Zibby Books

Coming June 3, 2025

Does your past define your destiny? Told through multiple perspectives, rich with emotion and immersive dual timelines, The Summer We Ran weaves together a story of lost love, devastating secrets, shocking sabotage, and the painstaking decision two people must make in order to fulfill the futures they each desire.

In the summer of 1996, teenage Tess Murphy’s mom gave her two rules to abide by: keep quiet and stay out of trouble. Her mother landed a new job as a cook at an affluent Virginia estate and didn’t want anything to risk the opportunity, least of all her outspoken daughter. What no one saw coming was Tess falling deeply in love with the boy next door, high-society Grant Alexander.

Over a few wondrous and heat-filled months, Tess and Grant’s love blooms so ferociously it feels utterly impossible that anything can keep them apart, until tragedy strikes and the teenagers find themselves pained by betrayal with little hope to repair the damage that’s been done. 

Coming April 1, 2025

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story. 

Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living. 

As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer who is now confined to a wheelchair, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live.

Ebook and Audiobook Out Now
Trade Paperback Available Now!

An intimate collection of meaningful, smart, funny, sad, emotional, and inspiring essays from today’s authors and advocates about what it means to be Jewish, how things have changed since the attacks on October 7th, 2023, and the unique culture that brings this group together. 

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On October 7th, 2023, Jews in Israel were attacked in the largest pogrom since the Holocaust. But Jews everywhere felt it and came together to process and to speak out in ways they never had before, like the contributors to this collection. More than sixty notable Jewish authors speak to their lifetimes of Jewish joy, celebration, laughter, food, trauma, loss, love, family, neuroses, and fun, and the common threads that course through the Jewish people: resilience and humor. Contributors include Mark Feuerstein, Jill Zarin, Rabbi Steve Leder, Amy Ephron, Lisa Barr, Rebecca Minkoff, Annabelle Gurwitch, Jenny Mollen, Nicola Kraus, Caroline Leavitt, and many more. On Being Jewish Now is edited by bestselling author, podcaster, bookstore owner, and media company CEO Zibby Owens.

Never again.

All profits from the sale of the e-book, audiobook, and paperback will be donated to Artists Against Antisemitism, a group founded by Jewish authors in the aftermath of October 7th, dedicated to fighting the spread of antisemitism.

Coming February 4, 2025

Are they hot flashes? Or is it just getting hot in here?

Lisa Darling, a high-flying TV executive and twice-divorced mother of two, is navigating life with an opinionated teenager and a pet-obsessed grade schooler, organizing PTA events, and supporting her best friend through breast cancer treatment, all while in the throes of perimenopause. It’s no wonder her to-do list is on overdrive and she never has time for pilates or that DIY interior design project she keeps setting aside. 

But when LA-based media hotshot Zach Russo swoops in as a temporary stand-in for her best friend’s job, Lisa starts feeling overheated and flustered. But that’s just the menopause, right? She chooses to believe her hormone replacement therapy needs some adjusting, until she finds herself in a sexy—and seriously ill-advised—cinch with him. As things snowball, Lisa has to confront these long-forgotten feelings and ask herself what it is she wants and what it is she’s ready for. 

Hilarious, relatable, and delightfully swoon-worthy, It’s Getting Hot in Here is the laugh-out-loud, coming-of-middle-age, rom-com meets mom-com readers have been waiting for.

Coming March 4, 2025

A girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layer upon layer of secrets, until one morning years later when she is forced to reckon with her past.

On an ordinary day in an upscale suburb of Atlanta, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating question: Who is Sunny? 

Maya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana—a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build. 

As she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the harrowing details of her past—her journey to America on the “backtrack,” the shock of being delivered into the hands of an abusive family while being severed from her own, and her many evolutions of self as she struggles to find a path forward against all odds.

But the letter contains urgent news which cannot be ignored. She has no choice but to confess her story of illegal immigration, abuse, addiction, and identity transformation to her unsuspecting husband, no matter the consequences.

Steeped in sensory detail, this striking debut transports the reader from the sugar cane fields of Guyana to the world of immigrant laborers in Miami to the affluent suburbs of Atlanta. Nanda Reddy takes us on a wrenching journey of assimilation, survival, and reinvention that explores the very construct of identity—all the while underscoring the strength of chosen family, love, and the resilience of the human spirit. 

Coming December 3, 2024 

A Washington Post Noteworthy Book!

EVERY FAMILY HAS AN EDGE

In this hilarious, heartwarming tale, mother-daughter skiing champs face the bumps in their own relationship when an avalanche in a Swiss village forces them together.

Alpine skiing G.O.A.T. Claudine Potts and her daughter Wylie have been bred for gold medal glory. They’re skiing their way to fame, but this gilded future is cut short when a fall forces Claudine’s retirement and Wylie’s debilitating anxiety sends her off the slopes. 

With the collapse of their ski careers, their relationship falters and now it’s been years since Wylie and Claudine have even spoken. They live on opposite coasts, pursuing different passions, until a chance opportunity to pair up in a European fitness competition drives them back together. Can this duo survive snow-buried regrets and family secrets and have the happy reunion they’re hoping for?

 Set in a dreamy Swiss village with a colorful cast of characters, Bluebird Day will make readers laugh and swoon, as Claudine and Wylie slalom through the complicated terrain of lost ambition, past mistakes, and mother-daughter love.

Published November 12, 2024

A PEOPLE Magazine's Best Book of November 2024

A November 2024 Book of the Month Selection 

A USA Today Bestseller 

From the author of the global breakout bestseller The Last Love Note comes the story of a young woman struggling to piece her life back together in the wake of a tragic accident, and the man who gives up everything to help her. 

If you knew then what you know now, would you make the same choices? Imagine having a second chance with the one you never forgot. 

When Evie Hudson wakes in an unfamiliar hospital room, she thinks she’s fresh out of a teenage party with her best friend, Bree. Except, Bree isn’t around anymore and high school was years ago. Evie had just survived the crash that killed her husband, Oliver—whom she can't remember either. After suffering a traumatic loss of memory,  she’s left to connect the dots. But how?

Enter: Drew, a promising photographer whose chance encounter with Evie unravels the elusive details of her marriage and her husband’s death. As Drew watches Evie stitch the story of her life together, secrets emerge that might shatter both of their worlds.

This tangled second-chance romance leads Evie to question every decision she ever made. This time around, she’s seeing all the things she missed–and the life she gets to choose . . . again.

Published October 8, 2024

“The Undercurrent is a mystery of remarkable scope, bristling with intelligence, beauty, and humanity. It is, quite simply: stunning.” —Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

Now featured in E! Fall Books of 2024

An overwhelmed new mother becomes obsessed with the unsolved disappearance of a young girl from her small Texas hometown—and unearths her own family’s dark secret.  

It’s 2011 and Deecie Jeffries’s missing person’s case in Austin, Texas, is still cold. New mom Bee, struggling with postpartum depression, is living in Portland, Maine, having left Austin–and those memories–far behind. Until Leo, her childhood crush and her estranged twin Gus’s best friend, suddenly resurfaces, drawing Bee back into their shared past. 

Bee’s predictable life is upended, pushing her to return to her childhood home and piece together a neighborhood’s shattered history. Bee becomes consumed with a need to uncover the truth about Deecie’s disappearance and what happened to the families who lived across the field from one another—Gus, Leo, and their mothers: Mary, a homemaker, whose only escape is the local community theater, and Diana, a serious academic dedicated to her studies.

Coming January 7, 2025

“In this honest, insightful, and often hilarious account, Amy Wilson explores her experience and frustrations as a people-pleaser—her story will resonate with anyone who has said, 'Happy to help!' one too many times. I couldn’t put it down.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

Award-winning podcast host Amy Wilson has always been an ultimate helper. As a big sister, Girl Scout, personal assistant, sitcom sidekick, and, finally, mother of three, Amy believed it was her destiny to be a people pleaser. She learned to put others first and to look like she had everything under control, even when she very much did not.

Along the way, Amy started to wonder why doing it all had been her job. Still, when she tried to hand over some of her to-dos, no one was interested in taking them. And when she asked for help, in return, she got advice: have a sense of humor, quit nagging, and stop trying to be perfect.

Hilariously relatable, Happy to Help is a collection of essays about how you can be the one everyone else depends on and still be struggling—how you can be “happy to help,” even when, for your own sake, you shouldn’t.

Published September 10, 2024

Exposure forces readers to reckon with both sides of a story that’s not easily reduced to right or wrong.  

One night. Two sides of a story.  In multi-perspective storytelling filled with humanity and empathy, Exposure forces readers to reckon with conflicting truths that are not easily reduced to right or wrong.  

In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and go home together after a night out.

Twelve years later, Noah has done the impossible and made it in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released, and he and his beloved wife Jesse, a successful writer herself, have just had a baby. Meanwhile, Juliette’s best friend Annie is back in LA for the first time in more than a decade, and makes a startling discovery about Juliette that will threaten to blow up the life Noah has struggled to build.

Spanning decades, from LA to Chicago, and told through Annie, Juliette, Noah, and Jesse’s perspectives, this powerful, provocative novel delves into one fateful night and the people affected by it, exploring how race, artistic ambition, and grief expose different versions of the same story.

Published July 30, 2024

A USA Today Bestseller! 

A Library Journal Best Book of 2024!

A Most Exciting Debut Short Story Collection of 2024 by Electric Literature

What happens when you are forced to let go of the things you love the most? What are you left with?  

In her stunning debut short story collection, The Goodbye Process, Mary Jones uses her distinctive voice to examine the painful and sometimes surreal ways we say goodbye.

The stories—which range from tender and heartbreaking to unsettling and darkly funny—will push you out of your comfort zone and ignite intense emotions surrounding love and loss. A woman camps out on the porch of an ex-lover who has barricaded himself inside the house; a preteen girl caught shoplifting finds herself in grave danger; a Los Angeles real estate agent falls for a woman who helps him detach from years of dramatic plastic surgery; a man hires a professional mourner to ensure his wife’s funeral is a success. Again and again, Jones’s characters find themselves facing the ends of things: relationships, health, and innocence.

Arresting, original, and beautifully rendered, this story collection packs a punch, just the way grief does―knocking us off our feet.

Published April 2, 2024 

"Bride Wars meets Bravo’s Southern Charm as a young lawyer tries to get her best friend a coveted magazine cover—until her devious aunt gets in the way. Evans’ debut novel is a charming contemporary novel that fans of Sarah Adams will enjoy." —Booklist

Competition for a bridal magazine cover unleashes mayhem, forcing a mastermind maid of honor to stop being a people pleaser and start figuring out what she wants out of life. A hilarious, smart coming-of-age story.

Olivia “Liv” Fitzgerald’s life is on ambition autopilot. The soon-to-be-lawyer has her life plan set and can talk anyone into anything. Well, almost anything. When her scheming aunt throws her cousin, Kali, into a competition for Southern Charm’s cover alongside Liv’s best friend, Leighton, all hell breaks loose. To save the day, Liv only has to:

a) Secure the Southern Charm cover for Leighton
b) Keep Aunt Charlotte happy—and keep Kali’s wedding running smoothly
c) Finish her final year of law school and nab a coveted NYC big law job
d) Win over the guy of her dreams

Easy, right? From engagement parties to rehearsal dinners, readers will root for Liv as she balances her schemes, dreams, and double maid-of-honor duties.

Read the first chapter!

Published June 25, 2024

A divided family. A devastated community. And the disaster that brings them all together.

Pearce Oysters, a family drama set on the Louisiana coastline during the historic 2010 oil spill, follows the Pearces, local oyster farmers whose business, family, and livelihood are on the brink of collapse.

This is eye-opening, eco-fiction at its best—a story that highlights the grit and beauty of lives lived in an overlooked corner of the American South. Diving deep into the bonds of family, culture, class, and industry, the novel elevates the voices of deeply sympathetic characters: Jordan, the reluctant head of his family’s storied oyster company; May, his distressed, widowed mother; and Benny, his beatnik musician brother, who returns from New Orleans in their time of crisis.

Published May 21, 2024

A ghostwriting gig in the Hamptons becomes far more than a job in this sexy, atmospheric, and deliciously tense story. 

Kirkus Reviews says, “Like cinnamon Red Hots, this of-the-moment domestic thriller keeps you sweetly sucking away till it delivers the punch."

Reeling from the death of her father, Zara Pines accepts a ghostwriting gig for celebrity chef Jane Bailey. Jane, star of the wildly popular cooking show 30 Bucks Tops, invites Zara to live in her East Hampton home for the summer. Zara doesn’t want to go, but Jane insists. 

As the two women create Jane’s book, their attachment grows stronger. Zara, who’s lost and in search of an identity, finds one in the shadow of Jane. She wears Jane’s clothes, adopts Jane’s mannerisms, and speaks like Jane. Eventually, the line between them blurs and Zara starts to see the side Jane keeps hidden from the cameras.

This dark and twisty novel about fame, lies, and obsession will make even the most open-hearted reader question how safe it is to trust the people they love.

Read an excerpt! 

Published March 5, 2024

- A USA TODAY Bestseller
- Starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Library Journal
- A March Book of the Month Selection
- An Apple Books “Best Book of March”
- A 2024 NPR "Book We Love" Pick
- A SheReads and ELLE Most Anticipated Book of 2024

Here After is an intimate story of deep love followed by dizzying loss; a stunning, taut memoir from debut author Amy Lin so finely etched and powerful that it will alter readers' hearts.

“When he dies, I fall out of time.”

Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. But on a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It is the last time she sees her husband alive.

Ten days after this seismic loss, Amy is in the hospital, navigating her own shocking medical crisis and making life-or-death decisions about her treatment.

What follows is a rich and unflinchingly honest accounting of her life with Kurtis, the vortex created by his death, and the ongoing struggle Amy faces as she attempts to understand her own experience in the context of commonly held “truths” about what the grieving process looks like. 

Here After is a love story and a meditation on the ways in which Kurtis’ death shatters any set ideas Amy ever held about grief, strength, and memory. Its power will last with you long after the final page.

Published April 04, 2023  

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards, Silver Medal - Literary Fiction

Featured on PBS NewsHour 

Named by Good Morning America, New York Post, and Los Angeles Daily News as one of the Best Books of Spring 2023

A deeply moving debut novel from the award-winning author of Yes, Yes, Cherries (“Funny, brave, and amazing”—Lorrie Moore) that explores the relationship complexities between mothers and daughters, the desire to escape, and the longing to connect. Viva has always found ways to manage her mother’s impulsive, eccentric and addictive personality. She’s had to—for her entire life, it has always been Viva and Charlotte against the world. After accidentally discovering an innate ability for dance, Viva chases her new passion with the same fervor with which her mother chases the bottle.

Over the years, Viva’s talent becomes a ticket to a life of her own, and as she moves further away from home to pursue her dream, Charlotte struggles to make peace with her own past as a failed artist and the effects of her addiction. When tragedy strikes, Viva begins a downward spiral and must decide whether she will repeat her mother’s mistakes or finally take control of her life. Told from interwoven perspectives with lyrical prose as deft as a choreographed dance.

Published August 29, 2023

A candid and revealing look at life in television, Hollywood, and work in the writer's room, from an insider who wrote for some of the most popular television shows in history: Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad.

Ever since Patty Lin retired from television writing at the ripe age of thirty-eight, people have asked her: “Why would you quit such a cool career?” Especially when they find out she worked on some of the most successful shows in television history. But what if achieving your professional dreams comes at too high a personal cost? That’s what Patty Lin started to ask herself after years in the cutthroat TV industry. One minute she was a tourist, begging her way into the audience of Late Night with David Letterman. Just a few years later, she was an insider who—through relentless hard work and sacrifice—had earned a seat in the writers’ rooms of the hottest TV shows of all time. While writing for Friends, Freaks and Geeks, Desperate Housewives and Breaking Bad, Patty steeled herself against the indignities of a chaotic, abusive, male-dominated work culture, not just as one of the few women in the room, but as the only Asian person.

Funny, eye-opening, and sobering, this inside-Hollywood story will resonate with anyone who has struggled with their work and on their life journey. And it will inspire others to listen to their inner voices and know when it’s time to get out.

Published November 14, 2023

What happens when a trauma therapist is traumatized by loss?

Esteemed trauma therapist Meghan Riordan Jarvis knew how to help her patients process grief. For nearly twenty years, Meghan expected that this clinical training would inoculate her against the effects of personal trauma. But when her father died after a year-long battle with cancer, followed by her mother’s unexpected passing while on their family vacation, she came undone.

Thrown into a maelstrom of grief, with long-buried childhood tragedy rising to the surface, Meghan knew what she had to do―check herself into the same trauma facility to which she often sent her clients. In treatment, trading the therapist’s chair for the patient’s couch, Meghan took her first steps toward healing. 

A brave story of confronting life’s hardest moments with emotional honesty, End of the Hour is for anyone who has experienced the unpredictable, lasting power of grief―and wondered how they’d ever get through it.

Published January 9, 2024

A USA TODAY Bestseller

Funny, honest, and inspiring for readers feeling overwhelmed by life, Everyone But Myself is like a best friend’s story of how she returned to solid ground while embracing chaos along the way.

Featured in The Washington Post, She Reads Most Anticipated, and The New York Post

For Julie, an elementary school librarian and mother of two boys, there was no time for debilitating anxiety. Yet the terrifying aftershocks of her first panic attack left her grappling with questions about the causes of her mental health crisis and where it would lead next.

What follows is a hopeful, honest account of love and loss, a husband who can’t read minds, disastrous family outings, and finding a path (with help from loved ones and a few key new friends) to the joy of a well-lived life.

Sure to resonate with mothers spread thin by the demands of modern family life, Everyone But Myself offers an intimate portrait of how one woman found her way back to herself.

Published June 06, 2023

A summer away. One troubled marriage. Two daughters. And the love interest that threatens to ruin it all.

Maud is a talented garden historian and devoted mother to daughters Ella and Louise. Motivated to reinvigorate her career and escape her troubled marriage, she accepts a summer job restoring the garden of a lush, 19th-century Hudson Valley estate.

While waiting for her daughters to join her at the end of their school year, Maud meets coworker, archeologist Gabriel Crews, whose passion for landscape history matches her own. When their immediate and intense friendship ignites, it sets in motion a seismic shock that will profoundly change Maud's life, as well as the lives of everyone she cares about. Hedge is a deeply moving portrait of a woman’s longing to be a good mother while still answering the call of her soul and mind.