Discover the stories behind these remarkable biographies!
AMERICAN POPE: LEO XIV’S ROAD FROM THE SOUTH SIDE OF CHICAGO TO VATICAN CITY by Daniel Burke and Scott Detrow
9781250446053 | 10/6/26
For the first time in its 2,000 year history, the Catholic Church would be led by an American.
NPR’s Daniel Burke and Scott Detrow, who were in St. Peter’s Square that day leading the network’s coverage, were among those shocked by the selection. Growing up in the faith as kids and reporting on it as adults, they had been told it was an article of faith, a given, that the Catholic Church would never elect an American pope. And yet, there was Prevost—now Leo XIV—smiling, waving, and declaring to the crowd in Italian, “Peace be with you.”
Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who grew up just outside Chicago but had spent much of his adult life in Peru, had been a dark horse candidate to say the least–an unassuming Augustinian who had only recently been promoted to the top levels of Church leadership. His elevation to the most prominent religious seat in the world prompted unprecedented enthusiasm—a surge of “Da Pope” memes and American tourists flocking to Rome with gifts of deep dish pizza and hats from Villanova (his alma mater)—but despite international media coverage and fascination, the scope of Prevost’s journey has yet to be told in full, intimate detail.
Now, in AMERICAN POPE, Burke and Detrow present the first comprehensive, impressively sourced biography of the new pontiff. The two journalists spent the year after Leo’s election reporting in Peru, Chicago, and Rome. They tracked down Leo’s close confidants, childhood friends, family members, classmates, fellow clergy, and Vatican insiders. They gained unprecedented access to archival documents, letters, emails, and other personal correspondence that provide key insights into Prevost’s experiences and views. As a result, readers are introduced to a man at varying stages of his destiny: Robert, a quiet young boy from a working-class parish straddling Chicago’s southern border, coming into his faith in Kennedy-era America; Bob, a serious student who writes for his high school paper and spends time in the seminary leading family interventions for alcoholics; Padre and Monsignor Roberto, a stabilizing and hopeful presence in impoverished and terrorized communities of Peru, and who would help lead his diocese through the COVID-19 pandemic; Father Bob, the leader of the Augustinian order at a time of crisis for the Catholic Church; Cardinal Prevost, the unassuming ally of Pope Francis; and, finally, Leo, whose ascension will forever change the Church he serves and loves.
Enlightening, engrossing, and undeniably human, AMERICAN POPE is the key to understanding one of the most consequential figures of our time.
SLEUTH-HOUND: THE CASE OF THE REAL SHERLOCK HOLMES by Lindsey Fitzharris
9780374609498 | 10/20/26
Throughout nineteenth-century Edinburgh, the surgeon Joseph Bell was known for his extraordinary talent for detection and diagnosis. To the amazement of onlookers at the Royal Infirmary, he could read a patient’s ailments, occupation, and personal habits from a single glance. Though such deductive powers were all quite “elementary” to Bell, they had a profound influence on the medical student and budding writer Arthur Conan Doyle. Soon enough, Bell’s methods helped spark the creation of fiction’s most iconic detective.
Since Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887, he has become a global phenomenon. Yet the man Conan Doyle credited as Sherlock’s prototype has slipped into the shadows. In SLEUTH-HOUND, the New York Times bestselling author Lindsey Fitzharris brings Bell center stage, recounting how his work took him from ward to witness box as a medical detective. He worked closely with the police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn and a pioneering ballistics expert named Dr. Watson, and even collaborated with Conan Doyle to overturn a homicide conviction. Bell’s forensic investigations took him from gaslit alleyways to Gilded Age drawing rooms, put him on the trail of poisoners and child killers, and even drew him into the hunt for Jack the Ripper.
By scrutinizing a scratch on a desk, a trace of cigar ash, or the slightest peculiarity of a man’s gait, Bell could turn the smallest clues into revelations. His sharp mind forever changed the way we read bodies, detect crimes, and serve justice.
BAD BOY FOR LIFE: THE RISE AND FALL OF SEAN COMBS by Cheyenne Roundtree
9781250411167 | 9/29/26
If not for Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ability to harness the voice of hip-hop and package it via artists like Mary J. Blige and the Notorious B.I.G., the landscape of American—and world—music would look and sound entirely different. For decades, mainstream performers clamored to be close to Combs; his charisma, vision, and brand of cool transformed hip-hop culture into a multibillion-dollar powerhouse. While his acumen built an empire that reflected the biggest names in not only music but also fashion, business, and the bright lights of Hollywood, another side of Combs was hidden from public view.
In BAD BOY FOR LIFE, journalist Cheyenne Roundtree vividly brings to life Combs’ early days and his rise to power. She also excavates the disturbing history of his alleged abuse. Through cultural insights, meticulous reporting, and in-depth interviews with more than one hundred sources, she examines Combs’ misuse of power that led to the criminal trial in 2025 that caused his kingdom to unravel.
Ultimately, this account shows how Combs embodies the much bigger story of hip-hop’s ascension, the wider music industry, and fame’s sinister aspects. This is one of the most significant pop-culture stories of our time, one that charts the path of an impresario while asking questions about accountability and justice, who is believed and who is silenced, and why we protect the powerful. In BAD BOY FOR LIFE, Roundtree depicts the man in full, offering a comprehensive portrait of Combs’ astonishing rise and fall.
ELEVEN DAYS: THE FASCINATING TRUE ACCOUNT OF AGATHA CHRISTIE’S MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE by Laura Thompson
9781250461261 | 12/1/26
In December of 1926, Agatha Christie, the world’s most famous mystery author, vanished. Eleven days later, after frenzied media speculation, she was discovered alive and well. Claiming to have lost her memory, she refused to speak publicly about her disappearance, and even today, there are questions that have never been answered. The book will seek to penetrate the blank space in Christie’s long and brilliant life, which leaves her ever more emblematic of the genre that she defines.
ELEVEN DAYS is an examination of a myth, of a Christie mystery that has remained unsolved for a century. In a new approach, Laura Thompson undertakes a re-enactment of Christie’s movements based on her own conversations with people close to Christie: notably, her interviews with Christie’s only child, her daughter Rosalind.
Thompson explores all theories and aspects of Christie’s disappearance, as well as the notion of disappearance in itself: how it might feel to wander like a ghost through one’s own life, to be oneself yet without identity. What sort of person has the capacity to disappear? Many of us may have longed to do so, but actually to go through with it? What courage or daring does it take, what desperation or deviousness? How was Agatha Christie changed by it?
ELEVEN DAYS delves into these questions and more, and delivers the final word on the greatest mystery ever created by the greatest writer of mysteries.
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