October 19th, 2026
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On Top Shelf
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October Reads Worth Falling For

Danger, desire, second chances, and unexpected romanceβ€”discover this month’s Fresh Fiction Featured Books.

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A poisoned cousin, a five-year-old's life, and a family with too many secrets.


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Supernatural sparks fly
between a bookseller
& her hard-boiled ghost.


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If Her Highness thinks I’ll let another man claim her and my child, she’s lost her royal mind. Sophaya’s mine.


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She found a body. Then she started asking the wrong questions.


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He ghosted her ten years ago. Now she’s stuck with him for Christmas.


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She’s the lady everyone overlooks. He’s the prince who can’t look away.

Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey by Kathleen Rooney

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Also by Kathleen Rooney:

Man Overboard!, July 2026
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook
From Dust to Stardust, September 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, August 2020
Trade Size / e-Book
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, January 2017
Hardcover
Live Nude Girl, February 2009
Hardcover

CHER AMI AND MAJOR WHITTLESEY
By: Kathleen Rooney

Penguin Books
August 2020
On Sale: August 11, 2020
336 pages
ISBN: 0143135422
EAN: 9780143135425
Kindle: B084788BMF
Trade Size / e-Book
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Thriller | Humor | Non-Fiction History

"Both heartbreaking and sharply funny...Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is brilliant and surprising at every turn."—Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer finalist for The Great Believers

A heart-tugging and gorgeously written novel based on the incredible true story of a WWI messenger pigeon and the soldiers whose lives she forever altered, from the author of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk.


From the green countryside of England and the gray canyons of Wall Street come two unlikely heroes: one a pigeon and the other a soldier. Answering the call to serve in the war to end all wars, neither Cher Ami, the messenger bird, nor Charles Whittlesey, the army officer, can anticipate how their lives will briefly intersect in a chaotic battle in the forests of France, where their wills will be tested, their fates will be shaped, and their lives will emerge forever altered.

A saga of hope and duty, love and endurance, as well as the claustrophobia of fame, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey is a tragic yet life-affirming war story that the world has never heard. Inspired by true events of World War I, Kathleen Rooney resurrects two long-forgotten yet unforgettable figures, recounting their tale in a pair of voices that will change the way readers look at animals, freedom, and even history itself.