Monthly Pop Picks Digest – October 2026

100 Rules for Living to 100 by Dick Van Dyke

Dick Van Dyke danced his way into our hearts with iconic roles in "Mary Poppins," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," and "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Now, as he's about to turn 100 years old, Dick is still dancing, still approaching life with the twinkle in his eye that we've come to know and love. In "100 Rules for Living to 100," he reveals his secrets for maintaining your joie de vivre, staying physically healthy, and making the most out of the life you've been given. Through stories from his past and present--the pivotal moments from childhood to film sets to his expansive family and finding love late in life--Dick reflects on both the joyful times and the challenges that shaped him. His indefatigable spirit and positive attitude will surely inspire readers to count the blessings in their own lives, persevere through the hard times, and appreciate the beauty and complexity of being human.

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How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger

How Not to Die: Revised and Updated is an empowering guide featuring the latest scientific discoveries on nutrition and longevity. Discover the foods, exercise, and lifestyle habits that prevent the fifteen leading causes of disease-related death. Doctors are good at treating acute illnesses, but bad at preventing chronic disease. The fifteen diseases that lead to the most deaths in America claim the lives of 1.6 million annually. This doesn't have to be the case. For the most part, these diseases and illnesses are preventable. In this revised and updated edition of the bestselling classic, Dr. Michael Greger shares groundbreaking scientific discoveries on nutrition and longevity. With updates from recent studies, How Not to Die details the foods we should eat and the lifestyle changes we can make to live longer. 

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Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department by Carol Leonnig

Throughout his first administration, Donald Trump did more than any other president to politicize the nation's top law enforcement agency, pressuring appointees to shield him, target his enemies, and even help him cling to power after his 2020 election defeat. The Department, pressed into a defensive crouch, has never fully recovered. Injustice exposes the Trump administration's efforts to undermine the Department at every turn and examines how delays in investigating Trump's effort to overturn the will of voters under Attorney General Merrick Garland helped prevent the country from holding Trump accountable and enabled his return to power. Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis take readers inside the turmoil among prosecutors and FBI agents as they grappled with Trump's disdain for the rule of law. 

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Persephone's Curse by Katrina Leno

The Hazel Wood meets Laini Taylor in this gorgeous urban fantasy of sisterhood, ghosts, and old family curses. Are the four Farthing sisters really descended from Persephone? Their aunt has always told them that the women in their family can trace their lineage back to the Goddess of the Dead. And maybe she's right, because the Farthing girls have a ghost in the attic of their New York City brownstone--a kind and gentle ghost named Henry, who only they can see. When one of the sisters falls in love with the ghost and another banishes him to the Underworld, the sisters face even bigger questions about who they are. If they're really related to Persephone and perhaps a little magical, they may have to save Henry, the world, and each other.

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Witches of Dubious Origin by Jenn McKinlay

Zoe Ziakas enjoys a quiet life, working as a librarian in her quaint New England town. When a mysterious black book with an unbreakable latch arrives at the library, Zoe feels that the tome is somehow calling to her. She consults the Museum of Literature, home to volumes of indecipherable secrets and books containing dark magic. There, among the Books of Dubious Origin, Zoe discovers that she's the last descendant of a family of witches and that the little black book is their grimoire. She must decode the spell book and solve the mystery of what happened to her mother and grandmother. But the book's power attracts all things magical, leaving Zoe under the watch of a pesky raven and pursued by undead Vikings, ghost pirates, and assorted ghouls. 

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Good Daughtering: The Work You've Always Done, the Credit You've Never Gotten, and How to Finally Feel Like Enough by Allison M. Alford

Daughters grow up believing their role in the family is simple: love their parents, help out when they can, and carry on family traditions. But adulthood reveals a more complicated reality, in which women take on the invisible labor of emotional support, crisis management, and unspoken expectations that leave them feeling stretched thin and unseen. Daughtering is the unpaid, invisible work of holding a family together--checking in, stepping up, and smoothing things over--without ever calling it work. In this book, Allison M. Alford, PhD, a leading researcher in family communication, explores the untold story of adult daughters and the essential work they do. Drawing on research and personal interviews, she examines how societal expectations, gender roles, and generational dynamics shape daughters' experiences in ways that are often misunderstood and overlooked.

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The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family by Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts grew up in a deeply segregated Chicago of the 1960s, where relationships rarely crossed the "color line." Yet inside her own home, where her father was white and her mother a Black Jamaican immigrant, interracial marriage was a shared mission. Her father, an anthropologist, spent her childhood working on a book about Black-white marriages, a project he never finished but that shaped their family life. As a graduate student, he dedicated himself to studying interracial marriage, and her mother soon became his full-time partner in that work. Together, they interviewed more than 500 couples and collected stories of interracial marriages dating back to the 1880s.

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Eight Million Ways to Happiness: Wisdom for Inspiration and Healing from the Heart of Japan by Hiroko Yoda

A Japanese cultural historian shares a path to joyful living drawn from her nation's unique approach to spirituality and nature, blending memoir, cultural reporting, and practical guidance for anyone seeking balance in a turbulent world. While many people look to Japan for advice on finding happiness, its spiritual traditions often remain hidden in plain sight, shaping beloved aspects of the country's culture. In Eight Million Ways to Happiness, Hiroko Yoda shares the culmination of her decade-long journey into the spiritual heart of her homeland. Readers follow her as she trains as a Shinto shrine-dancer, takes part in Buddhist funeral rituals, climbs holy mountains with Shugendo ascetics, and meets one of Japan's last living itako, a traditional mystic. Through personal stories, cultural insights, and history, Yoda offers lessons for readers of any background. She explores how traditional Japanese spirituality can coexist with modern secular life and help us navigate life's inevitable ups and downs by reconnecting with the natural world.

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This Is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Moving from Pakistan's dazzling, chaotic cities to its lawless feudal countryside, This Is Where the Serpent Lives evokes contemporary Pakistan through the intertwined destinies of a dozen characters whose lives are shaped by violence, tragedy, triumph, and love. Orphaned as a boy and forced to fend for himself on city streets, Yazid rises to a position of responsibility in the Lahore household of Colonel Atar, a powerful industrialist and politician. But conflicting loyalties and misplaced trust threaten his standing. Saqib, the son of a poor gardener on the colonel's estate, is entrusted with managing a pioneering business, only to overreach and become an outlaw pursued by corrupt police. Meanwhile, the colonel's sons compete for a woman's love, and her choice brings unexpected darkness into their lives. Across stories of power, money, and relationships, Mueenuddin's characters struggle to choose between moral paths and the compromises needed to survive systems of caste, capital, and social power. Intimate and epic, this novel explores the forces that shape people's lives in contemporary Pakistan.

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The Murder at World's End: A Novel by Ross Montgomery

Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is preparing for the apocalypse he believes will accompany the passing of Halley's Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom, with every window, chimney, and keyhole closed before nightfall. But the pompous, dishonest Viscount fails to account for the danger within. By morning, he's dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow. Suspicion falls on Stephen Pike, Tithe Hall's newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn't commit, he's the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally is Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp-witted, eighty-year-old family matriarch, who relishes chaos and puzzles. Together, they navigate secret passages, buried grudges, and rising terror as they try to unmask the killer before it's too late.

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