Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is "undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S."

Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.

A primer on intersectional environmentalism aimed at educating the next generation of activists on how to create meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable change. 
 
The Intersectional Environmentalist is an introduction to the intersection between environmentalism, racism, and privilege, and an acknowledgment of the fundamental truth that we cannot save the planet without uplifting the voices of its people -- especially those most often unheard. Written by Leah Thomas, a prominent voice in the field and the activist who coined the term "Intersectional Environmentalism," this book is simultaneously a call to action, a guide to instigating change for all, and a pledge to work towards the empowerment of all people and the betterment of the planet. 

In The Intersectional Environmentalist, Thomas shows how not only are Black, Indigenous and people of color unequally and unfairly impacted by environmental injustices, but she argues that the fight for the planet lies in tandem to the fight for civil rights; and in fact, that one cannot exist without the other. An essential read, this book addresses the most pressing issues that the people and our planet face, examines and dismantles privilege, and looks to the future as the voice of a movement that will define a generation. 

"With a little help from her family, community, and Santa himself, a little girl's faith in the magic of Christmas is restored"

A 2021 Geisel Honor Book!  Join Ty on his imaginative adventures in Ty's Travels, a new My First I Can Read series with rhythmic text by Kelly Starling Lyons and joyful art by Nina Mata.

Ty can’t wait to ride his brand-new scooter at the park. Other kids zip and zoom by like race cars, but all Ty can do is wobble! Ty wants to give up, but a new friend helps Ty give it another try. Celebrate imagination and the power of persistence in Zip, Zoom!

With simple, rhythmic text and joyful, bright art, this My First series is perfect for the beginning reader.

A fun, lyrical debut picture book, Kicks is an essential read for sneaker fans of all ages, from award-winning poet Van G. Garrett and New York Times bestselling illustrator Reggie Brown.

“A brilliantly written and illustrated ode to sneakers and sneakerheads, young and old. A gift to us all.” —Angie Thomas, #1 New York Times best-selling author

This is a love letter to sneakers. But not just any sneakers. Only the flyest, floatiest, you-est kicks you can get—the ones that let you soar!

This colorful, rhythmic adventure has something to offer anyone who prizes a great pair of shoes and any reader who loves to play with words.

A striking graphic novel edition of the National Book Award-winning history of how racist ideas have shaped American life—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist.

Racism has persisted throughout history—but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of five key American figures, preeminent historian Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the world cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it.

In collaboration with award-winning historian and comic artist Joel Christian Gill, this stunningly illustrated graphic-novel adaptation of Dr. Kendi’s groundbreaking Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history of America, and how we can learn from the past to work toward a more equitable, antiracist future.

Bestselling author ReShonda Tate presents a fascinating fictional portrait of Hattie McDaniel, one of Hollywood’s most prolific but woefully underappreciated stars—and the first Black person ever to win an Oscar for her role as Mammy in the critically acclaimed film classic Gone With the Wind.

It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she’d worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy in the controversial movie Gone With the Wind was going to be life-changing. Or so she thought.

Months after winning the award, not only did the Oscar curse set in where Hattie couldn’t find work, but she found herself thrust in the middle of two worlds—Black and White—and not being welcomed in either. Whites only saw her as Mammy and Blacks detested the demeaning portrayal. As the NAACP waged an all-out war against Hattie and actors like her, the emotionally conflicted actor found herself struggling daily.

Through it all, Hattie continued her fight to pave a path for other Negro actors, while focusing on war efforts, fighting housing discrimination, and navigating four failed marriages. Luckily, she had a core group of friends to help her out—from Clark Gable to Louise Beavers to Ruby Berkley Goodwin and Dorothy Dandridge.

The Queen of Sugar Hill brings to life the powerful story of one woman who was driven by many passions—ambition, love, sex, family, friendship, and equality. In re-creating Hattie’s story, ReShonda Tate delivers an unforgettable novel of resilience, dedication, and determination—about what it takes to achieve your dreams—even when everything—and everyone—is against you.

Does a second chance at happiness include your husband's three best friends?

A stunning visual homage to Black bookstores around the country along with profiles and essays that celebrate the history, community, activism, and culture these spaces embody, featuring an original foreword by Nikki Giovanni.

Black literature is perhaps the most powerful, polarizing force in the modern American zeitgeist. Today—as Black novels draw authoritarian ire, as Black memoirs shape public debates, as Black polemics inspire protest petitions—it’s more important than ever to highlight the places that center these stories: Black bookstores.

Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People explores these spaces, chronicling the Black bookstore's past and present lives. Combining narrative prose, eye-catching photography, one-on-one interviews, original essays, and specially curated poetry, Prose to the People is a reader’s road trip companion to the world of Black books.

Thoughtfully curated by writer and Black bookstore owner Katie Mitchell, Prose to the People is a must-have addition to the shelves of anyone who loves book culture and Black history. A visually rich tribute, this dynamic book centers profiles of over fifty Black bookstores from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West Coast, complete with stunning original and archival photography.

Interspersed throughout are essays, poems, and interviews by New York Times bestsellers Kiese Laymon, Rio Cortez, Pearl Cleage, and many more journalists, activists, authors, academics, and poets that offer deeper perspectives on these bookstores' role throughout the diaspora. Complete with a foreword by world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, Prose to the People is a beautiful tribute to these vital pillars of the Black community.

An R&B singer and a corporate executive find love that hits the right notes in this romance by Kristina Forest, USA Today bestselling author of The Partner Plot.

Iris Greene used to be a woman with a plan. But all of that changed after she met the love of her life at twenty-five, got pregnant and married…and then became a widow and a single mother all in alittle over two years. Now, after years of hustling, Iris is the director of partnerships at a beauty company and raising sweet six-year-old Calla by herself. Despite her busy life, she still can’t help but feel lonely. She just needs to catch her breath—and one night, at her sister’s wedding, when she steps outside to do just that, she sees a certain singer who takes her breath away. . . .

By all accounts, pop R&B singer Angel Hughes has it made. He’s a successful musician and has just scored a brand ambassador deal with an emerging beauty company. But he’s still not fulfilled; he’s not producing songs he’s passionate about, and there’s a gaping hole in his love life. When he visits the Save Face Beauty office to kickstart his campaign, he’s delighted to see Iris, his stylist’s sister—the beautiful woman he’s secretly had a crush on for years.

Despite their obvious attraction to each other, they must stay professional throughout the campaign tour—a goal that doesn’t quite pan out. But when it becomes clear their lives aren’t in sync, can they fall back in step to the same rhythm and beat?

"Kristina Forest’s Green Sisters series blends swoonworthy romantic moments with a healthy dose of sisterly bonding and a dash of glitz and glamor. Each book is a well-rounded treat."—Alexis Daria, bestselling author of You Had Me at Hola

adj.
1. A girl or guy who is quick to engage in sexual activities.
--Oftentimes used to shame. Oftentimes used to blame victims for their own abuse.

After the untimely death of her mother, Caprice Latimore has to move in with her grandmother. At eight years old, life as she knows it is turned upside down. The trauma of losing her mother is made worse with the introduction of Marcel, her grandmother's adult son who still lives in the home.

Her uncle Marcel takes an inappropriate interest in her that ultimately results in a tragic breaking point for the child. The only silver lining is that shortly after what Caprice calls "that night", Marcel is booked by local police with a drug possession charge. He's sentenced to prison for twelve years.

Seven years later, however, Marcel is released on good behavior.

Caprice is now sixteen, still dealing with the emotional scars of the past. But things aren't like they were before.

Because now she has Shaun Taylor, the boy across the street who will do whatever it takes to make sure no one ever hurts Caprice again.

fast is a standalone that spans twenty years. Separated into three acts, we watch Caprice grow from eight years old to sixteen years old to twenty-eight years old. She gets hurt, she falls in love, she grows, and she just might overcome.

fast is a story written about victims who were made to feel like their abuse was their own fau

A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.

We can’t deny it any longer: there is a Black mental health crisis in our world today. Black people die at disproportionately high rates due to chronic illness, suffer from poverty, under-education, and the effects of racism. This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today’s world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care.

In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist and African American mental health expert Rheeda Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, how to combat stigma, spot potential mental illness, how to practice emotional wellness, and how to get the best care possible in system steeped in racial bias.

This breakthrough book will help you:

• Recognize mental and emotional health problems
• Understand the myriad ways in which these problems impact overall health and quality of life and relationships
• Develop psychological tools to neutralize ongoing stressors and live more fully
• Navigate a mental health care system that is unequal

It’s past time to take Black mental health seriously. Whether you suffer yourself, have a loved one who needs help, or are a mental health professional working with the Black community, this book is an essential and much-needed resource.

An expanded edition of Parks’ classic account of race relations in America, with previously unpublished images and texts

This expanded edition of Gordon Parks: Segregation Story includes around 30 previously unpublished photographs, as well as enhanced reproductions created from Parks’ original color transparencies; newly discovered descriptions Parks wrote for the photographs; a manuscript of film-developing instructions and captions Parks authored with Samuel F. Yette; previously published texts by the late art historian Maurice Berger and the esteemed journalist and civil rights activist Charlayne Hunter-Gault; and a new essay by artist Dawoud Bey.
After the photographs were first presented in a 1956 issue of Life magazine, the bulk of Parks’ assignment was thought to be lost. In 2011, five years after Parks’ death, the Gordon Parks Foundation found more than 200 color transparencies belonging to the series. In 2014 the series was first published as a book, and since then new photographs have been uncovered.
In the summer of 1956, Life magazine sent Gordon Parks to Alabama to document the daily realities of African Americans living under Jim Crow laws in the rural South. The resulting color photographs are among Parks’ most powerful images, and, in the decades since, have become emblematic representations of race relations in America. Pursued at grave danger to the photographer himself, the project was an important chapter in Parks’ career-long endeavor to use the camera as a weapon for social change.
Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was born into poverty and segregation in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. An itinerant laborer, he worked as a brothel pianist and railcar porter, among other jobs, before buying a camera at a pawnshop, training himself and becoming a photographer. He evolved into a modern-day Renaissance man, finding success as a film director, writer and composer. The first African American director to helm a major motion picture, he helped launch the blaxploitation genre with his film Shaft (1971). Parks died in 2006.

A powerful and expertly told novel in verse by an award-winning poet, about a 12-year-old Dominican American swimmer who is diagnosed with Juvenile Arthritis.

Aniana del Mar belongs in the water like a dolphin belongs to the sea. But she and Papi keep her swim practices and meets hidden from Mami, who has never recovered from losing someone she loves to the water years ago. That is, until the day Ani’s stiffness and swollen joints mean she can no longer get out of bed, and Ani is forced to reveal just how important swimming is to her. Mami forbids her from returning to the water but Ani and her doctor believe that swimming along with medication will help Ani manage her disease. What follows is the journey of a girl who must grieve who she once was in order to rise like the tide and become the young woman she is meant to be. Aniana Del Mar Jumps In is a poignant story about chronic illness and disability, the secrets between mothers and daughters, the harm we do to the ones we love the most—and all the triumphs, big and small, that keep us afloat.

Carole Boston Weatherford, a Caldecott Honor winner, creates a celebration of family roots in this uplifting tale about how one young girl sees her family history by looking into a mirror

As a young girl reflects on her family, she notices how her own characteristics are similar to the people around her. She discovers these shared traits create incredible family connections, and they also give each person the opportunity to contribute to the family tree .  

This heartfelt book celebrates the diversity of the people who love us and the joys of being connected to family!

I’ve got my father’s mouth

And my mother’s thick brown waves.

I’ve got my uncle’s chin

Though you can’t tell ‘til he shaves.

I’ve got my brother’s ears

And my sister’s big bright eyes.

I’ve got my grandpa’s hands

Twinkle the unicorn has a knack for finding adventure…but will she get to bed on time? This delightful title from the TEN MINUTES TO BED series is now available as a board book! Running through the forest, Twinkle is off on an exciting, new adventure. But will she get to bed on time? Weaving a journey from lively beginning to gentle end, the ten-minute countdown to bed is at the heart of this enchanting story. This beautifully illustrated board book is the perfect length for sending little ones off to sleep.

From the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author of When No One Is Watching comes a riveting thriller about the new caretaker of a historic estate who finds herself trapped on an island with a murderer—and the ghosts of her past. 

Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity.

Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers—including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect.

Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island—and their own past—or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.

Paperback Release: September 30, 2025

A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia―and sought to transform their lives.

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black?

These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit―the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start. Founded by the brilliant preacher Albert Cleage Jr., the Shrine of the Black Madonna combined Afrocentric Christian practice with radical social projects to transform the self-conception of its members. Central to this endeavor was the Shrine’s chancel mural of a Black Virgin and child, the icon of a nationwide liberation movement that would come to be known as Black Christian Nationalism. The Shrine’s members opened bookstores and co-ops, created a self-defense force, and raised their children communally, eventually working to establish the country’s largest Black-owned farm, where attempts to create an earthly paradise for Black people continues today.

Alongside the Shrine’s story, Robertson reflects on a diverse array of Black utopian visions, from the Reconstruction era through the countercultural fervor of the 1960s and 1970s and into the present day. By doing so, Robertson showcases the enduring quest of collectives and individuals for a world beyond the constraints of systemic racism.

The Black Utopians offers a nuanced portrait of the struggle for spaces―both ideological and physical―where Black dignity, protection, and nourishment are paramount. This book is the story of a movement and of a world still in the making―one that points the way toward radical alternatives for the future.

Read the sequel to the explosive, instant New York Times bestseller fantasy debut that People Magazine calls “unforgettable.” A Black teenager with magical powers returns to Caiman University only to find new dangers and new secrets.

It's Homecoming season at Caiman University, and all 17-year-old Malik Baron wants to do is be a regular college student…or as regular as he can get at a magical HBCU for young, Black Conjurers. He’s ready to go to parties, hang out with his new friends, choose a major, and talk to girls. Instead, he's reeling from a summer of revelations, heartbreak and betrayal, and still uncovering the truth about his powers and his legacy.

The family he only just discovered is already fractured beyond repair, and a new relative who shows up on his doorstep brings even more questions. Then there’s the mother he risked everything to find, who might be the biggest threat to the life he's trying to build. To protect his new community, Malik joins an elite secret society with roots in ancient magic.

His journey takes him even deeper into his own heritage and the history of the magical world, while bringing him closer to a classmate whose friendship might mean something more, if Malik is ready to let her in. But how can he use powers he can’t even control to defend a world he’s not sure will ever fully accept him? And as the pressure and danger builds, will he be able to confront the deepening cracks within the magical society, and those building within himself?

Nikki Grimes, Coretta Scott King Award winning author, and illustrator Elizabeth Zunon's latest children's masterpiece creates an imagination-fueled journey to bedtime.

Your bookshelf is noisy with stories.
"Which one?" I ask.
You point, frozen like a fawn
until you hear "Once upon a time."

It's bedtime, but Mommy's little boy is not sleepy.

He growls like a bear, he questions like an owl, he tosses his mane like a lion. He hunts for water like a sly wolf, and hides like a snake.

In her final novel, “a beautiful and devastating examination of family, society and race” (The New York Times), Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's Black bourgeoisie on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1950s.

Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from "a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions." Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community.

With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.

“Strikingly dramatic, yet simple and unrestrained . . . an unusual and intensely interesting book richly packed with strange information.”

—New York Times Book Review