The author of the bestselling Cazalet Chronicles brilliantly captures the coming-of-age hopes and yearnings of an adolescent English girl during World War I The fourth child born to a struggling musician and a mother who’s an incurable romantic, Lavinia lives an unremarkable existence. But a visit to a sprawling country estate transforms her world and becomes the touchstone for the rest of her life. Lavinia is sixteen when she’s invited to a house party given by distant acquaintances. It’s her first trip away from home, and she’s instantly mesmerized by her beautiful and lush new surroundings. Days are filled with delectable meals and skating and riding lessons; nights with parties and dancing. Lavinia adores her hosts, Lucy and Gerald Lancing, and their boisterous extended family—and the mysterious, conceited Rupert Laing, with whom she shares her first kiss. But the visit can’t last forever. Soon after she returns home, the First World War breaks out. As Lavinia matures, and other people pass through her life—including Ian Graham, the soldier who loves her yet doesn’t expect her love in return—she continues to view things through the prism of that unforgettable Christmas with the Lancings. Elizabeth Jane Howard’s debut novel about a young girl’s spiritual and emotional awakening, the painful pride of youth, and female emancipation, The Beautiful Visit is a moving montage of English life at the beginning of the last century.

A life lesson that all parents want their children to learn: It’s OK to make a mistake. In fact, hooray for mistakes! A mistake is an adventure in creativity, a portal of discovery. A spill doesn’t ruin a drawing—not when it becomes the shape of a goofy animal. And an accidental tear in your paper? Don’t be upset about it when you can turn it into the roaring mouth of an alligator. An award winning, best-selling, one-of-a-kind interactive book, Beautiful Oops! shows young readers how every mistake is an opportunity to make something beautiful. A singular work of imagination, creativity, and paper engineering, Beautiful Oops! is filled with pop-ups, lift-the-flaps, tears, holes, overlays, bends, smudges, and even an accordion “telescope”—each demonstrating the magical transformation from blunder to wonder.

Showcasing travel photographs by more than 150 of America’s top architects and designers, Travel by Design is an inspiring guide to the power of travel to shape and expand our world. Travel by Design reminds us of the beauty and importance of travel, with images of more than 100 locations in 60 countries, from exotic destinations and global cities to adventure travels and all-American escapes. More than 350 photographs take readers on a global journey through cityscapes, ancient civilizations, luxurious resorts, and stunning natural wonders, all seen through the discerning and artistic eyes of today’s leading creative talents. The images are sure to inspire dreams of escape, and the 40 pages of insider resources—from favorite hotels and restaurants to secret shopping sources and must-see monuments—will make planning future trips reassuring and easy.

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends. Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

A best book of the year from New York Public Library, NPR, the Financial Times, Book Riot, and the Sunday Times (London). A fascinating, revelatory portrait of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its treasures by a former New Yorker staffer who spent a decade as a museum guard. Millions of people climb the grand marble staircase to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art every year. But only a select few have unrestricted access to every nook and cranny. They’re the guards who roam unobtrusively in dark blue suits, keeping a watchful eye on the two million square foot treasure house. Caught up in his glamorous fledgling career at The New Yorker, Patrick Bringley never thought he’d be one of them. Then his older brother was diagnosed with fatal cancer and he found himself needing to escape the mundane clamor of daily life. So he quit The New Yorker and sought solace in the most beautiful place he knew. To his surprise and the reader’s delight, this temporary refuge becomes Bringley’s home away from home for a decade. We follow him as he guards delicate treasures from Egypt to Rome, strolls the labyrinths beneath the galleries, wears out nine pairs of company shoes, and marvels at the beautiful works in his care. Bringley enters the museum as a ghost, silent and almost invisible, but soon finds his voice and his tribe: the artworks and their creators and the lively subculture of museum guards—a gorgeous mosaic of artists, musicians, blue-collar stalwarts, immigrants, cutups, and dreamers. As his bonds with his colleagues and the art grow, he comes to understand how fortunate he is to be walled off in this little world, and how much it resembles the best aspects of the larger world to which he gradually, gratefully returns. In the tradition of classic workplace memoirs like Lab Girl and Working Stiff, All The Beauty in the World is a surprising, inspiring portrait of a great museum, its hidden treasures, and the people who make it tick, by one of its most intimate observers.