2019, Texas Library Association's Maverick Graphic Novel Reading List
Amazon Book Review's Best Comics & Graphic Novels of 2018
NPR's Best Books of 2018
Newsweek's Best Comic Books of 2018
The Advocate's Best LGBTQ Graphic Novels of 2018
Book Riot's Best Comics of 2018
Autostraddle's 50 of the Best LGBT Books of 2018

When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-'60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage.

This Jackpot Edition contains over SIXTY PAGES of bonus material, including the talents of MARGUERITE BENNETT (Batwoman) and newcomer BEVERLY JOHNSON, SHAWN PRYOR (Cash and Carrie) and PAULINA GANUCHEAU (Zodiac Starforce), award-winning historical romance author ALYSSA COLE's comics writing debut with SHAE BEAGLE (MOONSTRUCK), GAIL SIMONE (CROSSWIND) and MARGAUX SALTEL (Superfreaks), and AMANDA DEIBERT (Wonder Woman '77) and CAT STAGGS (CROSSWIND), with illustrations from MEGAN HUTCHINSON (ROCKSTARS) and ARIELA KRISTANTINA (InSeXts). Plus a sneak peek of BINGO LOVE, VOL. 2: DEAR DIARY, with an afterword from GABBY RIVERA (America).

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, OPRAH DAILY, THE WASHINGTON POST, BUZZFEED AND VULTURE

“Erudite, intimate, hilarious, poignant . . . A gorgeously written novel of youth’s promise, of the quest to find one’s tribe and one’s calling.” —Leigh Haber, Oprah Daily

The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of Real Life and Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads

In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.

A prize-winning historian details his intellectual and political evolution

Written by the author of the landmark book The Wages of Whiteness and one of the key figures in the critical study of race and racism in America, An Ordinary White is the life story of the historian and radical American writer, David Roediger.

With wry wit and keen observation, Roediger chronicles his intellectual and political evolution from growing up in his southern Midwest sundown town to becoming a leading figure in working-class his­tory and Whiteness studies. A latecomer to the New Left, a longtime figure in the Chicago Surrealist Group, and part of the collective reviving of the Charles Kerr Company―the world’s oldest socialist publisher―Roediger captures events and characters absent from standard histories of the left as well as such icons of resistance as Studs Terkel, Noel Ignatiev, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, and C. L. R. James.

A direct response to the venom, effectiveness, and durability of white nationalist attacks on Critical Race Theory, this memoir describes Roediger’s youth as “ordinary,” both in its unfolding in a lower-middle-class family of southern Illinois workers and in the depth of white racism he was taught. He considers himself “saved” by social movements of his time, including those of labor, against empire, and, above all, the Black Freedom struggle. Public education, dissenting currents in Catholicism, knowledge of the importance of good union jobs, and generative impulses in sports and music helped make his salvation stick.

Roediger’s knowledge of white advantage came from his personal everyday experiences, but among people ordinary enough to guard against the mistaken notion that poor and working-class whites are uniquely the culprits of white nationalism. Importantly he argues against the character­ization of them as intractably racist or incapable of understanding the advantages of whiteness. A teacher in state universities for forty years, Roediger has tirelessly fought against their being hollowed out by corporate values and austerity. In An Ordinary White, he writes movingly of these experiences and what we have lost in our institutions whose soaring rhetoric outstrips any ability to defend education or racial justice.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: March 11, 2025

FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

“[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE • A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian

“Stunningly beautiful. . . one of the smartest reflections on what it means to remember those we’ve lost.”—NPR

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Han Kang’s The White Book is a meditation on color, as well as an attempt to make sense of her older sister’s death, who died in her mother’s arms just a few hours after she was born.

In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book is a letter from Kang to her sister, offering a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, and of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 15, 2025

A twisty and prescient new thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Avery Keene series, by nationally renowned author and leader Stacey Abrams, Coded Justice follows Avery down a dark rabbit hole into the breathtaking—and dangerous—use of AI in the medical industry.

Avery Keene is back! The fan-favorite former Supreme Court clerk has finally gone out on her own, securing a prestigious position at a high-end law firm in Washington, D.C., where she is about to earn real money and get her life in order after a tumultuous run working as a clerk on the Supreme Court. With her reputation preceding her, Avery is quickly tasked at her new job with becoming a corporate internal investigator. Her new client is Camasca—a mega-tech firm that's on the forefront of developing a new integrated AI system poised to revolutionize the medical industry, particularly by delivering vastly improved health care to veterans. The AI potential is breathtaking, but some disturbing anomalies have plagued Camasca in early testing—including the mysterious death of a Camasca engineer. Avery and her colleagues, Jared, Ling, and Noah, find themselves on a journey to determine whether the anomalies are mere technical glitches, or something much more concerning. Full of twists, behind-the-scenes financial machinations, and the continued blossoming of Avery and her vibrant cast of friends, Coded Justice finds Stacey Abrams' riveting series to be in full swing.

A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America

Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.

The Reconstruction Amendments—which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights—converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit—that all men are created equal—real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness.

Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters—petitioners, attorneys, justices—to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. In this groundbreaking grand history, Brando Simeo Starkey reveals a troubling and dark aspect of American history.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 6, 2025

Every first-generation immigrant has a unique story to tell – and is part of a large community that knows just what it’s like, too.

This is a kids’ book about first-generation immigrants. When you're a first-generation immigrant, a lot of things feel different from what you know: a new place to live, a new school, new foods, new smells, new noises.

This book was made to help kids aged 5-9 understand that they’re thankfully not alone in this experience. This author immigrated to a new country with his family when he was a kid. He has been there, understands, and wants you to know that all the experiences that make you who you are…are amazing!

A Kids Book About First Generation Immigrants features:
* A large and bold, yet minimalist font design that allows kids freedom to imagine themselves in the words on the pages.
* A friendly, approachable, empowering, and child-appropriate tone throughout.
* An incredible and diverse group of authors in the series who are experts or have first-hand experience of the topic.

Tackling important discourse together!

The A Kids Book About titles are best used when read together. Helping to kickstart important, challenging, and empowering conversations for kids and their grown-ups through beautiful and thought-provoking pages. The series supports an incredible and diverse group of authors, who are either experts in their field, or have first-hand experience on the topic.

A Kids Co. is a new kind of media company enabling kids to explore big topics in a new and engaging way, with a growing series of books, podcasts, and blogs made to empower. Learn more about us online by searching for A Kids Co.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 22, 2025

"A fable becoming reality of a woman becoming herself: Tehila Hakimi's Hunting in America just purely bangs." —Joshua Cohen

An award-winning, thrillingly subversive novel about an Israeli woman who moves to America, takes up hunting, and is drawn into a world of predator, prey, and dark attraction

An Israeli woman relocates to America on assignment from her tech company. In an attempt to leave her past behind and adapt entirely to the new culture in which she finds herself, she joins her colleagues on a deer hunt, discovering a surprising acumen for the sport. She fires again and again, refining her skills with every shot. As she embarks on an affair with her hunting guide and colleague, David, she sinks deeper into hunting season, vacillating between predator and prey as the boundaries between man, woman, work, and nature begin to collapse. Hunting with David becomes the one stable aspect of her life until one day everything changes.

With a poet's eye and a hunter's aim, Tehila Hakimi's beguiling debut novelis a taut, twisty story about the everyday violence that haunts countries, and one woman's tenuous grasp on reality.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: March 3, 2026

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?

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 25, 2025

From the author of Oprah's Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.

Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, who weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.

The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.

Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale Date: August 12. 2025

The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States.

In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.
 
As the sweeping changes and brief glimpses of hope brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction began to wither, anger at the opportunities available to newly freed Black people were on the rise. As a result, both Blacks and whites searched for new places to settle. That was when Edward McCabe, a Black businessman and a rising political star in the American West, set in motion his plans to found a state within the Union for Black people to live in and govern. His chosen site: Oklahoma, a place that the U.S. government had deeded to Indigenous people in the 1830s when it forced thousands of them to leave their homes under Indian Removal, which became known as the Trail of Tears.
 
McCabe lobbied politicians in Washington, D.C., Kansas, and elsewhere as he exhorted Black people to move to Oklahoma to achieve their dreams of self-determination and land ownership. His rising profile as a leader and spokesman for Black people as well as his willingness to confront white politicians led him to become known as Black Moses. And like his biblical counterpart, McCabe nearly made it to the promised land but was ultimately foiled by politics, business interests, and the growing ambitions of white settlers who also wanted the land.
 
In Black Moses, Gayle brings to vivid life the world of Edward McCabe: the Black people who believed in his dream of a Black state, the white politicians who didn't, and the larger challenges of confronting the racism and exclusion that bedeviled Black people's attempts to carve a place in America for themselves. Gayle draws from extraordinary research and reporting to reveal an America that almost was.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale Date: July 15, 2025

A transformative love story about two best friends who fall for each other, fall apart, and try to find their way back together in their tight-knit British-Jamaican community.

South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down, preferably in a book. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed.

Daphne’s attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small in every way: lanky, outgoing, and unapologetically himself. Daphne tries to keep her distance, but Connie is magnetic, and they form an intense bond. As they navigate growing up in a volatile, rapidly changing city, their families become close, and their friendship begins to shift into something more complicated. When Connie reveals that he and his mother “nuh land”—meaning they’re in England illegally—Daphne realizes that she is dangerously entangled in Connie’s fragile home life. Soon, long-buried secrets in both families threaten to tear them apart permanently.

Spanning one tumultuous decade, from the industrial docklands of the Thames to the sandy beaches of Calabash Bay, Jamaica Road is a deftly plotted and emotionally expansive debut novel about race and class, the family you’re born with and the family you choose, and the limits of what true love can really conquer.

PRE-ORDER.  ON SALE DATE: May 20, 2025

This compelling and complex romance about love across cultures follows a Black girl and Brown boy who find themselves—and each other—while pursuing their passions the summer before college.

Deja’s got a plan. The first in her large family to go to college, she wants to study chemistry and sell natural skin care products, like the ones she already creates from plants grown on her family’s North Carolina farm. It all starts with the Onward Bound summer program at the University of Maryland, the summer before school officially starts.

Raja’s got a dream. His traditional Nepali parents want him to study engineering and settle down in an arranged marriage, but his passion is art, and he wants to open his own tattoo parlor one day. In the meantime, he’s apprenticing at a tattoo shop in College Park, Maryland.

When Deja walks into the shop where Raja’s working, they both start crushing hard—over the course of the summer, they fall more and more deeply for one another. But the closer they get and the more their lives entwine, the more they find that dating someone who doesn’t match your parents’ expectations is harder than they ever imagined.

Can they bridge the divide between the vision their families have for their futures and the lives—and love—that are starting to feel like destiny?

No matter how wrong relationships can be, there’s nothing quite like getting them right.

Every guy’s been a creep at one point or another. That’s just the way it is. Or at least, that’s what Cleo tells herself once she finds out her boyfriend might not be the man she thought he was. Is it possible to keep loving someone you’re not sure you can trust? More to the point, should you? Once the fabric of Cleo’s relationship rips at the seams, the life she had built with him―abroad and away from those closest to her―unravels right before her eyes. Yet, letting it fall to pieces as she walks away is only half the story.

So Long Sad Love swaps out the wobbly transition of weaving a new existence into being post-heartbreak for the surprising effortlessness and simplicity of a life already rebuilt. Cleo not only rediscovers her identity as an artist but uncovers her capacity to find love where she has always been most at home: with other women.

Mirion Malle dares to tell a story with a happier ending in a stunning, full-color follow-up to the multi-award nominated This is How I Disappear. Translated by Governor General Literary Award nominee Aleshia Jensen, So Long Sad Love unabashedly skips to the good part and shines a light on just how rewarding following your bliss can be.

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ."

So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up.

Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: April 15, 2025

A dazzling, electrifying, and thought-provoking novel for readers of Maame and Honey Girl, Things Left Unsaid is a mesmerizing and deeply-felt exploration of discovering your place in the world and the lasting power of love.

When twenty-six year old Shirin Bayat bumps into Kian at a house party in London, she is taken aback by the immediate feelings that resurface. It’s been a decade since they were close friends at school, before painful events pulled them apart, suddenly and seemingly forever. Ever since, Shirin has lived with the aching weight of things left unsaid between them.

Now they're back in each other's lives, at a time when Shirin needs someone she can trust the most. Feeling stuck in a sea of slippery friendships and deeply burned out by her publishing job, Kian is a bright light amongst a sea of gray. There’s nothing worse than losing the person you trust most with your deepest secrets and desires, and Shirin and Kian are determined to hold tightly to each other.

But of course, life often has other plans. Will it be different this time around, or are Shirin and Kian destined to fall apart once more?

"A delicate yet impactful look at depression, disillusioned dreams, second chances at love and the power of bravery. What a book!" - Jessica George

"Intricate and deft...Jafari has written a total stunner." - Amy Jo Burns, author of Mercury

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: April 15, 2025

A New York Times Book Review Most-Anticipated Book of Spring
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2025

“Nettie Jones’s voice is astonishing. It leaps off the page like a panther . . . Unlike anything I've ever read.” ―Joumana Khatib, The New York Times Book Review

A mesmerizing spin through the high-rolling high times of 1970s New York and Detroit, Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales is a lost classic taking its rightful place in the spotlight.

Lewis Jones is a party girl for the ages. Confident and cavalier, she seeks freedom and a good time, leaving mayhem in her wake. Strutting between the bohemian demimonde of New York City and the affluent Black community of Detroit, she is supported in her adventures by her husband, Woody, and accompanied by her friend Kitty-Kat, a gay hustler with impeccable style and a knack for finding all the best spots. She guzzles champagne, snorts piles of cocaine, wakes up on silk sheets with a variety of lovers. And then she is upended by the handsome, erudite, often cruel Brook―a man who has his own bevy of admirers. Soon, Lewis and Brook are ensnared in a struggle for dominance that launches them into a shock of violence.

A bold exploration of the blurred line between love and control, pleasure and addiction, Fish Tales offers a glittering, devastating portrait of a woman’s pursuit of her own kind of freedom. It is a striking deluge of longing, anxiety, ego, identity, and love. As provocative as it is moving, as profane as it is artful, Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales illuminates the warring forces of power, desire, intimacy, and fear, and exposes the raw nerve of our yearning to be loved on our own terms.

Asia Village is in peril when Private detective Lydia Shepard returns to enlist the help of Lana Lee to solve a rash of unsolved murders and thefts in The Chow Maniac, the latest Noodle Shop Mystery from Vivien Chien.

When Lydia brings Lana onto the case, three of the members of an elite Asian order known as the Eight Immortals have already been murdered. Each member of the order holds one item that represents their immortal counterpart, and someone is dying to get their hands on them all. Lydia's client insists he―and only he―knows who will be next and wants the murderer captured before there is another victim.

Riding below the line of three cities of law enforcement and Lana’s own boyfriend, Detective Adam Trudeau, the two women must tread lightly as they infiltrate a secret organization that even the Mahjong Matrons know nothing about. And somehow protect the next victim without letting on that she’s in danger.

As they dig deeper into the case, Lana finds there are unexpected associations within Asia Village and potential ties to her own family that could be devastating. With the stakes raised on the toughest case she’s ever worked, will Lana be able to keep her own emotions out of the investigation? And will the murderer be found before they become the ultimate “immortal”?

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: JULY 29, 2025

One summer bound them. One secret divided them. One reunion could change everything.

As teenagers, Summer Knight and Echo Abara spent one unforgettable summer as camp counselors. Beneath sun-soaked days and starry nights, their bond deepened from easy friendship into something more—an unspoken love neither dared confess. Life pulled them in different directions, yet their souls remained tethered by time, distance, and a shared secret.

Neither has forgotten their connection—nor the secret they swore to keep. When a reunion brings them back together, their lives collide once more, stirring long-buried emotions and unanswered questions. Summer and Echo must confront not only their unvoiced feelings but also the burden of their shared secret—one that could shatter everything they believed about their friendship and the summer that shaped them.

Will they find the courage to embrace what's always been between them? Or will the truth they've guarded destroy their second chance?

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 10, 2025

Julie Murphy's If the Shoe Fits meets Talia Hibbert's Take a Hint, Dani Brown―USA Today bestselling author Danielle Allen brings another steamy, witty novel about finding the perfect partner―and how sometimes what you're looking for is right in front of you.

“I only spend time with people I enjoy. I only do things I want to do. I only have sex with people who get me off. So, my time is never wasted and my energy stays high.”

Nina Ford doesn’t like to put all her eggs in one basket. She works multiple jobs, she enjoys multiple hobbies, she dates multiple men.

In her thirty years of life, Nina has never come across a man who has all the things she’s looking for.

She loves fun and excitement―and she has a man for that.

She loves confidence and humor―and she has a man for that.

She loves intelligence and ambition―and she has a man for that.

She loves passion and romance―and she has a man for that.

She’s always been content rotating a few men in and out of her life to get her needs met. But when an opportunity presents itself, Nina finds herself in a bit of a predicament. Because if everything she’s ever wanted in a partner collides with everything she’s ever wanted in a career, her eggs are bound to get cracked.

Like her back.

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.

Award-winning novelist Bernice McFadden's highly anticipated new historical novel set amidst the Harlem Renaissance.

―Glorious was a finalist for the 2011 NAACP Image Award for Fiction.

“McFadden’s lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth. . . . McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos.” ―New York Times Book Review

“Bernice L. McFadden’s novel Glorious, which starts with a bang-up prologue, has a strong main character (based in part on Zora Neale Hurston), hard-driving prose, and historic sweep of several decades, including the years of the Harlem Renaissance, which has always fascinated me.” ―Jane Ciabattari, National Book Critics Circle President

Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era. Blending fact and fiction, Glorious is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.

It is a novel informed by the question that is the title of Langston Hughes’s famous poem Harlem: "What happens to a dream deferred?" Based on years of research, this heart-wrenching fictional account is given added resonance by factual events coupled with real and imagined larger-than-life characters. Glorious is an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and, finally, redemption.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE: May 13, 2025 

New York Times bestselling author and BookTok star Kennedy Ryan concludes the Skyland trilogy with an unapologetically ambitious businesswoman finally finding a soft place to land with a soulmate who wants nothing more than to make all her dreams come true...if she would only let him.

Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. She has phenomenal friends, a loving family, and a thriving business that places her in the entertainment industry's rarefied air. Your vision board? She’s probably living it.

She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions—always striving upward. And in the midst of everything, she's facing her toughest challenge yet: caring for an aging parent. Who has time for romance? From her experience, there's a low ROI on relationships. Anyway, she hasn't met the man who can keep up with her. Until...him.

Tech mogul Maverick Bell is a dilemma wrapped in an exquisitely tailored suit and knee-melting charm. From their first charged glance at the summer's hottest party, Hendrix feels like she’s met her match. Only he can’t be. Mav may be the first to make her feel this seen and desired, but he’s the last one she can have. Forbidden fruit is the juiciest, and this man is off limits if she plans to stay the course she’s set for herself.

But when Maverick gives chase—pursuing her, spoiling her, understanding her—is it time to let herself have something more?

A young woman must learn to love and trust again after experiencing the brutality of ritual servitude in West Africa.

―Longlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction

―A Black Caucus of the American Library Association 2019 Honor title, Fiction

“McFadden, writer of great, imaginative novels for years now (including Sugar and Gathering of Waters), is back with one of her best yet. Exploring ritual sacrifice in contemporary West Africa, Praise Song offers a fascinating, painful glimpse into a world beyond America’s shores, filled with tragedy and love and hope.” ―Entertainment Weekly, One of 20 New Books to Read in August

“The novel has a timeless quality; McFadden is a master of taking you to another time and place. In doing so, she raises questions surrounding the nature of memory, what we allow to thrive, and what we determine to execute . . . McFadden brings the sweeping drama of her earlier works ― The Book of Harlan, Glorious, Gathering of Waters ― into this small book, and reminds me of the gentle fierceness of Edwidge Danticat’s writing.” ―Los Angeles Review of Books

Abeo Kata lives a comfortable, happy life in West Africa as the privileged nine-year-old daughter of a government employee and stay-at-home mother. But when the Katas’ idyllic lifestyle takes a turn for the worse, Abeo’s father, following his mother’s advice, places the girl in a religious shrine, hoping that the sacrifice of his daughter will serve as atonement for the crimes of his ancestors. Unspeakable acts befall Abeo for the fifteen years she is held in the shrine. When she is finally rescued, broken and battered, she must struggle to overcome her past, endure the revelation of family secrets, and learn to trust and love again.

In the tradition of Chris Cleave’s Little Bee, this novel is a contemporary story that offers an eye-opening account of the practice of ritual servitude in West Africa. Spanning decades and two continents, Praise Song for the Butterflies will break you heart and then heal it.

The long-awaited reissue of McFadden’s classic novel about a young woman on a journey of self-discovery

"An engrossing multigenerational saga . . . With her deep engagement in the material and her brisk but lyrical prose, McFadden creates a poignant epic of resiliency, bringing Sherry to a well-earned awareness of her place atop the shoulders of her ancestors, those who survived so that she might one day, too." ―Publishers Weekly

Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family’s past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets; but Sherry is determined to know the full story.

In just a few days time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them. What Sherry and Dumpling find on their trip is far more important than scenic sites here and there―it is the assorted pieces of their family’s past. Pulled together, they reveal a history of amazing survival and abundant joy.

The long-awaited reissue of McFadden’s best-selling second novel praised by Toni Morrison, USA Today, Washington Post, and others―published simultaneously with McFadden’s new novel Gathering of Waters.

“McFadden’s reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold of addiction.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Riveting . . . so nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes.” ―Toni Morrison, author of Beloved

For Kenzie, growing up in the Lowe household means opening the bottom drawer of her father’s dresser to choose which belt she’ll be whipped with that night, furtive trips to the Bee Hive liquor store for her father’s vodka, and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment 5A.

Buoyed by the lyrical, redemptive voice that characterizes McFadden’s writing, The Warmest December tells the powerful, deeply moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism and abuse that marked the years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John, the story moves fluidly between the past and the present as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make. The Warmest December is ultimately a cathartic tale of hope, healing, and forgiveness.

This powerful sequel to Bernice L. McFadden’s bestselling debut Sugar follows a young African-American woman back to her Arkansas hometown, where she must confront difficult truths about her parentage and a curse in her family’s past.

When Sugar Lacey returns to Short Junction to find the aunts who raised her, she hopes they will be able to tell her the truth about her parents. What she discovers is not just a terrible story of unrequited love, but also a tale of black magic that has cursed generations of Lacey women.
 
Armed with newfound knowledge and strength in the face of adversity, Sugar must push through the pain to find her absent father and discover the truth about the curse that has befallen her family line in hopes of breaking it before she passes it on to her own child.
 
A powerfully realized novel that brings back the unforgettable characters from Sugar, This Bitter Earth is a testament to the ultimate triumph of the human spirit.

From the author of Race After Technology, an inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world—one small change at a time

“A true gift to our movements for justice.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day.

Vividly recounting her personal experiences and those of her family, Benjamin shows how seemingly minor decisions and habits could spread virally and have exponentially positive effects. She recounts her father’s premature death, illuminating the devastating impact of the chronic stress of racism, but she also introduces us to community organizers who are fostering mutual aid and collective healing. Through her brother’s experience with the criminal justice system, we see the trauma caused by policing practices and mass imprisonment, but we also witness family members finding strength as they come together to demand justice for their loved ones. And while her own challenges as a young mother reveal the vast inequities of our healthcare system, Benjamin also describes how the support of doulas and midwives can keep Black mothers and babies alive and well.

Born of a stubborn hopefulness, Viral Justice offers a passionate, inspiring, and practical vision of how small changes can add up to large ones, transforming our relationships and communities and helping us build a more just and joyful world.

Throughout his esteemed career, William Cross has tried to reconcile how Black men he met in the barber shop “seemed so normal,” but the portrayal in college textbooks of Black people in general—and the Black working class in particular—is self-hating and pathological. In Black Identity Viewed from a Barber’s Chair, Cross revisits his ground-breaking model on Black identity awakening known as Nigrescence, connects W. E. B. DuBois’s concept of double consciousness to an analysis of how Black identity is performed in everyday life, and traces the origins of the deficit perspective on Black culture to scholarship dating back to the 1930s. He follows with a critique showing such deficit and Black self-hatred tropes were always based on extremely weak evidence.

Black Identity Viewed from a Barber’s Chair ends with a new understanding of the psychology of slavery that helps explain why and how, during the first twelve years of emancipation, countless former slaves exhibited amazing psychological, political, and cultural independence. Once free, their previously hidden psychology became public.

His booksets out to disrupt and agitate as Cross attempts to more accurately capture the humanity of Black people that has been overlooked in previous research.

A collectible hardcover edition of our greatest African American poet's award-winning first novel, about a black boy's coming-of-age in a largely white Kansas town, featuring an introduction by National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy

A Penguin Vitae Edition

When first published in 1930, Not Without Laughter established Langston Hughes as not only a brilliant poet and leading light of the Harlem Renaissance but also a gifted novelist. In telling the story of Sandy Rogers, a young African American boy in small-town Kansas, and of his family--his mother, Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father, Jimboy, who plays the guitar and travels the country in search of employment; his strong-willed grandmother Hager, who clings to her faith; his Aunt Tempy, who marries a rich man; and his Aunt Harriet, who struggles to make it as a blues singer--Hughes gives the longings and lineaments of black life in the early twentieth century an important place in the history of racially divided America.

Penguin Vitae--loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life”--is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped the course of their lives, and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Learn how artificial intelligence can reflect human-created biases, and how we can address this to create a more fair, just world.

This is a kids’ book about AI bias. AI consumes lots of information and uses that data to predict patterns. But when the information has biases or prejudices, the predicted patterns can perpetuate injustice.

This book was made to help kids aged 5-9 understand how AI bias works and what we can do to address it. If AI technology doesn't work fairly for everyone, it's not helpful AI. Fortunately, we can make a difference when we use our voices to advocate for fair, just technologies.

A Kids Book About AI Bias features:
* A large and bold, yet minimalist font design that allows kids freedom to imagine themselves in the words on the pages.
* A friendly, approachable, empowering, and child-appropriate tone throughout.
* An incredible and diverse group of authors in the series who are experts or have first-hand experience of the topic.

Tackling important discourse together!

The A Kids Book About titles are best used when read together. Helping to kickstart important, challenging, and empowering conversations for kids and their grown-ups through beautiful and thought-provoking pages. The series supports an incredible and diverse group of authors, who are either experts in their field, or have first-hand experience on the topic.

A Kids Co. is a new kind of media company enabling kids to explore big topics in a new and engaging way, with a growing series of books, podcasts, and blogs made to empower. Learn more about us online by searching for A Kids Co.

Raised in Appalachia, native daughter Ashleigh Shanti, a queer Black woman and acclaimed chef, knows Southern Black cooking means more than we’ve come to believe. While hot buttered cast-iron-pan cornbread and crunchy, juicy, lard-fried chicken have their roles to play, they are far from the entire story. 

The key to understanding how Black influence has defined foodways and cultures in the South is to explore its microregions, each with its own distinct flora and fauna, dialects, traditions, and dishes. In Our South, Ashleigh takes you through the five regions closest to her heart, beginning with a glimpse of mountain life in the Backcountry through recipes like Fish Camp Hush Puppies and quail spiked with black pepper. A swing over to the coastal Lowcountry fills your plate with smoky grilled oysters and benne seed–topped crab toasts. Seasonal produce shines in the Midlands, where bountiful stone fruits enrich dishes from shortcakes to salads. Lowlands nods to the diversity of food cultures that meet in the region, where Ashleigh grew up eating noodle dishes like Virginia yock alongside Southern classics like Brunswick stew. The book culminates in Homeland, with foods that share what it’s like to cook—and live—as a Black Southern chef now.

Long before competing on Top Chef and earning a coveted James Beard Award Rising Star Chef nomination for her cooking at Asheville, North Carolina’s Benne on Eagle, Ashleigh shelled boiled peanuts and coveted the jars of pickles in her great-aunt Hattie Mae’s larder. In high school, she pored over food and travel magazines and marveled at how her mother never failed to put a hot meal on the table, whether instant grits or slowly cooked celebration dishes. After spending a gap year in Nairobi and graduating from culinary school, Ashleigh entered the restaurant world, bartending, catering, teaching, and staging. She rekindled her connection to the cuisine of her roots before opening her own restaurant, Good Hot Fish, named for a phrase her ancestors would shout to draw in customers.

Our South takes readers on a mouthwatering journey through Appalachia and beyond, revealing the depth and diversity of Southern cooking through the eyes of a rising culinary star. Perfect for fans of other regional Southern cookbooks like the Mosquito Supper Club cookbook or soul food cookbooks like Jubilee, Our South stands as a testament to the rich tapestry of Black culinary traditions, offering a contemporary exploration of Black Southern foodways that's both personal and universal.