In Crush Nicholas O’Connell provides a behind-the-scenes look at the daily operations of some of the world’s most prestigious wineries on the West Coast. A world with not only romance and refinement but long hours, backbreaking labor, mind-numbing repetition, and fanatical dedication to quality.

Pair with: a local wine

Rick Gosselin explores the Kansas City Chiefs’ struggles and triumphs in its early years, the humiliating loss against the Packers, and the moves they made to recover from that loss and win Super Bowl IV. The early Chiefs set a bar for excellence that the team continues to pursue.

Pair with: their favorite player’s jersey

Death Does Not End at the Sea explores the complexity of elusive citizenship, an immigrant’s brokenhearted prayer for a new beginning, a chorus of elegies, and a cosmic love song between the living and the dead.

Pair with: a subscription to the Prairie Schooner

Thomas Aiello examines the history of Muhammad Ali, Leroy Johnson, and the city of Atlanta, while highlighting an important fight of Ali’s that changed the trajectory of his career.

Pair with: tickets to a boxing match

Let loose in New York City’s Central Park by a misguided aristocrat, the starlings were supposed to help curb insect outbreaks and add to the tuneful choir of other songbirds. Rather than staying put, the dark and speckled starlings marched across the continent like a conquering army. A bitter, baffling, and sometimes comical war on starlings ensued. Still, artists and scientists marveled at their undulating aerial formations, which seemed equal parts poetry and mathematics.

Pair with: a birding journal

Moses Malone tells the story of Malone’s ascent in the early 1970s to becoming the premier player in the world for a five-year period. Malone overcame abject poverty in segregated Petersburg, Virginia, to pave a path for future stars such as Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, and LeBron James to follow.

Pair with: a hat from their favorite NBA team

The voices from this distant time offer an example of what real patriotism, courage, and moral conviction look like in times of extreme national divisions over race, identity, and the meaning of democracy.

Pair with: a trip to the museum

Where Blackbirds Fly offers a prismatic deep dive into the human heart through fierce narratives of intimacy both lovely and heartbreaking. The characters of this novel form a compelling cross section of humanity met with revelation, suffering, and possibility.

Pair with: a box of chocolates

America Tees Off tells stories that cover both the great amateur and professional players, as well as the golf adventures of average players and the not-so-average. These lesser-known, behind-the-scenes true stories will entertain and inform all golfers.

Pair with: playing a few rounds together

Based on extensive research, including their fifty-year correspondence, Georgia and Anita casts light on the friendship of these two women who, in different ways, helped to modernize the world and women’s roles in it.

Pair with: a trip to your local art gallery