Beyoncé. Her name conjures more than music, it has come to be synonymous with beauty, glamour, power, creativity, love, and romance. Her performances are legendary, her album releases events. She is not even forty but she has already rewritten the Beyoncé playbook more than half a dozen times. She is consistently provocative, political and surprising. As a solo artist, she has sold more than 100 million records. She has won 22 Grammys and is the most-nominated woman artist in the history of Grammy awards. Her 2018 performance at Coachella wowed the world. The New York Times wrote: "There's not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year or any year soon." Artist, business woman, mother, daughter, sister, wife, black feminist, Queen Bey is endlessly fascinating.

This title features a diverse range of voices, from star academics to outspoken cultural critics to Hollywood and music stars, each with their own essay on Beyoncé's impact on our shared culture. Click here to reserve Queen Bey in hardcover today.

For most of us, outer order contributes to inner calm. And for most of us, a rigid, one-size-fits-all solution doesn't work. 

The fact is, when we tailor our approach to suit our own particular challenges and habits, we're then able to create the order that will make our lives happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative. 

Gretchen Rubin has found that getting control of our stuff makes us feel more in control of our lives. By getting rid of things we don't use, don't need, or don't love, we free our minds (and our shelves) for what we truly value. 

With a sense of fun, and a clear idea of what's realistic for most people, Gretchen Rubin suggests dozens of manageable steps for creating a more serene, orderly environment--one that helps us to create the lives we want.

Make more room for happiness in your space by reserving a copy with Fulton County Libraries.

This tale of Israel's first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff--but it's all true. For anyone interested in real-life spies and the paradoxes of the Middle East, Spies of No Country is an intimate story with global significance. 

The four spies at the center of this story were part of the unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. While performing their dangerous work these men were often unsure to whom they were reporting, and sometimes even who they'd become. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war's outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end the Arab Section would emerge, improbably, as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel's vaunted intelligence agency.

Matti Friedman's 2016 book Pumpkinflowers was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and as one of Amazon's 10 Best Books of the Year.  Click here to be one of the first to read his newest work.

From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here, a portrait of love and death in Chicago's most turbulent neighborhoods. 

The numbers are staggering: over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed and another roughly 60,000 wounded by gunfire. What does that do to the spirit of individuals and community?

Drawing on his decades of experience, Alex Kotlowitz set out to chronicle one summer in the city, writing about individuals who have emerged from the violence and whose stories capture the capacity--and the breaking point--of the human heart and soul. The result is a spellbinding collection of deeply intimate profiles that upend what we think we know about gun violence in America. Among others, we meet a man who as a teenager killed a rival gang member and twenty years later is still trying to come to terms with what he's done; a devoted school social worker struggling with her favorite student, who refuses to give evidence in the shooting death of his best friend; the witness to a wrongful police shooting who can't shake what he has seen; and an aging former gang leader who builds a place of refuge for himself and his friends.

An American Summer can be reserved in hardcover by clicking here.

The story of the decades-long fight to bring justice to the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, culminating in Sen. Doug Jones' prosecution of the last living bombers. 

On September 15, 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed. The blast killed four young girls and injured twenty-two others. The FBI suspected four particularly radical Ku Klux Klan members. Yet due to reluctant witnesses, a lack of physical evidence, and pervasive racial prejudice the case was closed without any indictments.

But as Martin Luther King, Jr. famously expressed it, "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Years later, Alabama Attorney General William Baxley reopened the case, ultimately convicting one of the bombers in 1977. Another suspect passed away in 1994, and US Attorney Doug Jones tried and convicted the final two in 2001 and 2002, representing the correction of an outrageous miscarriage of justice nearly forty years in the making. Jones himself went on to win election as Alabama's first Democratic Senator since 1992 in a dramatic race against Republican challenger Roy Moore.

A distinguished work of legal and personal history, the book is destined to take its place as a canonical civil rights history. Click here to reserve a copy in hardcover today.

Sometimes a self-help book can help you take inventory of your life. In this emotionally charged how-to guide, by Katherine Wintsch you'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll enjoy her entertaining thoughts on:

•The mask you hide behind when you say everything is "just fine" when it's not. 

•How goal-setting tactics you're deploying to get ahead could be what's holding you back.

•The difference between struggling and suffering.

Brave, supportive, and insightful, the stories and advice in this book will encourage you to live more confidently, enjoy the present, and become your best self as a woman, a mother, and beyond. 

This book isn't available for sale or as a library book until March 19, but you can win a print galley (a paperback used to promote the book before official release) of this title by emailing us within 24 hours of the New Books Newsletter email. Just put "Slay" in the subject line of your email to Collection.Development@fultoncountyga.gov. We'll pick a winner at random from messages received between 8:30am Monday, 3/04/19 and 8:30am Tuesday, 3/05/19.

The winner will be notified via email and must be able to pick the book up at an AFPLS branch within one month. Just in case you aren't chosen, why not click here to reserve a copy with Fulton County Libraries? We'll be pleased to offer this title to all our readers on its release date.