Stranger than Fiction (09/01/2026): Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas
Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to Thriller or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. The ticket is food all-inclusive! And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it’s an out, and players might go to bat on stilts, or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it.
But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America’s oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again.
This is a story that’s bigger than baseball, and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the “ringmaster” of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse’s telling, it takes heart, creativity, joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America’s great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories–love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans.
This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story, of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.
Stranger than Fiction (08/04/2026): McMillions: The Absolutely True Story of How an Unlikely Pair of FBI Agents Brought Down the Most Supersized Fraud in Fast Food History
Upon their arrival, Devereaux watched them closely, looking at body language, checking for tells. To him, they were all potential suspects. Once they were seated in an unremarkable conference room, sealed away in the hyper-secure FBI building, Devereaux began to lay out a shocking conspiracy, one that ran deep into McDonald’s most beloved the Monopoly game. From 1989 to 2001, not a single winner of a high-value prize was legitimate. Instead, all were the courtesy of one man who brilliantly crafted a near-infallible nationwide conspiracy for fraud.
Expanded from the wildly popular HBO docuseries with major new interviews, MCMILLIONS traces this massive crime, the intricate web of lies that bolstered it, and the tireless work of the FBI agents that unraveled it all. It is a story littered with families torn apart, betrayals, financial ruin, and one suspicious car crash. Yet, there are bright spots in the hijinks of the FBI agents and their co-conspirators. Ultimately, it is a story of what happens when the American dream goes very wrong.
Stranger than Fiction (07/07/2026): Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
Stranger than Fiction (06/02/2026): Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality
In sharp and witty prose–aided by humorous comics from artist Jules Zuckerberg–Schrefer uses science, history, anthropology, and sociology to illustrate the diversity of sexual behavior in the animal world. Interviews with researchers in the field offer additional insights for readers and aspiring scientists.
Queer behavior in animals is as diverse and complex–and as natural–as it is in our own species. It doesn’t set us apart from animals–it bonds us even closer to our animal selves.
Stranger than Fiction (05/05/2026): Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World
Medical anthropologist Theresa MacPhail, herself an allergy sufferer whose father died from a bee sting, set out to understand why. In pursuit of answers, MacPhail studied the dangerous experiments of early immunologists as well as the mind-bending recent development of biologics and immunotherapies that are giving the most severely impacted patients hope. She scaled a roof with an air-quality controller who diligently counts pollen by hand for hours every day; met a mother who struggled to use WIC benefits for her daughter with severe food allergies; spoke with doctors at some of the finest allergy clinics in the world; and discussed the intersecting problems of climate change, pollution, and pollen with biologists who study seasonal respiratory allergies. This is the story of what they are, why we have them, and what that might mean for the fate of humanity in a rapidly changing world.
Stranger than Fiction (04/07/2026): We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People
Nemonte returned to the forest and traditional ways of life and became one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism. She spearheaded an alliance of Indigenous nations across the Upper Amazon and led her people to a landmark victory against Big Oil, protecting over a half million acres of primary rainforest.
We Will Be Jaguars is an astonishing memoir by an equally astonishing woman. Nemonte digs into generations of oral history, uprooting centuries of conquest, and hacking away at racist notions of Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, she reveals a life story as rich, harsh, and vital as the Amazon rainforest herself.
Stranger than Fiction (03/03/2026): The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick
As a young woman working in the horror film industry, O’Meara set out to right the wrong, and in the process discovered the full, fascinating story of an ambitious, artistic woman ahead of her time. Patrick’s contribution to special effects proved to be just the latest chapter in a remarkable, unconventional life, from her youth growing up in the shadow of Hearst Castle, to her career as one of Disney’s first female animators. And at last, O’Meara discovered what really had happened to Patrick after The Creature’s success, and where she went.
A true-life detective story and a celebration of a forgotten feminist trailblazer, Mallory O’Meara’s The Lady from the Black Lagoon establishes Patrick in her rightful place in film history while calling out a Hollywood culture where little has changed since.
Stranger than Fiction (02/03/2026): The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement
You’ll meet a woman astride a white horse riding down Pennsylvania Ave, a young boy detained at a Japanese incarceration camp, a formerly enslaved woman on a mission to reunite with her daughter, a poet on a train, and a teacher who learns to work with her enemies. More than one thing is bombed, and multiple people surprisingly become rich. Some rich with money, and some wealthy with things that matter more.
This is a book about what really made America – and Americans – great. McMahon’s cast of improbable champions will become familiar friends, lighting the path we journey in our quest to make the world more just, peaceful, good, and free.
Stranger than Fiction (01/06/2026): Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond
A lively and utterly fascinating guide to these geologic wonders, Super Volcanoes revels in the incomparable power of volcanic eruptions past and present, Earthbound and otherwise—and recounts the daring and sometimes death-defying careers of the scientists who study them. Science journalist and volcanologist Robin George Andrews explores how these eruptions reveal secrets about the worlds to which they belong, describing the stunning ways in which volcanoes can sculpt the sea, land, and sky, and even influence the machinery that makes or breaks the existence of life.
Walking us through the mechanics of some of the most infamous eruptions on Earth, Andrews outlines what we know about how volcanoes form, erupt, and evolve, as well as what scientists are still trying to puzzle out. How can we better predict when a deadly eruption will occur—and protect communities in the danger zone? Is Earth’s system of plate tectonics, unique in the solar system, the best way to forge a planet that supports life? And if life can survive and even thrive in Earth’s extreme volcanic environments—superhot, superacidic, and supersaline surroundings previously thought to be completely inhospitable—where else in the universe might we find it?
Traveling from Hawai‘i, Yellowstone, Tanzania, and the ocean floor to the moon, Venus, and Mars, Andrews illuminates the cutting-edge discoveries and lingering scientific mysteries surrounding these phenomenal forces of nature.
Stranger than Fiction (12/02/2025): The Less People Know About Us: A Mystery of Betrayal, Family Secrets, and Stolen Identity
Convinced that the thief had to be someone they knew, Axton and her parents completely cut off the outside world. As a result, Axton spent her formative years crippled by anxiety, quarantined behind the closed curtains in her childhood home. Years later, Axton discovered that she, too, had fallen prey to the identity thief.
The Less People Know About Us is a cautionary tale, but not one without hope as Axton looks back on the dysfunctional childhood that led to her desire to help this from happening to others.