"The Chicago-born artist Charles White (1918–79) was celebrated during his lifetime for depictions of African-American men, women and children that acquired the name “images of dignity. White’s draftsmanship, his direct address of the social and political concerns of his time, and his commitment to media that gave his art wide circulation established him as a major artist, and one with significant influence both on his contemporaries and on later generations.

Beginning with White’s early days as an artist in the Chicago of the 1930s and ’40s, moving through his time spent developing his craft in New York in the late 1940s and ’50s, and closing with his final decades as a revered figure in Los Angeles, Charles White: Black Pope explores the artist’s practice and strategies through consideration of key works. It devotes particularly close examination to his late masterwork "Black Pope (Sandwich Board Man)," in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. By creating visually compelling, ideologically complex works that engage audiences on many levels, White established himself as a key figure of his time, one whose work continues to resonate today."

Combining representation and abstraction, Abney's vibrant works reference gender, sexuality and pop culture

Committed to sharing social realities through fantastic, expansive forms, Nina Chanel Abney is an artist possessed of an iconic style and wit. Through stylized, cubistic and highly charged painterly symbols, she references radical traditions of graphic design and street art to communicate urgent political and cultural realities with immediacy to the largest possible audience. Abney’s paintings and collages use dynamic color and form to draw viewers into complex narratives.
Big Butch Energy/Synergy features Abney’s recent exhibitions at ICA Miami and moCa Cleveland. In these works, Abney mines cinematic and media representations of student Greek life to explore how gender perception and performance is inspired by the legacies of social ritual and visual culture. The complex compositions reference scenes from popular slapstick comedy films such as National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) and Porky’s (1981), while citing traditions of Baroque portraiture and fraternity composites. Inspired by her experience as a masculine-of-center woman, with this body of work Abney asks how viewers gender a figure in a work of art.
Nina Chanel Abney was born in 1982 in Harvey, Illinois, and is based in New York, where she attended Parsons School of Design. Abney’s work is held in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Bronx Museum, New York; the Nasher Museum of Art, North Carolina; and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, among others.

This book was published in conjunction with Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami/Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

‘I may pay rent to a friend for my place in Greensboro, but the South’s my landlord; and I’m trapped in its stomach trying to get to its brain. Here, I see butterflies with Confederate flag-grown wings and minstrel vestiges of Daddy Rice collecting dough. I can’t move because I’m stuck in Aunt Jemima’s syrup.’ Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body is the highly anticipated first book by artist, filmmaker, and writer RaMell Ross. Bringing together Ross’s large-format photographs, sculptures, conceptual works, and selected films, together with illuminating texts by Ross and a host of writers, this ambitious publication presents a chronicle of the American South that is both mysterious and quotidian, a historical document and a radical imagining of the future. The book opens with a series of illuminating colour photographs from Hale County, Alabama, Ross’s adoptive home and the setting of his Academy Award-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018). It then moves through a series of photographic and mixed-media works and writings that examine, deconstruct, and rewrite visual representations of the South. Amidst these works, at the book’s heart, is Ross’s film Return to Origin, a remarkable conceptual work in which Ross freight ships himself in a 4x8-foot box – a nod to Henry Brown who shipped himself to freedom in 1849. With Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body, Ross creates a new visual narrative of the South, freed from its iconic meanings to reveal the earth, dirt, soil, and land beneath. With texts by RaMell Ross, Tracy K. Smith, Richard McCabe, and Scott Matthews

Black Gurl Reliable does the original work of curating Black girls’ and women’s experiences and experiential knowledge, indexing sociocultural tactics (schooling) that foreclose Black girl aliveness, while advancing embodiment as a key ingredient of Black mattering. Elevating Black Girlhood Studies as an ethos, narratives presented offer redress to inequities and hauntings of race-gender structures of dominance and position Black girls and girlhood as more than lamentation and what happens to the body. Hill solicits the strength and utility of arts-based methods in capturing identity, performance, and experimental design for ephemerality and improvisation. Hill makes clear Black feminism’s insistence that knowledge and possibility are produced through the body.

As a means of mitigating the deleterious effects of schooling on Black girls’ and women’s bodies and making legible the insights and knowledge produced from schooling experiences, Hill introduces the concept of Transgressngroove. This living feminist practice explores the relationships between Black girlhood, education, and the body, as researched for over a decade through workshops, consulting, classrooms, personal development, and other teaching/learning spaces.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In his final years, one of America’s greatest writers envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project had never been published before acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined them to compose his Academy Award-nominated documentary.

“Thrilling…. A portrait of one man’s confrontation with a country that, murder by murder, as he once put it, ‘devastated my universe.’” —The New York Times

Peck weaves these texts together, brilliantly imagining the book that Baldwin never wrote with selected published and unpublished passages, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.

This edition contains more than 40 black-and-white images from the film.

A young adventurer must test their skills as a hero while navigating new challenges, friendships, and rivalries in the next blockbuster Minecraft novel. Welcome to Adventure School!

Hero Crowe’s Adventure School is the stuff of legends. Every year, aspiring heroes across the Overworld wait to see where the mysterious school will pop up this time. But before students can even make it to the front steps, they must pass a dangerous admissions test.

Belinda knows she can pass. She has to pass. She needs to prove to everyone (most of all herself) that she’s not a coward, and she is certain that winning the school’s glorious chest of rare, valuable items is the way to do it. She just needs to make sure she wins without revealing too much about her past.

Belinda has competition, though. She and countless other students are up against hair-raising mobs, secret rooms, and saboteurs, facing challenge after challenge as they battle their way through Hero Crowe’s unusual “lessons.” While some students think working together is the best strategy, others prefer the whole lone wolf thing. After all, Hero said there could be only one victor.

Navigating new friendships, rivalries, and plenty of danger, Belinda discovers just what it takes to be a hero. But in the end, will she win the prize and become the school’s one true hero?

An NPR Best Book of the Year * The stunning sequel to the critically acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestseller Dear Martin. An incarcerated teen writes letters to his best friend about his experiences in the American juvenile justice system.

An unflinching look into the tragically flawed practices and silenced voices in the American juvenile justice system.

Vernell LaQuan Banks and Justyce McAllister grew up a block apart in the Southwest Atlanta neighborhood of Wynwood Heights. Years later, though, Justyce walks the illustrious halls of Yale University . . . and Quan sits behind bars at the Fulton Regional Youth Detention Center.

Through a series of flashbacks, vignettes, and letters to Justyce--the protagonist of Dear Martin--Quan's story takes form. Troubles at home and misunderstandings at school give rise to police encounters and tough decisions. But then there's a dead cop and a weapon with Quan's prints on it. What leads a bright kid down a road to a murder charge? Not even Quan is sure.

"A powerful, raw, must-read told through the lens of a Black boy ensnared by our broken criminal justice system." -Kirkus, Starred Review

A cunning teen memory merchant falls for the handsome rookie officer on her tail in this swoony dystopian romance that's “one to watch” (Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of The Isles of the Gods)

In 2364, eighteen-year-old Liv Newman dreams of a future beyond her lower-class life in the Metro. As a Proxy, she uses the neurochip in her brain to sell memories to wealthy clients. Maybe a few illegally, but money equals freedom. So when a customer offers her a ludicrous sum to go on an assignment in no-man’s-land, Liv accepts. Now she just has to survive.

Rookie Forceman Adrian Rao believes in order over all. After discovering that a renegade Proxy’s shady dealings are messing with citizens’ brain chemistry, he vows to extinguish the threat. But when he tracks Liv down, there’s one problem: her memories are gone. Can Adrian bring himself to condemn her for crimes she doesn’t remember?

As Liv and Adrian navigate the world beyond the Metro and their growing feelings for one another, they grapple with who they are, who they could be, and whether another way of living is possible.

A sweeping look back at the protest movements that changed America from activist and NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with personal and historical insights into lessons they can teach us today

For many, it can feel like change takes too long, and it might seem that we have not moved very far. But political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar believes that public protest is a vital part of affecting change, even if that change doesn’t come “right now.”

In We All Want to Change the World, he examines the activism of people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, the fight for women’s and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War. At a time in our history when we are witnessing protests across campuses, within the labor movement, and following the killing of George Floyd, Abdul-Jabbar reminds us that protests are a lifeblood of our history:

“Protest movements, even peaceful ones, are never popular at first. . . . But there is a reason protest gatherings have been so frequent throughout history: They are effective. The United States exists because of them.”

Part history lesson and part personal reminiscences of his own activism, We All Want to Change the World will resonate with anyone who recognizes the need for social change and is willing to do the work to make it happen.

How can you trust your heart in a world that’s plastic? The story of a teen girl who longs to escape the spotlight, and the PR relationship that helps her find real happiness.

"Smart, fearless, romantic, and so very alive." — Casey McQuiston, New York Times bestselling author of Red, White and Royal Blue

Growing up in the public eye, Kia would gladly give up her privileged life as the daughter of a reality star for the freedom to find her own way—go to high school parties, gossip with the drama club, apply to college, make mistakes, and fall in love like any other teen.

Then she meets Cass, and he offers a glimpse at the ordinary life she craves. But Cass is a rising star in his own right, and what starts as something sweet and undefined soon becomes a magnet for rumor and speculation—as if first love wasn’t messy enough on its own.

The pressure of the spotlight takes its toll, chipping away at Kia’s sense of self, pushing and pulling and reshaping her—body and mind—to fit the expectations of everyone around her. But what does Kia want for herself? And can her fragile new relationship survive the fallout?

An all-new re-imagining of the legendary Black Panther comics arc, Panther’s Rage, from an award-winning author.

T'Challa, the Black Panther, returns to Wakanda to show Monica Lynne his home. But he finds violence in the streets, discontent brewing in his people, and the name Killmonger following him everywhere he goes. When a revered storyteller—and T'Challa's mentor—is murdered, he uncovers the first threads of a growing rebellion that threatens to engulf his beloved Wakanda.

Wakanda’s high-tech king must travel the savannah, into the deepest jungles and up the snow-topped mountains of his homeland in this prose adaptation of the landmark comics series by Don McGregor, Rich Buckler and Billy Graham. Discover the life and culture of the Wakandans, and see T'Challa channel the strength of his ancient bloodline to take out foes such as Venomm, Malice and the fearsome Erik Killmonger!

The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book

People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel. 

Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.

Welcome to “the mommune.”

From New York Times bestselling author Domenica Ruta comes a heartfelt, hilarious novel about a single mom reimagining what the perfect family can look like.

“A delight, a romp, a tale of redemption; sexy and relatable, heartwarming and true . . . This story will resound as a rallying cry for mothers everywhere for generations to come.”—Chelsea Bieker, author of Madwoman

Sandy thought she was making her greatest mistake yet when she got unexpectedly pregnant in her mid-thirties by a dating-app flop. Now, her baby Rosie is the love of her life, but trying to co-parent with her daughter’s dad, a wannabe rock star, is a challenge—and seems to be veering into catastrophe territory when Sandy finds out through social media that her daughter has a half-sibling Sandy doesn’t know anything about.

Enter her ex’s ex, Stephanie, the other mother. Sandy is prepared to hate her but when the two women meet, they are shocked to learn how much they have in common beyond the deadbeat father their children share. Now Sandy needs to figure out what her and Rosie’s family looks like with all these new additions. Could life in a “mommune” be the answer to her prayers, or just a new brand of chaos?

In this winning story of family both born and chosen, Sandy is about to discover that when nothing goes as planned, the best things become possible.

An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.

Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on vulnerability: the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn’t, does that make our belief true?

In Scattered Snows, to the North, Phillips looks though the window of the past in order to understand the essential sameness of the human condition―“Tears / were tears,” mistakes were made and regretted or not regretted, and it mattered until it didn’t, the way people live until they don’t. And there was also joy. And beauty. “Yet the world’s still / so beautiful . . . Sometimes // it is . . .” And it was enough. And it still can be.

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, this astounding autobiography brings to life a remarkable man changed the world —and still inspires the desires, hopes, and dreams of us all.

Martin Luther King: the child and student who rebelled against segregation. The dedicated minister who questioned the depths of his faith and the limits of his wisdom. The loving husband and father who sought to balance his family’s needs with those of a growing, nationwide movement. And to most of us today, the world-famous leader who was fired by a vision of equality for people everywhere.

Relevant and insightful, The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. offers King’s seldom disclosed views on some of the world’s greatest and most controversial figures: John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Lyndon B. Johnson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Richard Nixon. It paints a moving portrait of a people, a time, and a nation in the face of powerful change. And it shows how Americans from all walks of life can make a difference if they have the courage to hope for a better future.

In this erotic combination of fantasy and how-to guide, channel your passions and turn your dreams—and your partner's dreams—into reality. 

"Many people tend to think that fantasies are far-fetched and out of reach, that they are just for those girls—you know, the girls you've spent your whole life convincing others you're nothing like. Well, it's time to change our way of thinking and become more open to being just like those girls in our relationships. It's time to turn your fantasies, and your partner's fantasies, into reality, and not just on birthdays and holidays or when your man finally paints the garage. They should never be just for special occasions, but an active part of your everyday life. From this point forward, you should take a bold step, make a liberating decision. It's time to make fantasies and role-playing a regular part of your sexual agenda!" —Karrine Steffans

Some of the chapters include:
 
* Defilement
* Domination
* The One-Man Gangbang
* Paid Escort
* Self-Pleasure
* If I Have To Show You What To Do, Why Are You Here?
* Swingers

"Passion, heat and deep emotion—Naima Simone is a gem!" —Maisey Yates, New York Times bestselling author

He’s the best mistake she ever made…

Back in Rose Bend after a work trip that went wrong, Florence “Flo” Dennison craves the kind of distraction only a searing fling with a gorgeous stranger can provide. And she gets it—in an encounter hot enough to leave scars. But satisfaction turns to shock when Flo realizes her one-night stand is leading the restoration project she’s been hired to photograph. And his sweet little girl has decided Flo’s her new bestie…

Single dad and architect Adam Reed wants stability for his daughter, and he’s sure that Flo—young, ambitious, beautiful—isn’t looking for that. But when his nanny bails and Flo helps him out, it becomes impossible to keep their distance. Now, navigating tangled family ties and her own trust issues, Flo has to decide if one wild night can become so much more.

Bonus novella!

Brooklyn Hayes just woke up in Vegas married to her best friend, who also happens to be her sister's ex. Will they make it through a trip back home without spilling their secret…or falling in love?

Rose Bend

Book 1: The Road to Rose Bend
Book 2: Christmas in Rose Bend
Book 3: With Love from Rose Bend
Book 4: Mr. Right Next Door
Book 5: The Single Dad Project

An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials

A Penguin Vitae Edition

The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838, how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass’s classic autobiography, this new edition also includes his most famous speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and his only known work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, which was written, in part, as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Penguin Classics presents Penguin Vitae, loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life,” a deluxe hardcover series featuring a dynamic landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction that has shaped the course of our readers' lives. Penguin Vitae invites readers to find themselves in a diverse world of storytellers, with beautifully designed classic editions of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

In this New York Times bestselling classic, Caldecott Medal-winning artist Kadir Nelson tells the incredible story of baseball's unsung heroes -- perfect for celebrating the centennial anniversary of the Negro Leagues!

Winner of the Coretta Scott King Author Award and Robert F. Siebert Award as well as a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor

Featuring nearly fifty iconic oil paintings and a dramatic double-page fold-out, an award-winning narrative, a gorgeous design and rich backmatter, We Are the Ship is a sumptuous, oversize volume for all ages that no baseball fan should be without. Using an inviting first-person voice, Kadir Nelson shares the engaging story of Negro League baseball from its beginnings in the 1920s through its evolution, until after Jackie Robinson crossed over to the majors in 1947.

The story of Negro League baseball is the story of gifted athletes and determined owners, of racial discrimination and international sportsmanship, of fortunes won and lost; of triumphs and defeats on and off the field. It is a perfect mirror for the social and political history of black America in the first half of the twentieth century. But most of all, the story of the Negro Leagues is about hundreds of unsung heroes who overcame segregation, hatred, terrible conditions, and low pay to do one thing they loved more than anything else in the world: play ball.

Urgent new poems on race and gender inequality, and select poems drawing upon Domestic Work, Bellocq’s Ophelia, Native Guard, Congregation, and Thrall, from two-time U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey.

Layering joy and urgent defiance―against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone―Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument, Trethewey’s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, and Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet’s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.

In this setting, each poem drawn from an “opus of classics both elegant and necessary,”* weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow. As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history. This is a poet’s remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future.

*Academy of American Poets’ chancellor Marilyn Nelson

“[Trethewey’s poems] dig beneath the surface of history―personal or communal, from childhood or from a century ago―to explore the human struggles that we all face.” ―James H. Billington, 13th Librarian of Congress

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography • A Washington Post Notable Book • Finalist for the PEN America Literary Award •One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best History Books of the Year • One of AAIHS's Best Black History Books of 2024

“Though broad strokes of Tubman’s story are widely known, Miles probes deeper, examining her inner life, faith and relationships with other enslaved Black women to paint a deeper, more vibrant portrait of a historical figure whose mythic status can sometimes overshadow her humanity.” –The New York Times

From the National Book Award–winning author of All That She Carried, an intimate and revelatory reckoning with the myth and the truth behind an American everyone knows and few really understand

Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she’s a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero. Despite being barely five feet tall, unable to read, and suffering from a brain injury, she managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some seven hundred people. You could almost say she’s America’s Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood.

Tiya Miles’s extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman’s life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman’s surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes more palpable the more we understand it—a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.

A collection of essential writings from the iconic foremother of Black women's intellectual history, feminism, and activism, who helped pave the way for modern social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name

Winner of the American Library Association Award for Best Historical Materials 

A Penguin Classic

The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper's major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism and selected correspondences, including over thirty previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Portable Anna Julia Cooper will introduce a new generation of readers to an educator, public intellectual, and community activist whose prescient insights and eloquent prose underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African American social and political activism.

Recognized as the iconic foremother of Black women's intellectual history and activism, Cooper (1858-1964) penned one of the most forceful and enduring statements of Black feminist thought to come of out of the nineteenth century. Attention to her work has grown exponentially over the years--her words have been memorialized in the US passport and, in 2009, she was commemorated with a US postal stamp. Cooper's writings on the centrality of Black girls and women to our larger national discourse has proved especially prescient in this moment of Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and the recent protests that have shaken the nation.

Cuban American Camila Núñez has always been afraid of the future. She’s been working hard to keep her anxieties in check, but with so many new experiences―her first queer love, trouble with her dog walking job, her mother’s judgments about her body, learning to drive, her father being too busy with work―there’s just so much to worry about.

So when Camila’s best friend gives her a tarot card reading for her sixteenth birthday, she believes it when the cards predict terrible things to come. As the year unfolds, the cards seem to be spot-on―is her papi having an affair? Will her best friend’s love life ruin their friendship? Are all her relationships doomed to fail?

Whether she’s ready or not, Camila will have to reckon with all the ways her fear about the future is ruining her life and learn to find peace amidst it all.

Acclaimed artist Erika Lynne Jones's author-illustrator debut picture book! A young girl named Zara would rather say she doesn't know what she wants than choose between her two grandmothers' ideas.

Zara loves living next door to her Grandma Jane and Granny Gladys, but sometimes it’s tough being stuck in the middle of them! Both her grandmas think they know what’s best for her, and Zara is worried she might upset them if she says what she really wants.

Find out what it will take for Zara to speak up for herself in this multigenerational story about finding your voice and the strength of family.

After her husband’s unexpected death eighteen months ago, Kausar Khan never thought she’d receive another phone call as heartbreaking—until her thirty-something daughter, Sana, phones to say that she's been arrested for killing the unpopular landlord of her clothing boutique. Determined to help her child, Kausar heads to Toronto for the first time in nearly twenty years.

Returning to the Golden Crescent suburb where she raised her children and where her daughter still lives, Kausar finds that the thriving neighborhood she remembered has changed. The murder of Sana’s landlord is only the latest in a wave of local crimes which have gone unsolved.

And the facts of the case are troubling: Sana found the man dead in her shop at a suspiciously early hour, with a dagger from her windowfront display plunged in his chest. And Kausar—a woman with a keen sense of observation and deep wisdom honed by her years—senses there’s more to the story than her daughter is telling.

With the help of some old friends and her plucky teenage granddaughter, Kausar digs into the investigation to uncover the truth. Because who better to pry answers from unwilling suspects than a meddlesome aunty? But even Kausar can’t predict the secrets, lies, and betrayals she finds along the way…

On a bus moving across a rural landscape, town to dusty town, three young strangers are escaping with their lives. One has committed a crime for which there will be retribution. The second is staggering from a sudden loss. And the third is running from a haunted past.

These three will find each other and attempt a new way forward. But the talons of the past have dug deep and the wounds have not yet healed. Moving back and forth in time, from the fragile bonds of this new relationship to the lives they lived before, The Ones We Loved tenderly reveals characters whose way of loving is inherited and channeled into the lands they inhabit, the people they care for, and the present they cling to.

Written in the rhythms of oral retellings practiced by Zimbabwe’s Shona ethnic group, where the narrative is a call and response with the listener, this is a remarkable story blending fable and fiction, and honoring the ecstatic joys and profound heartbreaks of life and love.

In his debut collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man’s late-night encounter with a police officer—the titular “man in blue”—becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: “It’s a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love I’m too ashamed to want for myself.” In “Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum,” the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an “infant’s small mouth” as well as the “sad calculator” that was “built to subtract from and divide a town.” In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the “other” and locates us squarely within these personae.

A heartbreaking story of suicide, addiction, and hard truths from acclaimed author Jay Coles, for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, You’ve Reached Sam, They Both Die at the End, and Tiffany D. Jackson.

Hakeem goes to Narcotics Anonymous meetings to keep his addictions in check. But when his best friend Miles kills himself, Hakeem finds the days harder and harder to get through. He loved Miles -- maybe even loved loved him -- and he's haunted by the fact that there might have been something he could have done to ease his friend's pain. He meets a girl named Eliza in his NA meetings, and she is there for him when something truly out-there happens... Hakeem calls Miles's old phone number. And Miles not only calls back from beyond the grave, but has news to share: He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.

Finding out the truth about Miles might end up helping Hakeem find his way to his own truth... and further strength to stay alive himself. But as his relationship with Eliza grows, other cracks begin to show... and holding his world together may be even harder than he thought it would be.

A perfect book for young readers to discover lesser-known people who have shaped Black history in the United States.

The organizer behind the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The first Black American head coach in the National Football League. The first Black female state senator from New York. Throughout history, Black people have broken barriers and protested to fight for equality. Celebrate little-known people like these and learn about the social impact of their work on American history in Unsung Voices of Black History.

ABOUT THIS SERIES:

This brand-new series is rooted in a profound commitment to shedding light on some of the important -- and often lesser-known -- aspects of Black history. From the Archives features landmarks, events, people, and artistic endeavors that have played a significant role in the Black experience in America and offers a chance to celebrate them. Written in a vivid, engaging style and featuring a colorful combination of photos and illustrations, each title serves as a powerful vehicle for education, inspiration, and empowerment for young readers.

A perfect book for young readers to discover lesser-known works of art and culture that have shaped Black history in the United States.

The Banjo Lesson. The Brownies Book. "Rapper's Delight." Throughout history, Black people have performed, created art, and broken barriers that helped propel the fight for equality forward. Celebrate little-known groundbreaking contributions to art and culture like these and learn about their social impact on American history in Overlooked Creations of Black Art and Culture.

ABOUT THIS SERIES:

This brand-new series is rooted in a profound commitment to shedding light on some of the important -- and often lesser-known -- aspects of Black history. From the Archives features landmarks, events, people, and artistic endeavors that have played a significant role in the Black experience in America and offers a chance to celebrate them. Written in a vivid, engaging style and featuring a colorful combination of photos and illustrations, each title serves as a powerful vehicle for education, inspiration, and empowerment for young readers.

An exciting, eye-catching repackage of acclaimed author Walter Dean Myers' bestselling paperbacks! With a Introduction by Coretta Scott King Author Honor winner Varian Johnson and bonus material by Coretta Scott King Award winner Christopher Myers.

"Those shackles didn't rob us of being black, son, they robbed us of being human."

This is the story of one family. A family whose history saw its first ancestor captured, shackled, and brought to this country from Africa. A family who can still see remnants of the shackles that held some of its members captive ― even today. It is a story of pride, determination, struggle, and love. And of the piece of the land that holds them together throughout it all.

A perfect book for young readers to discover lesser-known places that have shaped Black history in the United States.

The square in New Orleans where enslaved people met to sing, dance, and play music together. The oldest Black church still standing in the United States. The first Freedmen's colony in the country. Throughout history, Black people have founded communities, churches, and more to fight for equality. Celebrate little-known historic sites like these and learn about their social impact on American history in Hidden Landmarks of Black History.

ABOUT THIS SERIES:

This brand-new series is rooted in a profound commitment to shedding light on some of the important -- and often lesser-known -- aspects of Black history. From the Archives features landmarks, events, people, and artistic endeavors that have played a significant role in the Black experience in America and offers a chance to celebrate them. Written in a vivid, engaging style and featuring a colorful combination of photos and illustrations, each title serves as a powerful vehicle for education, inspiration, and empowerment for young readers.