“Outrageously creative! Kids will drink in every imaginative detail in El Toro’s wild world!” —Jeff Kinney, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series

From the Eisner Award Nominated World of ¡Vamos! series, Tough Times finds everyone’s favorite young luchador fighting a losing streak in an action-packed, graphic-novel-style El Toro & Friends paper-over-board reader by New York Times bestselling, three-time Pura Belpré Award–winning author-illustrator Raúl the Third.

The rookie Kid Toro hasn’t won a match in a long time. He loses to every wrestler he fights, from Al “the Crane” Scorpio to Prickly Pear to Burrobot. It feels like he’ll never win again!

Luckily, his coach, Ricky Raton, won’t let him give up so easily. As he reminds his young fighter what he does best, Kid Toro starts to realize that, when you get knocked down, getting back up makes all the difference.

Tackling Spanish phrases and packed full of humor, these Eisner-nominated early reader graphic novels are essential for readers who want an action-packed story and lots of laughs.

For more fun with El Toro & Friends, check out:

* Tag Team
* Tacos Today
* Team Up
* Training Day

From one of the most important figures in American journalism -- acclaimed historian, Pulitzer finalist, staff writer at the New Yorker, and dean of Columbia Journalism School--a devastatingly insightful collection of published and original work that paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of our last turbulent decade.

What just happened?

From the moment Trayvon Martin's senseless murder initiated the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, America has been convulsed by the new social movements--around guns, gender violence, sexual harrassment, race, policing, and on and on--and an equally powerful backlash. Jelani Cobb has been reporting and commenting on these changes--sometimes from the frontlines of places like Ferguson and Charleston, other times from a more studied remove, where he applies his gifts as a critic and background as a historian to penetrate the meaning of it all. He has written profiles of some of the key figures of the era--from directors and comedians to activists and politicians--and written on some of great cultural artifacts--film, television, and music. Through this shifting lens, he's captured the crises, the movements, and absurdity of an era--and helped readers understand what might be coming next.

As in this country's other great moments of turbulence, this has been an era of democratic expansion and contraction, the latest in a series of battles over what it means to be an American. Cobb strings this collection together with original work--the original pieces provide the connective tissue that helps readers see these powerful short dispatches as a cohesive, epic narrative of one of the most consequential, but hard to understand, eras in American history.

A major anthology that illuminates historical and contemporary solidarities between Black and Asian feminists.

A collaborative project between Black Women Radicals and the Asian American Feminist Collective, We Are Each Other's Liberation envisions a cross-racial and internationalist politics that explicitly addresses solidarity between Black and Asian feminists. Bringing together organizers, artists, journalists, poets, novelists, and more, this collection introduces readers to new ways of understanding and reflecting on race and feminism.

Drawing out lessons from the revolutionary work of movement forebearers―including the Combahee River Collective, Claudia Jones, Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, and Third World Women’s Alliance as well as struggles today―We Are Each Other’s Liberation offers an urgent call for the just future we might build together.

Winner of a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (Honorable Mention)The Mexican Revolution was a defining moment in the history of race relations, impacting both Mexican and African Americans. For black Westerners, 1910-1920 did not represent the clear-cut promise of populist power, but a reordering of the complex social hierarchy which had, since the nineteenth century, granted them greater freedom in the borderlands than in the rest of the United States. Despite its lasting significance, the story of black Americans along the Mexican border has been sorely underreported in the annals of U.S. history. Gerald Horne brings the tale to life in Black and Brown. Drawing on archives on both sides of the border, a host of cutting-edge studies and oral histories, Horne chronicles the political currents which created and then undermined the Mexican border as a relative safe haven for African Americans. His account addresses blacks' role as 'Indian fighters' the relationship between African Americans and immigrants, and the U.S. government's growing fear of black disloyalty, among other essential concerns of the period: the heavy reliance of the U.S. on black soldiers along the border placed white supremacy and national security on a collision course that was ultimately resolved in favor of the latter. Mining a forgotten chapter in American history, Black and Brown offers tremendous insight into the past and future of race relations along the Mexican border.

In her 100th book, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author

Brenda Jackson

blends heated sensuality and drama into a dazzling new novel featuring one her most unforgettable Madaris heroes yet…

One by one, Madaris men have surrendered to their grandmother's matchmaking. But Lee Madaris isn't letting anyone else control his destiny. He'll bring a bride of his own choosing to the family's holiday gathering—if his hotel's gorgeous new chef will agree to a marriage of convenience.

It's not just the chance to work at the Strip's hottest hotel that brought Carly Briggs to Vegas. Witnessing a crime in Miami may have made her a mob target. Though she's reluctant to complicate their working relationship, Lee's tempting offer is so hard to resist. And soon, desire is clouding their no-strings arrangement.

The danger that made Carly flee Miami is about to land at their door. So, Carly and Lee must decide who to trust, when to let go—and whether a love they never anticipated is strong enough to pass the ultimate test.

An inclusive, evidence-based guide to healing and thriving as a cis or trans queer man.

As a cis or trans man who loves men, you face unique and challenging circumstances, including homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia, struggles with body image, and rejection from family. In addition, the lingering effects of bigotry, discrimination, microaggressions, and hate crimes can have a traumatizing and devastating impact on your mental health and well-being. This compassionate guide offers powerful skills to help you heal the pain of trauma and thrive authentically in a world that often misunderstands or marginalizes your identity and experiences.

The Mental Health Guide for Cis and Trans Queer Guys offers you a safe, inclusive space to examine, understand, and heal from systemic and interpersonal threats to your mental well-being. Based on proven-effective cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this book provides proven-effective tools and exercises to help you reflect on, confront, and manage difficult emotions; improve self-image and self-esteem; and develop healthy coping skills.

This guidebook will help you:

* Cultivate greater self-awareness
* Move past negative thinking habits
* Heal emotional wounds and build resilience
* Challenge heteronormativity and gender role rigidity
* Care for your sexual health

Also included is a #DiggingDeeper community wellness campaign to help you reflect on the deeper questions of the book and share your own challenges and triumphs with others on social media.

If you’re struggling with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or trauma—or feel oppressed or misunderstood by the world around you—this book can help you overcome the negative internalized messages that are causing you emotional pain, and build the self-awareness, confidence, and courage needed to embrace your unique identity and thrive.

"In a world eager to promote the newest wunderkind, grandmother theology carries us two or more generations back: to the kitchens, hair salons, gardens, and church basements of older Black women who are often invisible in theological discourse but without whom the American Christian church would cease to exist."

The church mothers who raised Yolanda Pierce, dean of Howard University School of Divinity, were busily focused on her survival. In a world hostile to Black women's bodies and spirits, they had to be. Born on a former cotton plantation and having fled the terrors of the South, Pierce's grandmother raised her in the faith inherited from those who were enslaved. Now in paperback, In My Grandmother's House follows Pierce as she reckons with that tradition, building an everyday womanist theology rooted in liberating scriptures, experiences in the Black church, and truths from Black women's lives. Pierce tells stories that center the experiences of those living on the underside of history, teasing out the tensions of race, spirituality, trauma, freedom, resistance, and memory. The paperback features a new readers' guide, written by the author, that is useful for individual reflection and group discussion.

A grandmother's theology carries wisdom strong enough for future generations. The Divine has been showing up at the kitchen tables of Black women for a long time. It's time to get to know that God.

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured―the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

Black Magic looks at the origins, meaning, and uses of Conjure―the African American tradition of healing and harming that evolved from African, European, and American elements―from the slavery period to well into the twentieth century. Illuminating a world that is dimly understood by both scholars and the general public, Yvonne P. Chireau describes Conjure and other related traditions, such as Hoodoo and Rootworking, in a beautifully written, richly detailed history that presents the voices and experiences of African Americans and shows how magic has informed their culture. Focusing on the relationship between Conjure and Christianity, Chireau shows how these seemingly contradictory traditions have worked together in a complex and complementary fashion to provide spiritual empowerment for African Americans, both slave and free, living in white America.

As she explores the role of Conjure for African Americans and looks at the transformations of Conjure over time, Chireau also rewrites the dichotomy between magic and religion. With its groundbreaking analysis of an often misunderstood tradition, this book adds an important perspective to our understanding of the myriad dimensions of human spirituality.

Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he's been transformed into a white man. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he's been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways.

A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. As he did in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, Barrett brilliantly depicts life in contemporary Nigeria and details the double-dealing and code-switching that are implicit in everyday business. But it's Furo's search for an identity--one deeper than skin--that leads to the final unraveling of his own carefully constructed story.

'Master of the jaw-dropping twist' S MAGAZINE

'An edge-of-your-seat thriller that'll keep you guessing right until the end, get this to the top of your reading pile' HEAT

** Pre-order the new heart-stopping emotional thriller from the Queen of the Big Reveal **

Robyn 'Avril' Managa was twelve when she witnessed her controlling and abusive father murder her mother. Put into care while her well-connected father was given a new identity in Witness Protection, Robyn has lived with the trauma of that day ever since.

Now in her twenties, Robyn has decided she wants a family reunion - so is killing people connected to her father's case, leaving on their bodies the note: GIVE HIM TO ME.

Dr Kez Lanyon is called onto the case. But can Kez get into Robyn's mind before she kills again? Or is she about to become Avril's latest victim?

Profiler and therapist Kez Lanyon returns in a gripping new stand-alone novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Dorothy Koomson.

Readers love Dorothy Koomson:

'Raw, emotive and chilling'

'Full of shocks and surprises . . . another hard hitting, psychologically thrilling page turner'

'Jaw-dropping, totally unexpected'

'Terrifyingly authentic, twisty and compelling'

'A must read!'

Meet rock star Layla and her team of Bots!

Pick a book. Grow a Reader!This series is part of Scholastic's early chapter book line Branches, aimed at newly independent readers. With easy-to-read text, high-interest content, fast-paced plots, and illustrations on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and stamina. Branches books help readers grow!Layla and the Bots are in an awesome rock band! They also use problem-solving and creativity to build cool inventions. When a local amusement park is in danger of shutting down, Layla knows just how to bring in the crowds... build an amusement park for DOGS! But will cool doggie rides like the Rub-a-Dub Mud Slide and the Tummy Rubbing Machine be enough to keep the park open? With full-color artwork on every page and speech bubbles throughout, this early chapter book series brings kid-friendly STEAM topics to young readers!

Adapted from Clint Smith's #1 New York Times bestselling and universally acclaimed How the Word Is Passed, this must-read narrative takes readers to historical sites across America, exploring the legacy of slavery to help readers make sense of our nation's past and present, and be better stewards of their own future.

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads young readers through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—offering an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to school, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods (like downtown Manhattan) on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved people has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, this adaptation of Clint Smith’s #1 bestselling, award-winning work of nonfiction offers kids a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country, and shows how they can reckon with the past and present to become better stewards of their future.

A self-empowering wellness guide that celebrates the roots of self-care and community care as a sustaining force for generations of Black women. Bloom How You Must is a love letter to the millions of Black women who want a less stressful life but don’t know where to begin. 

Self-care isn’t a trend among Black women; it has always been a throughline in our heritage. Consider Coretta Scott King, who along with fellow activists Betty Shabazz and Myrlie Evers-Williams, would enjoy “girls’ trips” to take a break from the stress of the Civil Rights Movement. Remember their contemporary Rosa Parks attended (and led) yoga classes while on the front lines for Black rights in Detroit.

Think of the enduring friendship between Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King, a sisterhood in which they have leaned on each other for nearly forty years while thriving in the glaring media and entertainment spotlight.

Picture Toni Morrison’s overflowing gardens and lush houseplants she tended while writing classics like Beloved and The Bluest Eye.

Recall Audre Lord’s enduring declaration written after her second cancer diagnosis: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

Bloom How You Must explores and expands on this self-care legacy and shows how it can help every Black woman today.

Tara Pringle Jefferson excavates the roots of self-care and community care as a sustaining force for generations of Black women and transforms her findings into a blueprint women can follow in their daily lives. A blend of guidebook and journal, Bloom How You Must explores several distinct pillars of wellness, featuring:

* Research from leading wellness experts
* Interviews with women aged 19–99
* Stories of personal experience
* Overviews and explanations of each component of self-care
* Dedicated pages for readers to reflect on each chapter
* Exercises to put wellness into practice
* Easy-to-follow explanatory graphics and sidebars

With its diversity of insights,practical skills and multigenerational focus, Bloom How You Must is a love letter to the millions of Black women who want a less stressful life but don’t know where to begin. Bloom How You Must gives them the tools they need to improve their health and their daily lives.

NEXT BIG IDEA CLUB's November 2023 Must Read Books • LIBRARY JOURNAL EDITOR PICK •

“A groundbreaking book, both bold in its premise and precise in its exploration of systemic racism in the workplace. This could not be a more urgent and necessary blueprint for progress.”—Bakari Sellers, New York Times bestselling author of My Vanishing Country

“Provides a trailblazing antiracist framework for us all.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist

"This vital and accessible study is a must-read for anyone concerned with workplace equality."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

A leading sociologist reveals why racial inequality persists in the workplace despite today’s multi-billion-dollar diversity industry—and provides actionable solutions for creating a truly equitable, multiracial future.

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to advancement and mobility—ignored and failed Black people. While explicit discrimination no longer occurs, and organizations make internal and public pledges to honor and achieve “diversity,” inequities persist through what Adia Harvey Wingfield calls the “gray areas:” the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that are now more important than ever. The reality is that Black employees are less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions.

Wingfield has spent a decade examining inequality in the workplace, interviewing over two hundred Black subjects across professions about their work lives. In Gray Areas, she introduces seven of them: Alex, a worker in the gig economy Max, an emergency medicine doctor; Constance, a chemical engineer; Brian, a filmmaker; Amalia, a journalist; Darren, a corporate vice president; and Kevin, who works for a nonprofit.

In this accessible and important antiracist work, Wingfield chronicles their experiences and blends them with history and surprising data that starkly show how old models of work are outdated and detrimental. She demonstrates the scope and breadth of gray areas and offers key insights and suggestions for how they can be fixed, including shifting hiring practices to include Black workers; rethinking organizational cultures to centralize Black employees’ experience; and establishing pathways that move capable Black candidates into leadership roles. These reforms would create workplaces that reflect America’s increasingly diverse population—professionals whose needs organizations today are ill-prepared to meet.

It’s time to prepare for a truly equitable, multiracial future and move our culture forward. To do so, we must address the gray areas in our workspaces today. This definitive work shows us how.

Gray Areas includes 15 black-and-white images and a photo insert.

A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of Loss

“A novel so wonderful, when I got to the last page, I turned to the first and began again.”—Sandra Cisneros
"A grand and stirring love story, written in exquisite prose . . . [a] sheer delight!"—Namwali Serpell

When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.

Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

A visual celebration of André Leon Talley’s life that centers his personal style as a lens on his contributions to fashion history.

This lavish volume reflects on the life of André Leon Talley and his impactful ascent to the height of global fashion. Many of Talley’s most iconic looks—from his suits and straw Breton boater in Paris of the late seventies to the opulent custom capes and coats he made famous—are newly photographed and presented alongside archival imagery.

From his days as Diana Vreeland’s apprentice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to Andy Warhol’s Factory and Interview Magazine, to Paris bureau chief for Women’s Wear Daily, to positions at W, The New York Times, Ebony, and Vogue, where he served as the magazine’s first African American creative director, Talley’s exuberant personality and voice guided thousands through the glamorous world of high fashion.

Essays, stories, and memories from industry luminaries who experienced his singular character reflect on a legacy in fashion spanning more than four decades. A posthumous commemoration of Talley, this celebratory volume offers a rare view into his world, the people who shared it, and the creation of one of the most iconic figures in fashion history.

From the award-winning author of the Jada Jones chapter books comes an illustrated spin-off series perfect for STEM fans!

When Miles and his friend RJ team up for their school's bake sale, they embark on a journey filled with sweet treats, friendship, and a dash of science. Miles is confident that Nana's famous tea cakes will win the prize, but he's feeling the pressure from RJ, who wants to win the prize money to replace his mom's treasured keepsake that he accidentally broke. Through baking mishaps and heartfelt moments, they discover that the true recipe for success lies in honesty, teamwork, and adding a special ingredient—love.

A love just for show grows into something more in this swoonworthy romance from the author of The Romantic Agenda.

Zinnia is an ambitious, successful businesswoman who is not about to wait around for her One True Love. She turns her dating profile into a marriage-merger proposal: a few strategic meetings, move in together, get married—all within thirty days. Her friends think it will never work… until she meets Jordan, a near-perfect applicant with a big secret.

Jordan’s family has spent the last decade starring in a massively popular reality show about their lives. He has finally agreed to join the cast, but production wants him to marry an actress (his ex) in a romantic storyline to boost viewership.

Convinced Zinnia is perfect for the role instead, Jordan proposes a mutually beneficial marriage agreement: she gets her business partner husband, and he gets to help his family on his terms. Together they face strict schedules, wild plot twists, and behind-the-scenes hostilities, all while acting like besotted newlyweds—an intense performance that evolves into a relationship they never expected.

As the line between reality and show blurs, Zinnia and Jordan must choose between a clean contract or a beautifully messy love story.

Squid Game meets Dear Justyce in an explosive young adult novel about a teenage girl on death row who competes on a reality show in hopes of winning her freedom.

Last Chance Live! is the most popular reality show in America—and eighteen-year-old death row inmate Eternity Price’s last chance to live. Getting cast on the show could win her clemency preventing her execution… if she can convince the viewing audience she deserves a second chance. The catch? If America doesn’t vote for her, she loses the chance to appeal her sentence, and she’ll be executed within a week of being eliminated from the show. And since Eternity’s been unpopular her whole life, she’s terrified America won’t pick her. But any chance of getting out of prison and back to her little brother Sincere, no matter how slim, is better than rotting away in her cell.

Eternity never expected to find her first real friends in a reality TV house full of people battling for survival after being convicted of capital crimes, but that’s exactly what happens. So when she gets the opportunity to sabotage them and secure her own victory, she has a choice to make: protect the friendships and acceptance she’s always longed for at the cost of her own life, or sacrifice her newfound community. Eternity must ultimately decide what forgiveness, family, and freedom mean to her, and how far she’ll go to win a game where the stakes are literally life or death.

The first of two steamy and entertaining romance novels, published under the beloved and distinguished author’s real name for the first time

You never know what’s going on behind someone’s groove.

New York City, April 2002: Geneva, Crystal, Noah, and Chevy, a close friend group, are all mid-thirty, flirty—and ready to embrace the heat of the summer.

But behind closed doors, each of them has struggles of their own: Geneva keeps accidentally falling for the charms of her good-for-nothing ex-husband; Crystal is a high-flying executive with a picture-perfect life and a boyfriend who might just be too good to be true; Noah is attempting to keep the spark alive between him and his European boyfriend, but the flames of temptation keep catching fire in the most unexpected of places; and then there’s Chevy, who couldn’t care less about love and only wants a life of champagne dinners and designer bags, no matter the cost.

But as the city heats up and tensions keep bubbling under the surface, Chevy gets entangled with a hot and mysterious stranger. The group must come together to save their friend before it’s too late—and before secrets break their forever friendship.

A profound and unparalleled literary voice, Zadie Smith returns with a resounding collection of essays

In the past two decades, few writers have mastered the craft and art of the essay in the way that Zadie Smith has. Her writing, at once an occasion for personal reckoning and communal reflection, studies the fault lines that divide us and consistently finds grounds for solidarity and compassion.

This eagerly awaited new collection brings Smith’s dexterity as an essayist to bear on a range of subjects that have captured her attention in recent years. Organized in five thematic sections—eyeballing, considering, reconsidering, mourning, and confessing—she unspools intimate dialogues with various sources of inspiration. She takes an exhilaratingly close look at artists Toyin Ojih Odutola and Kara Walker. She invites us along to the movies in her review of Tár, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and to her desk while researching the Tichborne trial and writing her New York Times bestselling novel The Fraud. She asks us to take another look at Flannery O'Connor and to mourn with her the passing of writers Joan Didion, Martin Amis, Hilary Mantel, Philip Roth, and Toni Morrison. And she shows us once again in Dead and Alive her unrivaled ability to think through, critically and humanely, some of the most urgent preoccupations of our troubled times.

With an eye toward the past and the present, Smith examines what it means to identify with our contemporary world and the history that frames it.

The National Book Award, PEN/Voelcker Award, and NAACP Image Award winner returns with another inventive and boundary-breaking book: a sensual journey ignited in the archives of iconic queer Alexandrian poet C. P. Cavafy.

In her first book, Robin Coste Lewis’s poems exploded the imagery of the Black female figure from antiquity through the present day. Her second book was an expansive hybrid photographic and poetic study of human migration and the human family. Now she delivers a “poem in four parts,” which originated as a musical, visual, and lyrical collaboration with the composer Vijay Iyer, cellist Jeffrey Zeigler, and visual artist Julie Mehretu, with Lewis on the microphone offering a live reading of this sequence. Ignited by their encounters with Cavafy’s archive, in the heart of Athens, the multimedia quartet exalted the liminal spaces where desire and diaspora meet—where art often asserts itself most forcefully. In this volume, Lewis brings this performance to life on the page, where the poem weaves in and out of Cavafy’s bedrooms, notebooks, and the suppressed erotic excavation underpinning all of his work. Lewis converses directly with Mr. Cavafy: “often you / reminded us that // the only true / barbarians are the ones / raging in silence inside // of our own / minds.” But she also brings equal parts of herself to this study of artistry and sensuality, as in the short, tender section entitled “Cavafy in Compton/Closet Anthem: Self-Portrait at Sixteen, 1979.”

As in all Lewis’s works, here she reaches across centuries to express what is timeless and not bound by our current moment or our single selves: the discipline and glory of art, the give-and-take of love, the kiss that lives in the moment, and the unfolding journey of being human, whose contours become clear only with the passage of time, the igniting of memory, and the words we find to describe the journey.

Sweeping from the eighteenth century to futurist fabulations, Black Bell harmonizes poetry with performance art practices in an investigation of fugitivity.

Inspired by the nineteenth century image of an enslaved woman wearing iron horns and bells, Alison C. Rollins’s Black Bell continues an exploration of cataloging individual experience and collective memory. As Rollins sets out to resuscitate and embody the archive, we see a chorus of historical figures like Eliza Harris, Henry “Box” Brown, and Lear Green; readers can listen in as Phillis Wheatley takes a Turing test or venture through Dante’s Inferno remixed with Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers. Poems travel across time and space, between the eighteenth century and futuristic fabulations, vibrating with fugitive frequencies, sounds of survival, and nerve-wracking notes tuned toward love and liberation. Black Bell navigates what it means to be both invisible and spectacle, hidden and on display, allowing lyric language to become the material for fashioning wearable sculptures akin to Nick Cave’s “soundsuits.” Integrating performance art practices, metalwork, and sonic, Black Bell becomes multimedia meditation on freedom seeking, furthering the possibilities of both the page and the canvas of the poet’s body.

When Michigan bookshop owner and mystery writer Samantha Washington and her sister, Jenna, agreed to host a class for seniors on estate planning, they didn’t plan on discovering shady doings at Shady Acres Retirement Village . . .

Nana Jo has volunteered her lawyer granddaughter, Jenna, to teach estate planning to retirees—with Sam providing her bookshop as the venue. But during the seminar, entitled Getting Your Ducks in Order, it quickly becomes clear someone’s up to Fowl Play. When elderly Alva Tarkington, accompanied by her niece, sits down for a consultation, Sam realizes the woman’s frequent blinking is actually Morse Code—S.O.S. The sisters get her alone, and Alva tells them she believes her life is in danger and must change her will . . .

Unfortunately, Alva is found dead the next day—seemingly from natural causes. But Nana Jo and the sisters suspect otherwise. In between penning her latest historical mystery, set in 1939 as England declares war on Germany and Lady Elizabeth Marsh pursues stolen paintings and a traitor, Sam teams up with the senior sleuths of Shady Acres to search for motives—beginning with Alva’s family. They soon learn not everyone is who they say they are, and someone is more than qualified to teach a class on cold-blooded murder . . .

The #1 New York Times bestselling picture book by Tiffany Hammond, the creator of the popular Fidgets and Fries platform, invites readers into the life of an Autistic family who communicate without spoken language.

Aidan doesn't talk with words. He uses a tablet, tapping buttons with pictures to show what he means.

When Mama taps “Park . . . now?” Aidan quickly taps back “Yes.” And after Aidan twirls and twirls in the grass until he can no longer stand, he taps, “All done.”

Not everyone understands their family's unique way of communicating, though. Some think that because Aidan doesn't say words, he doesn't know words. But verbal speech isn't the only way we can connect with others. We can use tablets and letter boards, facial expressions, hand gestures, and written words.

With tenderness and heart, A Day with No Words illuminates the many unique ways people can understand each other, even if they don't speak.

Link and Hud are back with more mischief and mayhem in the series “full of Black boy joy, brother love, and silliness” (Book Riot).

Deep sea treasure hunting. Supersonic water walking. Swimming with sharks.

Lincoln and Hudson Dupré are brothers with active imaginations. When one of their imaginary adventures leads to the outdoor pool at the recreation center being closed, they’re faced with a choice: join the Sharks swim team or miss out on swimming altogether. But Coach Strickler is old-school and runs his team by the rules. Will the boys outwit their coach, make practice fun―and make the team?

Black-and-white illustrations throughout

Evan Wilde is a poor working-class girl. She writes contracts on behalf of wealthier folks who want to exchange a bit of their life for minor deals with devils. It’s not until she is bleeding out, the unwilling victim of an outlawed contract sacrifice, that Evan draws a contract for herself: A devil can take the last of her life―all she wants is revenge.

With the help of a devil named Jack, Evan infiltrates the upper class by posing as one of their own to bring them down from the inside.

For the first time, Evan finds friends and maybe even love. And with time she realizes that for all their corruption, the upper class’s magic is what keeps the devils at bay. Can she condemn the world to ruin to satisfy her need for vengeance?

But a contract cannot be broken, except at a devil’s mercy. And Jack has none.

“Patricia Smith is the greatest living poet. Every book is better than the last.” —Danez Smith, The Guardian

A collection of the finest new and selected poems from one of the most groundbreaking voices in contemporary poetry, a “masterful performer and poet of voices too little heard” (Poetry Foundation).

The Intentions of Thunder gathers, for the first time, the essential work from across Patricia Smith’s decorated career. Here, Smith’s poems, affixed with her remarkable gift of insight, present a rapturous ode to life. With careful yet vaulting movement, these poems traverse the redeeming landscape of pain, confront the frightening revelations of history, and disclose the joyous possibilities of the future. The result is a profound testament to the necessity of poetry—all the careful witness, embodied experience, and bristling pleasure that it bestows—and of Smith’s necessary voice.

Lyrical and sly, meditative and volcanic, The Intentions of Thunder stunningly explores the fullness of living. The inimitable poetry of Patricia Smith radiates in The Intentions of Thunder—reaffirming Smith’s place as one of the indispensable poets of our time.

A photographic look at Brooklyn's iconic Empire Roller Disco by photographer Patrick D. Pagnano.

Brooklyn’s Empire Rollerdrome opened its doors in 1941 and soon became the borough’s premier destination for recreational and competitive roller skating. But it wasn’t until the late 1970s that the celebrated rink reached iconic status by replacing its organist with a live DJ, installing a state of the art sound and light system, and renaming itself after the nationwide dance craze it had helped to originate: the Empire Roller Disco was born. In 1980, the acclaimed street photographer Patrick D. Pagnano went on assignment to document the Empire and its legendary cast of partygoers. The resulting photographs, gathered in Empire Roller Disco for the first time, capture the vibrant spirits, extraordinary styles, and sheer joys of Brooklyn roller disco at its dizzying peak.

The bestselling, definitive study of African Americans throughout American history, now with a new introduction by noted scholar V. P. Franklin.

In The Negro in the Making of America, eminent historian Benjamin Quarles provides one of the most comprehensive and readable accounts ever gathered in one volume of the role that African Americans have played in shaping the destiny of America. Starting with the arrival of the slave ships in the early 1600s and moving through the Colonial period, the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and into the last half of the twentieth century, Quarles chronicles the sweep of events that have brought blacks and their struggle for social and economic equality to the forefront of American life.

Through compelling portraits of central political, historical, and artistic figures such as Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Quarles illuminates the African American contributions that have enriched the cultural heritage of America. This classic history also covers black participation in politics, the rise of a black business class, and the forms of discrimination experienced by blacks in housing, employment, and the media.

Quarles's groundbreaking work not only surveys the role of black Americans as they engaged in the dual, simultaneous processes of assimilating into and transforming the culture of their country, but also, in a portrait of the white response to blacks, holds a mirror up to the deeper moral complexion of our nation's history. The restoration of this history holds a redemptive quality—one that can be used, in the author's words, as a "vehicle for present enlightenment, guidance, and enrichment."