In this “exquisitely crafted” novel, a Croatian woman goes to New York to search for her missing sister—and confronts her family’s dark history (Booklist). Magdalena does not panic when she learns that her younger sister has disappeared. A free spirit, Jadranka has always been prone to mysterious absences. But when weeks pass with no word, Magdalena leaves the isolated Croatian island where their family has always lived and sets off to New York to find her sister. Her search begins to unspool the history of their family, reaching back three generations to a country torn by war. A haunting and sure-footed debut by an award-winning writer, The First Rule of Swimming explores the legacy of betrayal and loss in a place where beauty is fused inextricably with hardship, and where individuals are forced to make wrenching choices as they are swept up in the tides of history. “Suspenseful . . . well-paced.” —The New Yorker “Gracefully interweave[s] three generations of family stories and lies.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “Examines lives bruised and twisted by history, like weather-beaten trees that nevertheless manage to produce the sweetest fruit.” —The New York Times Book Review

Bob Bowman, best known as the coach for the record-breaking run of Michael Phelps, is one of the most successful coaches in sports history. He is lauded for his intense personality, incredible dedication to his athletes, and his ability to nurture talent in athletes who have the heart and drive to win. This is his motivational book about winning in all walks of life and what you have to do to get there. He presents ten key concepts that all people should live by. Illuminating his lessons with spirited anecdotes, Bowman will teach you how to get gold out of every day by setting goals and getting motivated to achieve them. He will explain that taking risks is the key to success in any pursuit, and coach you on how you can become more risk-tolerant. By following The Golden Rules, you will learn to visualize in order to achieve your goals, and that above all else, dedication to your training, your job, or whatever area it is you are seeking to triumph in is paramount for success.

In Swim Speed Secrets, 4-time Olympian, gold medalist, and triathlon world champion Sheila Taormina reveals the swim technique used by the world’s fastest swimmers. Over the course of 4 Olympic Games and throughout her career as a world champion triathlete, Taormina refined her exceptional technique as a student of the sport, studying the world’s best swimmers using underwater photographs and video analysis. From Johnny Weissmuller to Michael Phelps, the world’s fastest swimmers share two common elements: high stroke rate and a high-elbow underwater pull. Many swimmers and triathletes neglect the underwater pull, distracted by stroke count or perfecting less critical details like body position, streamlining, and roll. Swim Speed Secrets focuses on producing power—the most crucial element of swimming—to help triathletes and swimmers overhaul their swim stroke and find the speed that’s been eluding them. With a commonsense approach that comes from decades of practice and years of hands-on coaching experience, Taormina shows swimmers how to transition to faster swimming. Swim Speed Secrets includes: The best drills to cultivate a more sensitive feel for the water Dryland and strength building exercises to develop arm position and upper body musculature Crisp photos of Olympic swimmers and variations in their high-elbow underwater pull Clear descriptions of the key moments of the underwater pull Tips that helped her perform at a world-class level for two decades Sheila Taormina’s Swim Speed Secrets brings the focus back where it belongs—to a powerful underwater stroke. With this approach, triathletes and swimmers can stop swimming for survival and break through to new levels of speed and confidence in the water.

In the Nazi-occupied Warsaw of 1943, Irma Seidenman, a young Jewish widow, possesses two attributes that can spell the difference between life and death: she has blue eyes and blond hair. With these, and a set of false papers, she has slipped out of the ghetto, passing as the wife of a Polish officer, until one day an informer spots her on the street and drags her off to the Gestapo. At times a dark lament, at others a sly and sardonic thriller, The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman is the story of the thirty-six hours that follow Irma's arrest and the events that lead to her dramatic rescue as the last of Warsaw's Jews are about to meet their deaths in the burning ghetto."

When Kent Wong was a young boy, his father, a patriotic Chinese official in the customs office in Hong Kong, joined an insurrection at work and returned with the family to the newly established People’s Republic of China. Hailed as heroes, they settled in the southern city of Canton. But Mao’s China was dangerous and unstable, with landlords executed en-masse and millions dying of starvation during the Great Leap Forward.

Two young men, Jim, the naive, scholarly son of a Dublin shopkeeper, and Doyler, a rough working boy, struggle with issues of political, religious, and sexual identity in the year leading up to the Easter uprising of 1916.

A brave and unnerving debut collection about life in wartime In 1991 a war began in Yugoslavia that would last four years and claim more than a quarter of a million lives. In her harrowing fiction debut, Courtney Angela Brkic puts a human face on the lost, the missing, the exiled, and the invisible. She brings to life perpetrators and victims, soldiers and civilians, diplomats and human rights workers: a man trapped in a cellar witnesses the erasure of his city—and of his identity—as it is shelled by unseen bombers; a sniper posted in a building overlooking a city street takes comfort in the arbitrary rules he creates to choose his targets; a husband and wife who have been brutalized in detention centers pick up the pieces of their marriage. The characters in Stillness are caught up in forces not of their own making. Rather than being uniformly powerless, however, they create choices where none should logically exist, and by doing so they defy the challenge of war. Brkic, who was a researcher and translator in Croatia, and a forensic archeologist in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, has written a powerful work of the imagination that somehow illuminates unimaginable events.