Book Reviews

4.7

Adapted from Admiral William H. McRaven's viral 2014 University of Texas commencement address, Make Your Bed distills ten principles drawn from his 34-year Navy SEAL career into a concise self-help book published by Grand Central Publishing — a brisk, anecdote-driven guide that resonates strongly with readers seeking direct, military-framed life lessons, though its brevity and narrow experiential lens will not satisfy every audience.

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate―Discoveries from by Peter Wohlleben

4.7

Peter Wohlleben's The Hidden Life of Trees, originally published in Germany as Das geheime Leben der Bäume and released in English by Greystone Books in 2016, makes a quietly revolutionary argument: that forests are social networks, and that trees communicate, nurture their young, share resources with the sick, and warn one another of danger. A New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal bestseller, it is one of the defining works of popular nature science of the past decade, and its reach has only grown since its first English-language edition.

A World of Curiosities: A Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel Book 18) by Louise Penny

4.7

The eighteenth Chief Inspector Gamache novel delivers one of the strongest entries in the series, weaving a dual-timeline mystery around siblings Fiona and Sam Arsenault — whose mother's murder opens both a harrowing flashback and a tense present-day investigation in Three Pines — while giving long-time readers the origin story of Gamache and Beauvoir's partnership they never knew they needed.

Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy by Thurston Clarke

4.6

Thurston Clarke's Ask Not narrows its lens to the three months before John F. Kennedy's inauguration and the creation of one of the most celebrated speeches in American political history, producing what critical coverage called an absorbing narrative that is balanced, revealing Kennedy at his most dazzlingly charismatic and cunningly pragmatic.

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick M. Lencioni

4.6

Patrick M. Lencioni's The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business makes a direct, focused case that the most powerful competitive differentiator available to any organization is not strategy, innovation, or talent — it is organizational health. Published by Jossey-Bass in 2012, the book is a comprehensive business guide that synthesizes themes from across Lencioni's prior work into a single, actionable framework built around four disciplines and six critical questions of clarity.

Forks Over Knives by Gene Stone

4.5

Edited by Gene Stone, with forewords by T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Forks Over Knives is a New York Times bestseller that builds on the landmark 2011 documentary to make the case that a whole-food, plant-based diet can prevent and reverse chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. It is an essential entry point for readers curious about the science and practice behind plant-based eating.

Personal Development: 50 Bestsellers in Infographics. All the soft skills by Ivi Green

4.5

Ivi Green's independently published guide distills 50 landmark personal-development titles into a single visual reference, translating soft-skills classics on success, leadership, healthy habits, and happiness into infographic form — a format designed to make a wide body of self-help reading accessible in one compact volume.

How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life by Massimo Pigliucci

4.5

How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life by Massimo Pigliucci (Basic Books) is a rigorous yet accessible self-help philosophy book that channels the ancient Stoic tradition — particularly the teachings of Epictetus — into a framework for contemporary living, written by a professional philosopher who brings both academic depth and personal conviction to the subject.

Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan

4.4

Maureen Callahan's Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed is a sweeping, deeply reported exposé published by Little, Brown & Company that dismantles the gilded mythology of America's most celebrated political dynasty by centering the women — wives, lovers, daughters, and bystanders — who bore the cost of Kennedy power across generations. The Guardian describes it as a "lacerating exposé," and critical coverage places it within an already crowded field of Kennedy literature, asking what Callahan hopes to add to this "vale of tears." The answer, it turns out, is a great deal: a multigenerational reckoning that spans patriarch Joseph Kennedy through John Jr., tracing a pattern of abuse, coercion, and institutional impunity that the family's mythmakers worked hard to obscure.

Lady Tremaine: Reese’s Book Club Pick (A Novel) by Rachel Hochhauser

4.4

Rachel Hochhauser's debut novel Lady Tremaine — an Instant New York Times Bestseller, Reese's Book Club Pick, IndieNext Pick, and LibraryReads Pick — reimagines Cinderella's iconic stepmother as a fierce, fully realized protagonist fighting to secure her daughters' futures against impossible odds. The audiobook edition, narrated by Bessie Carter and released by Macmillan Audio on March 3, 2026, runs 12 hours and 41 minutes and delivers what blurb contributors and Reese's Book Club describe as a riveting, complex paean to women's strength.

His and Hers: Swapped at the Office by Bella May

His and Hers: Swapped at the Office is a short-form Kindle romance by Bella May, built around an office body-swap premise and designed for readers who enjoy fast, light romantic fiction.

Lady: A Novel by Thomas Tryon

Thomas Tryon's Lady is the third novel set in the fictional Connecticut village of Pequot Landing, following the New York Times bestseller The Other and Harvest Home. Narrated through the adoring eyes of a boy named Woody, it unspools as an unhurried portrait of 1930s American small-town life before pivoting to a deeply shadowed revelation about the elegant, mysterious Lady Harleigh. The novel sits in the tradition of richly atmospheric popular fiction — think Peyton Place and Kings Row — and rewards patient readers willing to let Tryon build his slow crescendo toward its genuinely surprising close.