All Books

  • Nightcrawling

    by Leila Mottley

    $18.00

    Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed.

     
    One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
     
    Rich with raw beauty, electrifying intensity, and piercing vulnerability, Nightcrawling marks the stunning arrival of a voice unlike any we have heard before. 

  • When We Talk To God: Prayers And Poems For Black Women

    Sharifa Stevens

    $19.99

    These are prayers for your moments of gratitude and celebration. For your seasons of loss and waiting. For your days when prayers come, not in words but in groans. When We Talk to God, from poet-theologian Sharifa Stevens, captures the arc and the ache of our lives.

    A beautiful interweaving of artwork, prayers, and poems for Black women, this unique book encourages you to lift up your whole heart and loudest voice to God. And to tell Him about everything; nothing is off-limits. Sharifa's honest and powerful words express prayer and longing through personal experiences, biblical examples, and stunning imagery. When We Talk to God offers:

    * An invitation to journey through honest lamentation and heartfelt joy to find greater peace in a turbulent world
    * Poems and prayers exploring topics from job interviews to grief, from braiding hair to feeling invisible, from parenting to dancing
    * Validation and inspiration for Black women of faith, by a Black woman speaking from her life to yours
    * A relatable and authentic voice that frees you to present your own prayers and praises to the God who hears you, sees you, and loves you
    * A beautiful gift idea for Mother's Day, Grandparents' Day, International Women's Day, spiritual anniversaries, and birthdays

    Ideal for Black women of any age and background, When We Talk to God is a balm to your spirit and soul as it urges you to go to God with all of who you are and with everything you can or cannot say.

  • I'm So Happy You're Here: A Celebration of Library Joy
    $18.99

    Dubbed "the Internet's librarian"— and now host of the relaunched Reading Rainbow — Mychal Threets invites all to take a look and find themselves at the library! Perfect for little readers who are regular visitors and those who might be stepping into the stacks for the first time.

    Welcome to the library!

    It’s a place just for you! There are activities, movies, games, and SO. MANY. STORIES. Best of all, it’s a place where you will always belong.

    Take a tour of the library with the internet’s favorite librarian, Mychal Threets! This heartwarming debut picture book from Mychal extends an invitation to anyone who could use a little library joy and a reminder that libraries are for everyone.

  • Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic
    $39.99

    “[R]ichly evocative…a brilliant and beautiful volume.” ―Booklist, starred review
    “A lavish, eye-catching rethinking of ages-old stories.” ―Kirkus Reviews, starred review

    From the acclaimed fine artist Harmonia Rosales, a sweeping retelling of African myth illustrated throughout with Rosales’s spectacular paintings.

    In Chronicles of Ori, her debut book, Harmonia Rosales retells the African myths she has long treasured, crafting an enthralling epic that spans the birth of the universe to the modern world of colonialism and resistance. She writes of the powerful, temperamental deities called the Orishas; of the founding of Yorubaland by the shrewd leader Oduduwa; of the young heroine Eve, born in a time of violence and despair, who would help her people regain their past splendor; and of shimmering serpents and monstrous shadows who stalk the lands of mortals. At the center of these linked tales is the bond, sometimes fraying, between the Orishas and the humans who worship them. It was the Orishas who made humans, and who gave them their most precious resource: their Oris, or destinies. Vividly brought to life by Rosales’s artwork, Chronicles of Ori will enlighten and delight readers for years to come.

    26 illustrations

  • Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry

    by Joya Goffrey

    Sold out

    Debut author Joya Goffney creates a standout own voices story of an overly enthusiastic list maker who is blackmailed into completing a to-do list of all her worst fears. It’s a heartfelt, tortured, contemporary YA high school romance.

    Quinn keeps lists of everything—from the days she’s ugly cried, to “Things That I Would Never Admit Out Loud” and all the boys she’d like to kiss. Her lists keep her sane. By writing her fears on paper, she never has to face them in real life. That is, until her journal goes missing. . . .

    Then an anonymous account posts one of her lists on Instagram for the whole school to see and blackmails her into facing seven of her greatest fears, or else her entire journal will go public. Quinn doesn’t know who to trust. Desperate, she teams up with Carter Bennett—the last known person to have her journal—in a race against time to track down the blackmailer.

    Together, they journey through everything Quinn’s been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love.

  • Ten Black Dots Board Book

    by Donald Crews

    $9.99
    The perennial bestseller by the two-time Caldecott Honor artist is available in a board book format for the first time.

    What can you do with ten black dots? First published in 1968, Donald Crews’s bestselling classic is now a board book and just the right size and shape for its ideal audience—the very curious youngest readers. Ten Black Dots is a counting book, a book of simple rhymes, and a book of everyday objects. It’s a preschool masterpiece by the creator of such award winners as Freight Train and Truck.

  • Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present

    by Harriet A. Washington

    $20.00
    From the era of slavery to the present day, starting with the earliest encounters between Black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, Medical Apartheid details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations.

    It reveals how Blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of Blacks. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions.

    The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed, Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused Black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust.
  • Lovely One: A Memoir

    by Ketanji Brown Jackson

    $35.00

    In this inspiring, intimate memoir, the first Black woman to ever be appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court chronicles her extraordinary life story.
     
    With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji BrownJackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.
     
    Named “Ketanji Onyika,” meaning “Lovely One,” based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.
     
    Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.
     
    Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, open-hearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.

  • Immortal Dark (Standard Edition)

    by Tigest Girma

    from $12.99

    The Cruel Prince meets Ninth House in this dangerously romantic dark academia fantasy, where a lost heiress must infiltrate an arcane society and live with the vampire she suspects killed her family and kidnapped her sister. 

    It began long before my time, but something has always hunted our family.

    Orphaned heiress Kidan Adane grew up far from the arcane society she was born into, where human bloodlines gain power through vampire companionship. When her sister, June, disappears, Kidan is convinced a vampire stole her—the very vampire bound to their family, the cruel yet captivating Susenyos Sagad.
     
    To find June, Kidan must infiltrate the elite Uxlay University—where students study to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and vampires and inherit their family legacies. Kidan must survive living with Susenyos—even as he does everything he can to drive her away. It doesn’t matter that Susenyos’s wickedness speaks to Kidan’s own violent nature and tempts her to surrender to a life of darkness. She must find her sister and kill Susenyos at all costs.
     
    When a murder mirroring June’s disappearance shakes Uxlay, Kidan sinks further into the ruthless underworld of vampires, risking her very soul. There she discovers a centuries-old threat—and June could be at the center of it. To save her sister, Kidan must bring Uxlay to its knees and either break free from the horrors of her own actions or embrace the dark entanglements of love—and the blood it requires.

  • The Reformatory: A Novel

    Tananarive Due

    $19.99

    A gripping, page-turning “masterpiece” (Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman) set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

    Gracetown, Florida.

    June 1950.

    Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens Jr. is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

    Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules, but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

    The Reformatory is a “hallucinatory, haunting, terrifying, and moving” (S.A. Cosby, bestselling author of All the Sinners Bleed) work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.

  • The Black Experience In Design

    Anne H. Berry

    $29.99

    The Black Experience in Design spotlights teaching practices, research, stories, and conversations from a Black/African diasporic lens.

    Excluded from traditional design history and educational canons that heavily favor European modernist influences, the work and experiences of Black designers have been systematically overlooked in the profession for decades. However, given the national focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the aftermath of the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, educators, practitioners, and students now have the opportunity—as well as the social and political momentum—to make long-term, systemic changes in design education, research, and practice, reclaiming the contributions of Black designers in the process.

  • The Set Boundaries Workbook: Practical Exercises for Understanding Your Needs and Setting Healthy Limits

    by Nedra Glover Tawwab

    $18.00
    An accessible, step-by-step resource for setting, communicating, and enforcing healthy boundaries at home, at work, and in life

    We all want to have healthy boundaries. But what does that really mean – and what steps are needed to implement them in our daily lives? Sought-after therapist and relationship expert Nedra Glover Tawwab presents clear explanations and interactive exercises to help you gain insight and then put it into action. Filled with thought-provoking checklists, questions, writing prompts, and more, The Set Boundaries Workbook is a valuable tool for everyone who wants to speak up for what they want and need, and show up more authentically in the world.
  • Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture

    by Sherronda J. Brown

    Sold out

    For readers of Ace and Belly of the Beast: A Black queer feminist exploration of asexuality--and an incisive interrogation of the sex-obsessed culture that invisibilizes and ignores asexual and A-spec identity.

    Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong.

    The notion that everyone wants sex--and that we all have to have it--is false. It’s intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that’s not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack: lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity.

    In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown advocates for the “A” in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer--despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise.

    With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. It centers the Black asexual experience--and demands visibility in a world that pathologizes and denies asexuality, denigrates queerness, and specifically sexualizes Black people.

    A necessary and unapologetic reclamation, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is smart, timely, and an essential read for asexuals, aromantics, queer readers, and anyone looking to better understand sexual politics in America.

  • ABC Black History and Me: An inspirational journey through Black history, from A to Z
    Sold out

    ABC Black History and Me presents 26 historical concepts, events, and people—from A to Z—that are important in Black American history.

    From A is for Advocate to Z is for Zest, each letter of the alphabet is paired with inspirational historical concepts in this 9x9-inch board book. Along with the upbeat, rhyming text covering both well-known and more obscure topics, are colorful illustrations that promote an excitement and curiosity about Black American history. Covering trailblazers from A to Z but also chronologically, this book features a visual timeline with additional information for more in-depth learning on the people, places, and events discussed.

    From Harriet Tubman and Fanny Jackson Coppin to Amanda Gorman and Ketanji Brown Jackson, ABC Black History and Me covers more than 170 years in a short board book appropriate for the little ones. This book is not only perfect for getting toddlers comfortable with their ABCs, but also for reflecting on how we are all affected by this history and how even the youngest of children will affect the future.

    With age-appropriate concepts and visuals, ABC Black History and Me is a perfect discussion starter for the whole family. Even adults will find something to learn in this board book!

    The ABC for Me series presents a world of possibilities from A to Z and everything in between! For all little kids with big dreams, the endearing illustrations and mindful concepts in this series pair each letter of the alphabet with words that promote big dreams, inclusion, acceptance, healthy living, and other key concepts important to emotional well-being. Other books in this series include:
     
    * ABC Love (2017)
    * ABC What Can She Be? (2018)
    * ABC Let’s Celebrate You & Me (2021)
    * ABC Bedtime (2022)

  • IRL AUTHOR TALK: Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries with Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore - May 8 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    Celebrate the release of Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries with Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore!

    EVENT DEETS

    When: Thursday, May 8 @ 7PM

    Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

    How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our store programming

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Stop People-Pleasing and Start Setting Healthier Boundaries Now

    Do you feel resentful because you didn’t speak up? Do find yourself saying yes when you really mean no, only to burn out later? Or maybe frustration builds, leading to blowups that push people away? In Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries, licensed psychotherapist Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore addresses the struggles many face when they can’t express their needs, often resorting to either giving in or losing control.

    This book provides essential tools to break free from these patterns and communicate with clarity and confidence. Learn how to set firm, healthy boundaries without guilt and honor yourself without fear of conflict. Tackling either people-pleasing or explosive reactions, Dr. Gilmore’s practical guidance will help you build and maintain fulfilling relationships without compromising your well-being.

    Communication Skills for Healthier Boundaries includes:

    * Verbal and nonverbal communication skills and activities. Attain lifelong skill sets to build assertiveness, confidence, and self-awareness.
    * Real-life dialogue scripts. Practice setting and asserting boundaries at your own pace while finding your communication style.
    * Easy implementation in two parts. Learn core communication skills in the first part of the book, and then apply these skills in the second part, which features common scenarios where boundaries are challenged in everyday life, rela

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Dr. LaToya S. Gilmore is a licensed therapist, educator, consultant, writer, and speaker. She inspires those she works with to intentionally integrate self-care and healthy boundaries in their daily lives and is an advocate for ending the stigma related to seeking therapy. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Prairie View A&M University and a doctorate in counselor education from Texas Southern University. Her master’s degree in marriage and family therapy was earned at Fuller Theological Seminary. She resides in Houston, Texas.

    ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

    Kandice Ewing is a lifelong Houston resident and a dedicated co-leader at the Fellowship of Love Church for over 20 years. Recently, Kandice earned a Master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Houston Christian University and is now a Licensed Professional Counselor-Associate. Believing that therapy is her true calling, Kandice is committed to supporting individuals, groups, and couples experiencing mental distress, emotional dysregulation, and life stressors.

    With expertise in areas such as grief and loss, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, spiritual struggles, relationships, boundaries, assertiveness, and self-esteem, Kandice takes an eclectic therapeutic approach and tailors’ treatment to meet each client's unique needs.

    Passionate about guiding others on their wellness journey, Kandice is dedicated to fostering healing and personal growth in a compassionate and supportive environment.

  • How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

    by Clint Smith

    $21.99

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

    It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned maximum security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

    In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, 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 work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

    Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Sm

  • Amari and the Night Brothers

    by B.B. Alston

    $11.99

    Amari Peters has never stopped believing her missing brother, Quinton, is alive. Not even when the police told her otherwise, or when she got in trouble for standing up to bullies who said he was gone for good.

    So when she discovers a ticking briefcase in his closet containing a nomination for a summer tryout at the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, she’s certain the secretive organization holds the key to locating Quinton—if only she can wrap her head around the idea of magicians, fairies, aliens, and other supernatural creatures all being real.

  • Decolonial Marxism: Essays from the Pan-African Revolution

    by Walter Rodney

    Sold out
    A previously unpublished collection of Rodney's essays on Marxism, spanning his engagement with of Black Power, Ujamaa Villages, and the everyday people who put an end to a colonial era

    Early in life, Walter Rodney became a major revolutionary figure in a dizzying range of locales that traversed the breadth of the Black diaspora: in North America and Europe, in the Caribbean and on the African continent. He was not only a witness of a Pan-African and socialist internationalism; in his efforts to build mass organizations, catalyze rebellious ferment, and theorize an anti-colonial path to self-emancipation, he can be counted among its prime authors.

    Decolonial Marxism records such a life by collecting previously unbound essays written during the world-turning days of Black revolution. In drawing together pages where he elaborates on the nexus of race and class, offers his reflections on radical pedagogy, outlines programs for newly independent nation-states, considers the challenges of anti-colonial historiography, and produces balance sheets for a dozen wars for national liberation, this volume captures something of the range and power of Rodney's output. But it also demonstrates the unbending consistency that unites his life and work: the ongoing reinvention of living conception of Marxism, and a respect for the still untapped potential of mass self-rule.
  • Hair Love ABCs

    by Matthew A. Cherry

    Sold out

    An alphabet board book inspired by the bestselling HAIR LOVE, from the original award–winning author and illustrator duo—and perfect for baby gift baskets.

    A is for Afro, N is for Natural, and W is for Waves. Letter by letter, follow Zuri and her father in their joy-filled journey through the kinks and curls of Black hair. 

    This 7x7 board book is perfect as a baby gift, for existing fans of HAIR LOVE, young readers embracing their natural hair, and toddlers learning their ABCs!

  • How to Smile

    by Thich Nhat Hanh

    $9.95

    The final book in the bestselling How To series: simple, refreshing meditations of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh give us inspiration and tools for transforming our suffering and cultivating happiness

    In inspiring passages and simple exercises, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches us what he calls “the art of suffering.” He gives us teachings and tools for transforming suffering as well as ways to touch moments of happiness and smile even while suffering is still there.
    Written with characteristic simplicity and wisdom, these insightful meditations—born from the Zen master’s lifetime of Zen practice and peacemaking—teach us how to come back to ourselves, calm our body and mind, and not let suffering overwhelm us. When we’re willing to face our suffering and look deeply into it, we begin to understand its origins. Transformation and healing become possible, and along with it a greater capacity to understand the suffering of others and resolve conflicts in our relationships. Creating peace and understanding in ourselves and our relationships in this way is essential for helping create true understanding and peace in our communities, society, and the world. Thich Nhat Hanh offers practices for transforming our own suffering, listening deeply to the suffering of others, and especially how to cultivate our own smile and happiness.
    All Mindfulness Essentials books are illustrated with playful sumi-ink drawings by California artist Jason DeAntonis.

    Series Overview: The Mindfulness Essentials series is a back-to-basics collection from world-renowned Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh that introduces everyone to the essentials of mindfulness practice. The books, pocket-sized and perfect for placement at point of sale, all come with original sumi-ink artwork by California artist Jason DeAntonis.

  • Wednesday and Woof #1: Catastrophe

    by Sherri Winston

    $6.99

    Can Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, sniff out Mrs. Winter’s missing cat before her big trip? This is the first book of a fun full-color early chapter book series about the best detectives in the Midwest!

    Detective Tip #1 Try not to jump to conclusions. Wednesday and her service dog, Woof, are the best detectives in the whole world—or at least their neighborhood. But can they find Mrs. Winters’s missing cat before her big trip? Or will the case of the cat-napped kitty be their first unsolved mystery? 

    HarperChapters build confident readers one chapter at a time! With short, fast-paced books, art on every page, and milestone markers at the end of every chapter, they're the perfect next step for fans of I Can Read!

  • Glow

    by Ruth Forman

    $8.99
    A joyfully poetic board book that delivers an ode to the beautiful light of African American boys.

    I shine night too
    smooth brown
    glow skin

    This simple, playful, and elegant board book stars a young boy who joyfully celebrates his dark skin with a bright moon at the end of a perfect day.
  • Jazz

    by Toni Morrison

    $17.00
    From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author.

    “As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize–winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.” —Glamour

    In the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe’s wife, Violet, attacks the girl’s corpse. This novel “transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious” (People).
  • Where Sleeping Girls Lie

    Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

    $12.99

    n Where Sleeping Girls Lie ― a YA contemporary mystery by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, the New York Times-bestselling author of Ace of Spades ― a girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears. It’s like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again... Sade Hussein is starting her third year of high school, this time at the prestigious Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school after being home-schooled all her life. Misfortune has been a constant companion all her life, but even Sade doesn’t expect her new roommate, Elizabeth, to disappear after Sade’s first night. Or for people to think she had something to do with it. With rumors swirling around her, Sade catches the attention of the girls collectively known as the ‘Unholy Trinity’ and they bring her into their fold. Between learning more about them―especially Persephone, who Sade is inexplicably drawn to―and playing catchup in class, Sade already has so much on her plate. But when it seems people don't care enough about what happened to Elizabeth to really investigate, it's up to she and Elizabeth's best friend to solve it. And then a student is found dead. As they keep trying to figure out what’s going on, Sade realizes there’s more to Alfred Nobel Academy and its students than she thought. Secrets lurk around every corner and beneath every surface…secrets that rival even her own.

  • Judge Stone: A Novel
    Sold out

    Academy Award winning actress Viola Davis and the world's #1 bestselling author James Patterson’s Judge Stone "delivers first-class courtroom drama, small-town excitement, and strong characters all wrapped in a moral dilemma. Tense, readable, and relevant.” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)

    All rise… for Judge Stone.
     
    The most respected citizen in Union Springs, Alabama (population 3,314), is Judge Mary Stone. She holds two responsibilities sacred: running her family farm and presiding over her courtroom. It's there she draws the most controversial case in the history of the South.   
     
    Criminally, it’s open-and-shut. 
     
    Ethically, there is no middle ground. Essentially, it’s a choice between life and death.
     
    No judge can satisfy everyone. It would be dangerous to try. But Judge Stone is willing to fight to bring justice to the people and place she loves.

  • If Beale Street Could Talk

    by James Baldwin

    from $16.00
    In this honest and stunning novel that inspired the award-winning major motion picture of the same name, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice.

    "A major work of Black American fiction." –The New Republic

    Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions–affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.
  • Bone Black

    by bell hooks

    $18.99
    Stitching together girlhood memories with the finest threads of innocence, feminist intellectual bell hooks presents a powerfully intimate account of growing up in the South. A memoir of ideas and perceptions, Bone Black shows the unfolding of female creativity and one strong-spirited child’s journey toward becoming a writer. She learns early on the roles women and men play in society, as well as the emotional vulnerability of children. She sheds new light on a society that beholds the joys of marriage for men and condemns anything more than silence for women. In this world, too, black is a woman’s color—worn when earned—daughters and daddies are strangers under the same roof, and crying children are often given something to cry about. hooks finds good company in solitude, good company in books. She also discovers, in the motionless body of misunderstanding, that writing is her most vital breath.
  • A Healing Journal for Black Men: Prompts to Help You Reflect, Grow, and Live With Pride

    by Danny Angelo Fluker Jr.

    $15.99
    This is a healing journal for Black men-by a Black man-with prompts and practices to help readers reflect on their identity, practice self-care, and process their emotions.

    Create space for reflection and self-care with healing prompts for Black men

    Journaling is a powerful tool for healing that has been used by many great Black men. This guided journal is filled with prompts and practices that encourage you to reflect, heal, and live authentically in your Black manhood. You'll learn to root yourself in self-care and cultivate greater peace in your life so you can truly thrive.

    • Evidence-based methods—This self-care journal offers guidance for your healing journey through research-supported, trauma-informed therapeutic modalities.
    • Tools for healing—Discover a mix of journal prompts, affirmations, quotes, and other calming exercises to help you reflect and heal a little bit every day.
    • Meaningful themes—Awaken your spirit as you explore practices centered on identity, emotions, self-compassion, positive thinking, self-confidence, and pride.

    Celebrate your Blackness and uncover a sense of wholeness with this healing journal for men.

  • Black Women Writers at Work

    by Claudia Tate

    $24.95

    A critical collection of conversations with Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones and other Black women writers that changed the scope of Black literature in the 20th century and beyond.

    “Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard.” —Claudia Tate, from the introduction

    Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century. 

    Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after.


    Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art.

    Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.

  • Hip-Hop Is History
    Sold out

    Hip-Hop Is History is a book only Questlove could have written: a perceptive and personal reflection on the first half-century of hip-hop.

    When hip-hop first emerged in the 1970s, it wasn’t expected to become the cultural force it is today. But for a young Black kid growing up in a musical family in Philadelphia, it was everything. He stayed up late to hear the newest songs on the radio. He saved his money to buy vinyl as soon as it landed. He even started to try to make his own songs. That kid was Questlove, and decades later, he is a six-time Grammy Award–winning musician, an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, a New York Times bestselling author, a producer, an entrepreneur, a cofounder of one of hip-hop’s defining acts (the Roots), and the genre’s unofficial in-house historian.

    In this landmark book, Hip-Hop Is History, Questlove skillfully traces the creative and cultural forces that made and shaped hip-hop, highlighting both the forgotten but influential gems and the undeniable chart-topping hits—and weaves it all together with the stories no one else knows. It is at once an intimate, sharply observed story of a cultural revolution and a sweeping, grand theory of the evolution of the great artistic movement of our time. And Questlove, of course, approaches it with not only the encyclopedic fluency and passion of an obsessive fan but also the expertise and originality of an innovative participant.

    Hip-hop is history, and also his history.

  • The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience

    by Nikole Hannah-Jones

    Sold out

    An illustrated edition of The 1619 Project, with newly commissioned artwork and archival images, The New York Times Magazine's award-winning reframing of the American founding and its contemporary echoes, placing slavery and resistance at the center of the American story.

    Here, in these pages, Black art provides refuge. The marriage of beautiful, haunting and profound words and imagery creates an experience for the reader, a wanting to reflect, to sit in both the discomfort and the joy, to contemplate what a nation owes a people who have contributed so much and yet received so little, and maybe even, to act. --Nikole Hannah-Jones, from the Preface

    Curated by the editors of The New York Times Magazine, led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, this illustrated edition of The 1619 Project features seven chapters from the original book that lend themselves to beautiful, engaging visuals, deepening the experience of the content. The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience offers the same revolutionary idea as the original book, an argument for a new national origin story that begins in late August of 1619, when a cargo ship of enslaved people from Africa arrived on the shores of Jamestown, Virginia. Only by reckoning with this difficult history and understanding its powerful influence on our present can we prepare ourselves for a more just future.

    Filled with original art by thirteen Black artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Calida Rawles, Vitus Shell, Xaviera Simmons, on the themes of resistance and freedom, a brand-new photo essay about slave auction sites, vivid photos of Black Americans celebrating their own forms of patriotism, and a collection of archival images of Black families by Black photographers, this gorgeous volume offers readers a dynamic new way of experiencing the impact of The 1619 Project.

    Complete with many of the powerful essays and vignettes from the original edition, written by some of the most brilliant journalists, scholars, and thinkers of our time, The 1619 Project: A Visual Experience brings to life a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of American history and culture.

  • The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap's Masked Iconoclast

    S.H. Fernando Jr.

    Sold out

    The definitive biography of MF DOOM, charting the reclusive and revered hip-hop artist’s life, career, and eventual immortality.

    "Fernando provides a comprehensive look at DOOM's life and career, meticulously researched through interviews with the rapper’s many collaborators and those closest to the man behind the mask. His track-by-track breakdowns of DOOM's albums will have sample spotters diving into their record collections. A perfect pairing with Dan Charnas's Dilla Time (2022), this is an essential exploration into the world of 'your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper.'"
    —Carlos Orellana, Booklist (starred review)

    On December 31, 2020, the world was shocked to learn about the death of hip-hop legend MF DOOM. Born in London and raised in the suburban enclave of Long Beach, New York, Daniel Dumile Jr.'s love of cartoons and comic books would soon turn him into one of hip-hop's most enigmatic, prolific, and influential figures.

    Sweeping and definitive, The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast recounts the rise, fall, redemption, and untimely demise of MF DOOM. Broken down into five sections: The Man, The Myth, The Mask, The Music, and The Legend, journalist S. H. Fernando, or SKIZ, chronicles the life of Daniel Dumile Jr., beginning in the house he grew up in in Long Beach, NY, into the hip-hop group KMD, onto the stage of his first masked show, through the countless collabs, and across the many different cities Daniel called home. Centering the music, SKIZ deftly lays out the history of east-coast rap against DOOM's life story and dissects the personas, projects, tracks, and lyrics that led to his immortality.

    Including exclusive interviews with those who worked closely with DOOM and providing an unknown, intimate, behind the scenes look into DOOM’s life, The Chronicles of DOOM is the definitive biography of MF DOOM, a supervillain on stage and hero to those who paid attention.

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