Birth of the chess queen: a history by Marilyn Yalom — Everyone knows that the queen is the most powerful piece in chess, but few people know that the game existed for five hundred years without her. Not until the year 1000, two hundred years after Arab conquerors brought chess to southern Europe, did a chess queen appear on the board.Initially she was the weakest piece, not the formidable force she is today. How and why did this transformation take place? Examine the five-hundred-year period between the chess queens timid emergence and her elevation into the games mightiest piece.

Word Nerd: Dispatches from the Games, Grammar, and Geek Underground by Williams, John D — Now Word Nerd takes readers inside the byzantine, dog-eat-dog world of top tournament players, creating a piquant (seven-letter word, 68 points!) work that is part pop-cultural history, part anthropological study.

The kings of New York: a year among the geeks, oddballs, and geniuses who make up America's top high school chess team by Michael Weinreb — An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a year with the nations top high school chess team.

The queen of Katwe: a story of life, chess, and one extraordinary girl's dream of becoming a grandmaster by Tim Crothers — The astonishing true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenager from the slums of Kampala, Uganda, who, inspired by an unlikely mentor, a war refugee turned missionary, becomes an international chess champion.

The good, the bad, and the Barbie: a doll's history and her impact on us by Tanya Lee Stone — Explores how Barbie has influenced generations of girls, discussing criticisms of the doll, her role in fashion, and her surprising popularity during her first fifty years.

The monopolists: obsession, fury, and the scandal behind the world's favorite board game by Mary Pilon — the inside story of how the game of Monopoly came into existence, the heavy embellishment of its provenance by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins.

The great Beanie Baby bubble: mass delusion and the dark side of cute by Zac Bissonnette — A bestselling journalist delivers the never-before-told story of the plush animal craze that became the tulip mania of the 1990s . In the annals of consumer crazes, nothing compares to Beanie Babies. Bissonnette draws on hundreds of interviews (including a visit to a man who lives with his 40,000 Ty products and an in-prison interview with a guy who killed a coworker over a Beanie Baby debt) for the first book on the strangest speculative mania of all time.