream and legacy. When Wells shows up at her door out of nowhere, Josephine is shocked. When he suggest a wild business proposal that will benefit both of them, her shock reaches new levels. Wells offers Josephine the position as his new caddy where she will help him improve his game and where she will leave with a big chunk of the prize money. Josephine takes him up on his offer and the two start traveling together.

This innocent business proposal quickly spirals out of control as sparks fly between the two. They become inseparable, fighting for each other in front of the press and in front of the other golfers and caddies. Wells starts winning again, Josephine starts to rebuild her family’s business, and the two grow closer and closer. Their professional relationship as boss and employee is tested as they start to explore the possibilities of a romantic relationship.

Fangirl Down was a spicy read with the romance and sexy scenes happening on the page for you to read. There is a reason why some readers call Tessa Bailey the queen of dirty talk. This sports romance has some intriguing tropes: grumpy x sunshine, insta love, he falls first, just to name a few. The banter between Wells and Josephine flies off the pages. The main characters have a palpable attraction, chemistry that ripples between the two, and a verbal wit that can’t be matched. Check out this book if you like your romance on the spicier side.

This title is also available in large print and Playaway audiobooks.

Big Shots series

  1. Fangirl Down (2024)
  2. The Au Pair Affair (2024)
  3. Dream Girl Drama (2025)
  4. Pitcher Perfect (2025)
  5. Catch Her If You Can (2026)

MORE EBOOKS! MORE DIGITAL AUDIOBOOKS! LIBRARY OF THINGS!

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Thank you to the THOUSANDS of Davenport residents who completed our recent community survey! We are excited to implement ideas you shared to ensure that the Davenport Public Library continues to connect a diverse community to resources that educate, enrich, and entertain.

You overwhelmingly asked for more ebooks and digital audiobooks, and we heard you loud and clear! In order to meet this need, Davenport Public Library is excited to announce that we have QUADRUPLED our collection of digital materials by joining the BRIDGES Consortium! Through collaboration with Iowa libraries via the BRIDGES Consortium, library patrons have access to over 72,000 ebooks, 24,000 digital audiobooks, and 5,400 digital magazines. You will be able to access these titles seamlessly through the Libby app. Access to BRIDGES titles started on July 1, 2025!

Additionally, many of you requested an expansion to our current TechKnow Library collection of devices and other nontraditional items you can check out to try at home instead of making expensive purchases. Thanks to a successful fundraising campaign from the FRIENDS of the Davenport Public Library, we are expanding this collection to create a brand-new Library of Things! You’ll be able to check out cake pans, outdoor games, crafting supplies, tools, and much more when the Library of Things officially launches on October 1st!

In order to allocate funding and space for these new materials, and in alignment with our Collection Development Policy, starting on June 30th Davenport Public Library will no longer purchase physical audiobooks for our collection. This was a difficult decision to make and was arrived at due to the following factors:

  • Usage of our physical audiobooks has steadily decreased in recent years – in the last five years alone, the number of checkouts has plummeted by 56%. This is in stark contrast to our digital audiobook usage, where circulation trends upward every year with increases as high as 36%.
  • Availability of physical audiobooks has also decreased over the years, as most BOCD publishers are no longer even in business and others do not make titles available for libraries to purchase.
  • Cost of physical audiobooks has increased over time and provides less access than digital titles; for instance, the $25,113.76 fee for participation in BRIDGES would allow access to over 102,000 titles, significantly more than we could purchase in physical format. That is a very good return on investment for taxpayers!

We understand that the removal of physical audiobooks may pose challenges, especially for those without access to personal devices. Many alternative options remain available, including digital audiobooks through the Libby app, Tumble Book Library featuring interactive storybooks, and our newest collection of digibooks including Vox and Wonder Books—physical print books with a built-in audiobook similar to Playaways. If you have a low vision, a vision disability, a physical disability, or a reading disability, you may be eligible to receive books and other materials from the Iowa Department for the Blind. They offer a variety of ways to listen to books. Contact the Iowa Department for the Blind at 1-800-362-2587, option 2 to learn more about their services.

Thank you for your patience as we navigate changes to our spaces to accommodate these exciting changes!

Online Reading Challenge – August Wrap-Up

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Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read a classic? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Published in 1956, Giovanni’s Room is the story of David, a young man living in Paris in the 1950s. Waiting for his fiancée Hella to return from a trip to Spain, David starts an affair with an Italian bartender named Giovanni. Said affair spans several months. Giovanni is passionate and clever, but something seems off. Soon the two find themselves living together in Giovanni’s small room. David begins to feel stifled, while Giovanni repeatedly says that he won’t survive if David leaves him. During this time, David reflects on a homosexual affair he had in his adolescence and the impulses he has been struggling to repress for years. David is caught in a conflict between heterosexual and homosexual love, between desire and conventional morality. When Hella returns, David again struggles with the life he envisions for himself (and Hella) and with his homosexuality. The three impacted parties (Giovanni, David, and Hella) are humans with flaws whose decisions end up altering their lives forever.

I chose to listen to the audiobook narrated by Matt Bomer with an introduction by Kevin Young, but I highly recommend you read this book in any format that you can get your hands on. The writing style and imagery are gorgeous. The prose was laden with love, highlighting a depth of emotion portrayed beautifully throughout the book. Although I enjoyed the book, the main character was decidedly not my favorite and was hard to love. David was incredibly selfish, only worried about himself, and unlikable. The relationships he was in were toxic, but I had hopes throughout that David would grow by the end. Sadly, he did not. I had a rough time getting through this book, but I’m glad I did as it hooked me in completely with about 45 minutes left in the story. If this is on your to-read list, give it a go and let me know what you think.

Next month, we will be reading young adult literature!

In addition to following the Online Reading Challenge here on our Info Cafe blog, you can join our Online Reading Challenge group on Goodreads and discuss your reads!

Better Living Through Birding by Chrisitan Cooper

- Beth Leave a comment

In Better Living Through Birding, Christian Cooper uses his platform from the infamous “Central Park birdwatching incident” to shift focus on the joys of living life outside of stereotypes. 

In May 2020, Christian Cooper recorded a confrontation between himself and a white woman in New York’s Central Park where he asked her to leash her dog and she made a false police report saying he threatened her. The video went viral, partly because it happened around the same time George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis. “The Incident” became part of a larger conversation about institutional racism. Details are covered in one chapter of this memoir. Cooper acknowledges a handful of times that “The Incident” is probably the reason you are reading the book, but Cooper uses the notoriety of “The Incident” to invite you into a much larger and more fulfilling part of his life: birdwatching.

It was no accident that Cooper was in Central Park that day. This wasn’t a “I need to get out of the house” Covid walk. This day was one among a string a days that Cooper had spent enjoying peak bird migration through the area. Cooper is a dedicated birdwatcher who has traveled the world for his hobby but calls New York home. He has built a community of friends with others who can identify sparrows, warblers, and finches by their song.

There are some other things you should know about Cooper. He has been a nerd since childhood, with Star Trek and Marvel comics being two of his obsessions. He attended Harvard and in the book describes how he came out to his dormmates and then became a gay activist. Protesting and being arrested are part of his activist journey. His relationship with his parents, especially his father, is complicated. He worked for Marvel and wrote the first lesbian character.

Through it all, even in his childhood, has been birding. He wants the readers of his book to be just as excited about being outdoors as he is. In spaces where he has been an outsider, he invites you to be part of the community, to find joy in spotting a bird under the cover of foliage or being able to identify it by its call.

While I listened to this audiobook, and there were a few bird calls between chapters that were a nice touch, I don’t think the audiobook experience is a must. As of the publication of this blog post, Better Living Through Birding by Chrisitan Cooper is available in regular print, large print and eAudiobook on Bridges through the Libby app.

And if Christian Cooper’s memoir inspires you to take up birding, remember the Davenport Public Library has many resources to get you started, including field guides and birding backpacks with all the tools you need.

Online Reading Challenge – July

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge is focusing on domestic fiction, also known as domestic realism. This genre focuses on everyday lives of ordinary people, particularly the domestic sphere that focuses on families and communities. It strives to show a realistic portrayal of ordinary life in a straightforward way. Our main title for July is All This Could Be Yours by Jami Attenberg. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

“If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am,” says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father, Victor, is on his deathbed, Alex—a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister—feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tight-lipped mother, Barbra.

As Barbra fends off Alex’s unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex’s brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary’s wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drugstores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As family members grapple with Victor’s history, they must figure out a way to move forward—with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.

All This Could Be Yours is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can entangle a family for generations, and what it takes to—maybe, hopefully—break free. With her signature “sparkling prose” (Marie Claire) and incisive wit, Jami Attenberg deftly explores one of the most important subjects of our age. – Ecco

Looking for some other domestic fiction? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Online Reading Challenge – June Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read queer fiction? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. This national bestseller has won many awards, was featured on many publication lists, and was longlisted for other prizes. With these high accolades, this was an easy queer fiction pick for June.

Here’s a short summary before I discuss my thoughts. Detransition, Baby is the story of Reese and Amy and what they each want out of life. Reese has created the life that she has always dreamed of: a gorgeous apartment in New York City, a job she enjoys, and a loving stable relationship with Amy. As a trans woman, this life is full of things that she never thought herself worthy of, but one thing has always been missing: a child. Just when Amy and Reese start the process to have a child, their relationship explodes. Amy detransitions and become Ames and the life they know is over. Flash forward and neither Ames nor Reese are happy. When Ames’ partner, his boss Katrina, announces that she’s pregnant, Ames realizes that this baby is the way to get Reese back into his life. Ames, Reese, and Katrina start an awkward dance to figure out if this unconventional family will work.

The exploration that the author makes into each characters’ life was eye-opening. Each character is forced to confront their thoughts about sex, motherhood, and gender, to examine the messy corners of what it truly means to be a woman. The author isn’t afraid to discuss the uncomfortable, which I enjoyed. When I started Detransition, Baby, the writing and pacing hooked me. I could tell that the author was sincere in their writing, that nothing was written without a lot of thought, although some sections were a bit wordy. While I loved certain characters, others were unlikeable, which is honestly true of most books. The book’s ending also caught me completely off guard. If you read this book, I would love to know your opinion! Please let me know in the comments.

Next month, we will be reading domestic fiction!

In addition to following the Online Reading Challenge here on our Info Cafe blog, you can join our Online Reading Challenge group on Goodreads and discuss your reads!

Online Reading Challenge – June

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge is focusing on queer fiction. Our main title for June is Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn’t hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

Ames isn’t happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames’s boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she’s pregnant with his baby—and that she’s not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he’s been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?

This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can’t reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel. – One World

Looking for some other queer fiction? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!

Baseball Romances

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In November 2023, I wrote about an increase in sports romances. While researching new titles to purchase, I kept running across new baseball romances! While I’m no stranger to popular baseball movies (Bull Durham, Jerry Maguire, For the Love of the Game, 42, 61*, The Rookie, A League of their Own, Fever Pitch, to name a few), I will admit that I can’t name as many baseball books, specifically romances. To remedy this, here is a list of five baseball romances all published in either 2024 or 2025.

As of this writing, all of these titles are owned by the Davenport Public Library. Descriptions have been provided by the publishers.

The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson

Daphne Brink doesn’t follow baseball, but watching “America’s Snoozefest” certainly beats sitting at home in the days after she signs her divorce papers. After one too many ballpark beers, she heckles Carolina Battery player Chris Kepler, who quickly proves there might actually be a little crying in baseball. Horrified, Daphne reaches out to Chris on social media to apologize . . . but forgets to identify herself as his heckler in her message.

Chris doesn’t usually respond to random fans on social media, but he’s grieving and fragile after an emotionally turbulent few months. When a DM from “Duckie” catches his eye, he impulsively messages back. Duckie is sweet, funny, and seems to understand him in a way no one else does.

Daphne isn’t sure how much longer she can keep lying to Chris, especially as she starts working with the team in real life and their feelings for each other deepen. When he finds out the truth, will it be three strikes, she’s out? – Berkley

Heavy Hitter by Katie Cotugno

Taylor and Travis. Jennifer and A-Rod. Marilyn and Joe. When a professional athlete and a megawatt star fall in love, the world is obsessed . . .

With four chart-topping albums, Lacey Logan is a superstar whose life no longer feels like her own. Her every move is photographed, videoed, and dissected online, and her carefully curated Instagram feed studied by fans worldwide. To maintain her privacy, Lacey skillfully controls her narrative, showing fans and paparazzi what she wants them to see.

But when Lacey discovers her boyfriend is hiding two devastating secrets—a bad cocaine habit and a pregnant girlfriend—she begins to lose confidence and control of her own story. Then big-shouldered baseball player Jimmy Hodges, a former Rookie of the Year when Lacey was in high school, walks into the bar where she’s venting to a friend. With his shaggy beard and unfashionable button-down, Jimmy is the opposite of the picture-perfect guy Lacey thinks she wants. Soon, sparks fly and inhibitions go out the window when Lacey dares to take some chances.

Lacey and Jimmy are polar opposites. But could this be the forever after they both need? – Harper Perennial

No Ordinary Love by Myah Ariel

Ella Simone’s popstar life is what dreams are made of. Her eight year marriage to renowned music producer, Elliot Majors, has helped garner the hits, awards, and adoring fans to prove it. But when Ella tires of Elliot’s many infidelities, she decides to fight for her independence despite the ironclad prenup that threatens her career.

To help her case, Ella is under strict orders to stick to The Plan: no headlines, no rumors, no rocking the boat. But this strategy is thrown a curveball after an awards show wardrobe snafu and quick rescue by Miles Westbrook, MLB’s most eligible player, sends the tabloids into a frenzy. Amid tricky divorce proceedings, Ella’s magnetic connection with the charismatic pitcher might just be her downfall.

Now the pressure is on to turn a scandal into an opportunity and give their teams what they want: a picture-perfect performance that will shore up both Ella and Miles’ reputations. But as the lines between reality and PR begin to blur, Ella will either stick to the choreographed life she knows so well, or surrender to a love that could set her free. – Berkley

The Prospects by KT Hoffman

Minor leagues. Major chemistry.

Hope is familiar territory for Gene Ionescu. He has always loved baseball, a sport made for underdogs and optimists like him. He also loves his team, the minor league Beaverton Beavers, and, for the most part, he loves the career he’s built. As the first openly trans player in professional baseball, Gene has nearly everything he’s ever let himself dream of—that is, until Luis Estrada, Gene’s former teammate and current rival, gets traded to the Beavers, destroying the careful equilibrium of Gene’s life.

Gene and Luis can’t manage a civil conversation off the field or a competent play on it, but in the close confines of dugout benches and roadie buses, they begrudgingly rediscover a comfortable rhythm. As the two grow closer, the tension between them turns electric, and their chemistry spills past the confines of the stadium. For every tight double play they execute, there’s also a glance at summer-tan shoulders or a secret shared, each one a breathless moment of possibility that ignites in Gene the visceral, terrifying kind of desire he’s never allowed himself. Soon, Gene has to reconcile the quiet, minor-league-sized life he used to find fulfilling with the major-league dreams Luis inspires.

This triumphant debut romance reveals what’s possible when we allow ourselves to want something enough to swing for the fences. – Dial Press Trade Paperback

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

An emotional, slow-burn, grumpy/sunshine, queer mid-century romance for fans of Evvie Drake Starts Over, about grief and found family, between the new star shortstop stuck in a batting slump and the reporter assigned to (reluctantly) cover his first season—set in the same universe as We Could Be So Good.

The 1960 baseball season is shaping up to be the worst year of Eddie O’Leary’s life. He can’t manage to hit the ball, his new teammates hate him, he’s living out of a suitcase, and he’s homesick. When the team’s owner orders him to give a bunch of interviews to some snobby reporter, he’s ready to call it quits. He can barely manage to behave himself for the length of a game, let alone an entire season. But he’s already on thin ice, so he has no choice but to agree.

Mark Bailey is not a sports reporter. He writes for the arts page, and these days he’s barely even managing to do that much. He’s had a rough year and just wants to be left alone in his too-empty apartment, mourning a partner he’d never been able to be public about. The last thing he needs is to spend a season writing about New York’s obnoxious new shortstop in a stunt to get the struggling newspaper more readers.

Isolated together within the crush of an anonymous city, these two lonely souls orbit each other as they slowly give in to the inevitable gravity of their attraction. But Mark has vowed that he’ll never be someone’s secret ever again, and Eddie can’t be out as a professional athlete. It’s just them against the world, and they’ll both have to decide if that’s enough. – Avon

A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy by Tia Levings

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“When we are not free to say no, we are not free to say yes either.”
― Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

Tia Levings grew up surrounded by religion. She believed that in order to be a good Christian, she had to follow a set of life principles or rules that non-Christians weren’t allowed to know. These secret, special rules would guide her and her future family to salvation and protect their souls. As a young wife, Tia was recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement, guided by her new husband. Their relationship was rocky right from the start, but as she was raised to be silent and defer to the men in her life, Tia followed his directives. As a godly and submissive wife, Tia’s new routine centered around isolation, strict discipline, and living a wholesome life as the keeper of the home.

While their lives looked wholesome to outsiders, inside the home was another story. The fundamentalist teachings that she was raised with led her to an abusive marriage with little hope to escape. Thinking that what she was going through was somehow sanctioned by God and that other women were also going through this, Tia stayed. The longer she stayed married, the more dangerous and rocky her life became. Her husband laid down rules for the family that Tia had to follow, but also that could spell danger if anyone outside the home discovered. She wasn’t allowed to vote, visit doctors, put her children in school, or miss church sermons. Outside help was frowned upon.

While Tia struggled to keep the family together, her husband struggled to find his calling. He moved the family around the country searching for new churches that fit his religious beliefs. As a firm believer in patriarchy, he expected complete submission from Tia, perpetuating a cycle of patriarchal men and submissive women that Tia rebelled against. Through access to the internet, the library, and friends, Tia started to resist and question how she lived and the beliefs she as told to follow blindly. Having opinions proved dangerous. Her decision to learn more than what she was told eventually led Tia to a choice: she either had to face the consequences of her actions or escape with her children and start a new life.

This memoir broke me. Wanting to learn more about the teachings of Fundamentalist Christian religion and the struggles of women inside, I knew A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy would start me down that journey. Reading about her religious journey, her husband’s extreme views, and the details of the many churches they joined was difficult. I felt a wide-range of emotions while reading this book, at times crying with sadness, screaming with anger, and laughing with joy. The abuse and heartache that Tia endured destroyed me, but the fact that she was still able to discover her own thoughts, feelings, and her own voice that allowed her to leave and become her true self left me grateful she had the strength and will to write this book.

“Years later, on Instagram, I’d read a meme that read, ‘Why were we taught to fear the witches instead of the men who burned them?” And who were witches, anyway, but women with knowledge, skills, and names?’ “
― Tia Levings, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

May’s Celebrity Book Club Picks

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Bestsellers Club is a service that automatically places you on hold for authors, celebrity picks, nonfiction picks, and fiction picks. Choose any author, celebrity pick, fiction pick, and/or nonfiction pick and The Library will put the latest title on hold for you automatically. Select as many as you want! Still have questions? Click here for a list of FAQs.

It’s a new month which means that Jenna Bush Hager and Reese Witherspoon have picked new books for their book clubs! Reminder that if you join Bestsellers Club, you can choose to have their selections automatically put on hold for you.

Oprah has selected Matriarch: A Memoir by Tina Knowles-Lawson for her latest pick.

Curious what Matriarch is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

A revealing personal life story like no other—enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering—and a testament to the world-making power of Black motherhood

“You are Celestine,” she said. She squatted to push the hair off my face and pull leaves off my pajama legs. “Like my sister and my grandmother.” And there, under the pecan tree, as she did countless times, that day my mother told me stories of the mothers and daughters that went before me.

Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that.

Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of a more grandiose world. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood.

That life’s journey—through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts—is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America—and the wisdom that women pass on to one another, mothers to daughters, across generations. – One World

Jenna Bush Hager has selected The Names by Florence Knapp for her May pick.

Curious what The Names is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

The extraordinary novel that asks: Can a name change the course of a life?

In the wake of a catastrophic storm, Cora sets off with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register her son’s birth. Her husband, Gordon, a local doctor, respected in the community but a terrifying and controlling presence at home, intends for her to name the infant after him. But when the registrar asks what she’d like to call the child, Cora hesitates…

Spanning thirty-five years, what follows are three alternate and alternating versions of Cora’s and her young son’s lives, shaped by her choice of name. In richly layered prose, The Names explores the painful ripple effects of domestic abuse, the messy ties of family, and the possibilities of autonomy and healing.

With exceptional sensitivity and depth, Knapp draws us into the story of one family, told through a prism of what-ifs, causing us to consider the “one . . . precious life” we are given. The book’s brilliantly imaginative structure, propulsive storytelling, and emotional, gut-wrenching power are certain to make The Names a modern classic. – Pamela Dorman Books

Reese Witherspoon has selected Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry for her May pick.

Curious what Great Big Beautiful Life is about? Check out the following description provided by the publisher.

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story—just like the tale Margaret’s spinning—could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad . . . depending on who’s telling it. – Berkley

Join Bestsellers Club to have Oprah, Jenna, and Reese’s adult selections automatically put on hold for you!