From award-winning Korean author Sung-il Kim & translated by the world-renowned Anton Hur, Blood of the Old Kings begins an epic journey unlike any other.

There is no escaping the Empire.
Even in death, you will serve.

In an Empire run on necromancy, dead sorcerers are the lifeblood. Their corpses are wrapped in chains and drained of magic to feed the unquenchable hunger for imperial conquest.

Born with magic, Arienne has become resigned to her dark fate. But when the voice of a long-dead sorcerer begins to speak inside her head, she listens. There may be another future for her, if she’s willing to fight for it.

Miles away, beneath a volcano, a seven-eyed dragon also wears the Empire’s chains. Before the imperial fist closed around their lands, it was the people’s sacred guardian.

Loran, a widowed swordswoman, is the first to kneel before the dragon in decades. She comes with a desperate plea, and will leave with a sword of dragon-fang in hand and a great purpose before her.

Step into a world of necromancy, murder, and twisted magic. A world in need of a hero.

An impulsive, madcap, and newly concussed young woman comes of age as she navigates her Ghanaian American identity, her relationships, and the muddled landscape of history, memory, imagination, and delusion.

Twenty-four-year-old Akosua is easily knocked off her feet. When she falls and hits her head, she’s too preoccupied with her latest dramas to fully absorb the shock. In the span of three months, she has broken up with her boyfriend Wisdom, discovered that her deadbeat dad has moved back to the States from Ghana, and dropped so many classes that she believes she’s the only history grad student in the history of grad students to be registered for just one partial-credit class. Instead of facing her problems, Akosua seeks distraction in Daniel, a “good Ghanaian man.” But as her head injury worsens, she questions whether she can continue to run away from her father any more than she can keep ignoring her brain and its traumas. Vibrant, funny, and bittersweet, Blood on the Brain is a novel about the complications of family, romance, and culture—and how coming of age can feel like a blow to the head.

A hardcover edition of Octavia E. Butler's bestselling short story collection Bloodchild, with a new cover design and new introduction by two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward

Bloodchild and Other Stories is renowned author Octavia E. Butler's only collection of shorter work and features the Hugo and Nebula award-winning stories "Bloodchild" and "Speech Sounds." These works of the imagination are parables of the contemporary world. Butler proves constant in her vigil, an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong, and one of contemporary literature's strongest voices.

The powerful sequel to the instant New York Times bestselling and award-winning Legendborn—perfect for fans of Cassandra Clare and Margaret Rogerson!

The shadows have risen, and the line is law.

All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur’s knights—only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new:

A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion.

But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped.

Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won’t let her. To them, she is an unknown girl with unheard-of power, and as the living anchor for the spell that preserves the Legendborn cycle, she must be protected.

When the Regents reveal they will do whatever it takes to hide the war, Bree and her friends must go on the run to rescue Nick themselves. But enemies are everywhere, Bree’s powers are unpredictable and dangerous, and she can’t escape her growing attraction to Selwyn, the mage sworn to protect Nick until death.

If Bree has any hope of saving herself and the people she loves, she must learn to control her powers from the ancestors who wielded them first—without losing herself in the process.

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

The latest work from the veteran novelist called “one hell of a writer” by James Baldwin and “wonderfully wry” by Donald Barthelme: a timely meditation on the psychological impact of police brutality, through the lens of a day in the life of Miles Davis

Written by playwright and novelist Wesley Brown, Blue in Green narrates one evening in August 1959, when, mere weeks after the release of his landmark album Kind of Blue, Miles Davis is assaulted by a member of the New York City Police Department outside of the Birdland jazz club. In the aftermath, we enter the strained relationship between Davis and his wife, Frances Taylor, whom he has recently cajoled into ending her run as a performer on Broadway and retiring from modern dance and ballet altogether. Frances, who is increasingly subject to Davis’ temper—fueled by both his professional envy and substance abuse—reckons with her upbringing in Christian Science and, through a fateful meeting with Lena Horne, the conflicting demands of motherhood and artistic vocation. Meanwhile, blowing off steam from his beating, Miles speeds across Manhattan in his sports car. Racing alongside him are recollections of a stony, young John Coltrane, a combative Charlie Parker and the stilted world of the Black middle class he’s left behind.

From the National Book Award-winning translator, an atmospheric and wise debut novel of a young Brazilian woman’s first year in America, a continent away from her lonely mother, and the relationship they build over Skype calls across borders

“Utterly beautiful . . . The yearning in these pages will haunt me.”—Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White

In a small dorm room at a liberal arts college in Vermont, a young woman settles into the warm blue light of her desk lamp before calling the mother she left behind in northeastern Brazil. Four thousand miles apart and bound by the angular confines of a Skype window, they ask each other a simple question: what’s the news?

Offscreen, little about their lives seems newsworthy. The daughter writes her papers in the library at midnight, eats in the dining hall with the other international students, and raises her hand in class to speak in a language the mother cannot understand. The mother meanwhile preoccupies herself with natural disasters, her increasingly poor health, and the heartbreaking possibility that her daughter might not return to the apartment where they have always lived together. Yet in the blue glow of their computers, the two women develop new rituals of intimacy and caretaking, from drinking whiskey together in the middle of the night to keeping watch as one slides into sleep. As the warm colors of New England autumn fade into an endless winter snow, each realizes that the promise of spring might mean difficult endings rather than hopeful beginnings.

Expanded from a story originally published in The New Yorker, and in elegant prose that recalls the work of Sigrid Nunez, Katie Kitamura, and Rachel Khong, Bruna Dantas Lobato paints a powerful portrait of a mother and a daughter coming of age together and apart and explores the profound sacrifices and freedoms that come with leaving a home to make a new one somewhere else.

Written after two years of artistic silence, during which the world came to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic and Minneapolis became the epicenter of protest following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is Danez Smith’s powerful reckoning with their role and responsibility as a poet and with their hometown of the Twin Cities. This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a world that seems to be dissolving into desolate futures.

Smith brings a startling urgency to these poems, their questions demanding a new language, a deep self-scrutiny, and virtuosic textual shapes. A series of ars poetica gives way to “anti poetica” and “ars america” to implicate poetry’s collusions with unchecked capitalism. A photographic collage accrues across a sequence to make clear the consequences of America's acceptance of mass shootings. A brilliant long poem―part map, part annotation, part visual argument―offers the history of Saint Paul’s vibrant Rondo neighborhood before and after officials decided to run an interstate directly through it.

Bluff is a kind of manifesto about artistic resilience, even when time and will can seem fleeting, when the places we most love―those given and made―are burning. In this soaring collection, Smith turns to honesty, hope, rage, and imagination to envision futures that seem possible.

Another important season of reading for the little ones.  Picture books are perfect for read-alouds and will allow you both to explore the world through books.  It's also the best opportunity to model fluency, phonemic awareness, and expressive reading while building many other foundational reading skills.

What you get: Hardcover over paperboard frontlist books perfect for your little one.

Ordering deadline:  Subscription orders placed before the 17th of the month are guaranteed to ship on the first Tuesday of the following month when all subscriptions are shipped.

Ordering Instructions:  Please select your subscription frequency (monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly) and proceed to checkout.

Gift subscriptions:  Subscriptions make really great gifts.  Please make sure the shipping address is the correct address for the gift recipient.

Shipping will be calculated at checkout.  All subscriptions ship via media mail and will arrive within 3-8 business days of the ship date.

A baking book bursting with joy that will have you hightailing it to the oven—and planning a trip to your local corner store.

Growing up in the Bronx, Paola Velez’s happy place was the bodega, a unique world full of color and flavor where the shelves were stocked with everything from M&M’s to Muenster cheese to majarete (Caribbean corn pudding)—and, of course, its own cat (IYKYK). Before she was the James Beard–nominated chef, Cherry Bombe cover girl, social media darling, and cofounder of the grassroots social action network, Bakers Against Racism, Paola was a bodega kid with a taste for Warheads, Hostess cupcakes, ice pops, and Malta soda.  

Paola’s debut cookbook, inspired by these treasures and other ingredients available at corner stores everywhere, is a love letter to both her Dominican heritage and her New York City roots; its more than 100 recipes burst with distinctive flavors, inviting you to enjoy new takes on her childhood favorites and yours. Paola’s combination of classical training and self-taught pastry skills means her recipes are accessible no matter your skill level. She’ll be your hype girl through more ambitious projects (you can make a turnover—and a Guava and Cheese one at that), as well as more “set it and forget it” treats, like her Maria Cookie Icebox Cake. Whatever you do, don’t sleep on her signature Thick’ems—giant cookies that are somehow crunchy and gooey—the most requested recipe in Paola’s repertoire and the recipe that made her internet famous, which she shares here for the very first time here. With renditions of traditional Caribbean desserts like Pineapple Empanadillas and Golden Rum Cake alongside twists on classic American treats like sticky buns and brownies, Paola’s unique recipes and infectious positive spirit will help you recreate the magic of the bodega at home—BYO cat.

A written companion and workbook for readers seeking to reclaim their bodies as home in healing from sexual trauma.

Body rites as a holistic healing journey, anchored in the practice of decolonizing healing and reclaiming body sovereignty, reaches back into indigenous roots and land-based healing. It centers remembering as a means of survival.

This workbook is the first of its kind: a resource of rituals divided into four healing journeys for Black women, femmes, and nonbinary survivors of sexual assault. The experiential workbook moves beyond prescriptive self-help models by providing a gentle guide and liaison to explore the impact of sexual trauma on the mind, body, heart, and spirit. It is an invitation to heal holistically, drawing upon psychophysiology, lived body wisdom, trauma-informed embodiment practices, kinship and ancestral connections, and African spiritual practices. Most urgently, this book is a series of intimate conversations with your “self”; and remembrance that healing lives at the core of your intuition.

Boost your mental health with our "Books are my Therapy" glitter bookmark. Each time you open your book, remember the therapeutic power of reading. (No prescription needed!)

They are single-sided print. Printed on 60lb premium paper! Bookmarks measure 2.5 by 7 inches!

Add a little sparkle to your reading routine with our Books are Purrfect Glitter Bookmark! Perfect for kids, this bookmark will keep their place in their favorite books while adding a touch of whimsy. Never lose your page again with this fun and functional accessory.

They are single-sided print. Printed on 60lb premium paper! Bookmarks measure 2.5 by 7 inches!

It's almost Bookstore Romance Day! 

Bookstore Romance Day is a day designed to give independent bookstores an opportunity to celebrate Romance fiction—its books, readers, and writers—and to strengthen the relationships between bookstores and the Romance community.

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, August 17 

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

How: Feel free to show up anytime you would like! However, we're asking for those who are interested in the Cookie Decorating Class to RSVP!

ABOUT THE EVENT

We've celebrated bookstore romance day each year we've been open! But this year, we're stepping it up a notch to include: blind date with a book, more indie titles, a romance book swap AND decorating cookies inspired by some of our favorite romance book covers and tropes. 

The Romance Book Swap will take place at 4:30 PM. Bring one of your favorite romance books to swap with someone else. Feel free to buy something from the shop for the book swap! We're asking that you only take as many romance books as you bring. 

The Cooking Decorating Class will start at 6:00 PM and will be facilitated by Alex from Adoro Desserts! You'll be designing 4-6 cookies inspired by some of our favorite Romance books and Romance tropes. Each ticket cost $30.

Based on the true story of the first African American NASCAR champion Wendell Scott, Born Driven is an uplifting tale celebrating the power of persistence and big dreams.

Like many other boys, Wendell Scott had a big dream: to become a race car driver. He loved to race anything and everything! Although he faced many difficulties as an African American boy in the South, Wendell had the willpower to overcome these obstacles. Join Wendell Scott for the time he challenged himself to compete in his town’s soapbox derby.

As Udonwa grows, her hidden family history changes her forever.

Let me tell you a story. It’s about a war. This war is not the type fought with guns and machetes. It is a family type. A silent war. The type fought in the heart. It began long before I was formed.

Udonwa’s family is at war ― a war of relationships, played out under the tyranny of a monster dad. Age twelve, Udonwa has a peculiar love for her father, Reverend Leonard Ilechukwu, who favours her but beats his wife and his other children. She sees his good side: after all, he pays the school fees, and tells her that she, named “the peaceful child,” is the one most likely to become a doctor.

When her newly married eldest sister suddenly takes her from their family compound in Iruama, Nigeria, to live with her in Awka, Udonwa experiences violence first-hand. Later, pieces of a sinister picture emerge that shake her life to the core.

No longer the person she thought she was, Udonwa launches into a period of extreme change, and parts of her life spiral into chaos as she finds herself torn between her love for her father and an underlying need to free herself. This vivid family saga is engrossing, deeply unsettling, and finally uplifting.

Traditional accounts of the making of the modern world afford a place of primacy to European history. Some credit the fifteenth-century Age of Discovery and the maritime connection it established between West and East; others the accidental unearthing of the “New World.” Still others point to the development of the scientific method, or the spread of Judeo-Christian beliefs; and so on, ad infinitum. The history of Africa, by contrast, has long been relegated to the remote outskirts of our global story. What if, instead, we put Africa and Africans at the very center of our thinking about the origins of modernity?

In a sweeping narrative spanning more than six centuries, Howard W. French does just that, for Born in Blackness vitally reframes the story of medieval and emerging Africa, demonstrating how the economic ascendancy of Europe, the anchoring of democracy in the West, and the fulfillment of so-called Enlightenment ideals all grew out of Europe’s dehumanizing engagement with the “dark” continent. In fact, French reveals, the first impetus for the Age of Discovery was not—as we are so often told, even today—Europe’s yearning for ties with Asia, but rather its centuries-old desire to forge a trade in gold with legendarily rich Black societies sequestered away in the heart of West Africa.

Creating a historical narrative that begins with the commencement of commercial relations between Portugal and Africa in the fifteenth century and ends with the onset of World War II, Born in Blackness interweaves precise historical detail with poignant, personal reportage. In so doing, it dramatically retrieves the lives of major African historical figures, from the unimaginably rich medieval emperors who traded with the Near East and beyond, to the Kongo sovereigns who heroically battled seventeenth-century European powers, to the ex-slaves who liberated Haitians from bondage and profoundly altered the course of American history.

While French cogently demonstrates the centrality of Africa to the rise of the modern world, Born in Blackness becomes, at the same time, a far more significant narrative, one that reveals a long-concealed history of trivialization and, more often, elision in depictions of African history throughout the last five hundred years. As French shows, the achievements of sovereign African nations and their now-far-flung peoples have time and again been etiolated and deliberately erased from modern history. As the West ascended, their stories—siloed and piecemeal—were swept into secluded corners, thus setting the stage for the hagiographic “rise of the West” theories that have endured to this day.

“Capacious and compelling” (Laurent Dubois), Born in Blackness is epic history on the grand scale. In the lofty tradition of bold, revisionist narratives, it reframes the story of gold and tobacco, sugar and cotton—and of the greatest “commodity” of them all, the twelve million people who were brought in chains from Africa to the “New World,” whose reclaimed lives shed a harsh light on our present world.

Texas Southern University is often said to have been “conceived in sin.” Located in Houston, the school was established in 1947 as an “emergency” state-supported university for African Americans, to prevent the integration of the University of Texas. Born to Serve is the first book to tell the full history of TSU, from its founding, through the many varied and defining challenges it faced, to its emergence as a first-rate university that counts Barbara Jordon, Mickey Leland, and Michael Strahan among its graduates.

Merline Pitre frames TSU’s history within that of higher education for African Americans in Texas, from Reconstruction to the lawsuit that gave the school its start. The case, Sweatt v. Painter, involved student Heman Marion Sweatt, who was denied entry to the University of Texas Law School because he was black. Pitre traces the tortuous measures by which Texas legislators tried to meet a provision of the state’s constitution that called for the establishment and maintenance of a “branch university for the instruction of colored youths of the State.” When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that the UT Law School’s efforts to remain segregated violated the U.S. Constitution, the future of the institution that would become Texas Southern University in 1951 looked doubtful.

In its early years the university persevered in the face of state neglect and underfunding and the threat of merger. Born to Serve describes the efforts, both humble and heroic, that faculty and staff undertook to educate students and turn TSU into the thriving institution it is today: a major metropolitan university serving students of all races and ethnicities from across the country and throughout the world.

Launched during the early civil rights movement, TSU has a history unique among historically black colleges and universities, most of which were established immediately after the Civil War. Born to Serve adds a critical chapter to the history of education and integration in the United States.

*ships in 7-10 business days*

Learn to establish healthy boundaries and prioritize your own needs

Many women struggle with setting boundaries—saying no, speaking up, and believing their own needs are as important as everyone else’s. This journal helps readers figure out where they need stronger boundaries, and gives them the inspiration and encouragement they need to set and maintain them, encouraging and empowering happier, healthier lives.

*Ships in 7-10 business days*

There’s nothing a dad won’t do for his favorite boy.

Told in upbeat rhyming verse, Boy Dad is a picture book that celebrates fathers who raise, love, and uplift little men. A companion to Girl Dad, this keepsake will make a fun read aloud and gift for the special dad in your life.

PRE-ORDER. ON SALE DATE: March 25, 2025

51 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W. J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America

W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.

When his daddy comes home from the service struggling with PTSD, a young boy discovers that learning yoga together can be a source of healing.

Ever since Daddy returned from overseas, he’s been different. At first, Butta Bean thinks it’s his fault—that maybe his daddy doesn’t love him anymore. But Mama explains that Daddy’s mind is hurt from things that happened while he was away. When Mama takes them all to yoga class at their local YMCA, Daddy doesn’t want to go at first, and Butta Bean thinks it looks weird. But as Daddy and Butta Bean get better at the yoga poses (Daddy says he’s a real boyogi), Butta Bean starts to see a change in Daddy. He seems more and more like his old self. In a picture book gently tuned to a child’s understanding, award-winning author David Barclay Moore and Caldecott Honor recipient Noa Denmon celebrate the transformative power of yoga, therapy, and abiding love for your family.

A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller
Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub
A Book Riot "Favorite Summer Read of 2020"
A Food Tank Fall 2020 Reading Recommendation

Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Milkweed Editions, celebrates the book as an object of meaning that will last the ages. Beautifully bound with a new cover featuring an engraving by Tony Drehfal, this edition includes a bookmark ribbon and five brilliantly colored illustrations by artist Nate Christopherson. In increasingly dark times, we honor the experience that more than 350,000 readers in North America have cherished about the book—gentle, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred—and offer an edition that will inspire readers to gift it again and again, spreading the word about scientific knowledge, indigenous wisdom, and the teachings of plants.

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

Notes: Dark chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, red fruit
Region: Cerrado Mineiro
Altitude: 800–1,300 masl
Process: Natural

Origin Story

Bossa Nova translated literally means “new wave”, and this particular roast represents a post 3rd wave expression. The Cerrado Mineiro region is the first “Designation of Origin” in Brazil, located in the northwest of the Minas Gerais state in central part of the country. The coffees under this Designation of Origin are “Origin and Quality Guaranteed” by the Cerrado Minerio Region –D.O. Regulatory Board, and each bag carries a QR code connecting it to the specific farm and farmer who produced the coffee. This adds an additional layer of traceability which is often difficult in the massive coffee growing regions of Brazil.

Brazil is the largest coffee producer in the world, and production of coffee in Brazil is unique, in that Brazilian farms tend to have flatter elevations, less shade cover, and more manicured fields. They also use mechanical harvesters and produce far more coffee per hectare than other origins. Coffee in Cerrado Mineiro grows between 800-1300 meters above sea level and has very distinct rainy and dry seasons, creating the distinctive coffee of the region.

This lot is from Mercon Specialty’s LIFT sustainability program. LIFT is working with a group of farmers in Araxa, who are extremely dedicated to high quality. LIFT is helping the group digitalize their farm management, and to continue to respect the highest environmental standards in terms of biodiversity preservation of the Atlantic Forest.

The definitive, paradigm shifting guide to healing intergenerational trauma—weaving together scientific research with practical exercises and stories from the therapy room—from Dr. Mariel Buqué, Ph.D, a Columbia University-trained, trauma-informed, psychologist, professor, and practitioner of holistic healing.

When a physical wound is left unhealed, it continues to cause pain and can infect the whole body. When emotions are left unhealed, they similarly cause harm that spreads to other parts of our lives, hurting our family, friends, coworkers, and others. Eventually, this hurt can injure an entire community, metastasizing across years and generations. This is intergenerational trauma. 

This trauma is why some of us become estranged from our families, why some of us are people pleasers, why some of us find ourselves in co-dependent relationships. This trauma can be rooted in the experiences of ancestors, who may have suffered due to their race or identity, and it can be collective, the result of a shared experience like systemic oppression, harmful engrained behaviors in a culture like the acceptance of physical discipline of children, or even a natural disaster like a pandemic. These wounds are complex, impacting our minds, bodies, and spirits. Healing requires a holistic approach that has so far been absent from the field of psychology. Until now. 

From Dr. Mariel Buqué, a leading trauma psychologist, comes a groundbreaking guide to transforming intergenerational pain into intergenerational abundance. With BREAK THE CYCLE, she delivers the definitive guide to healing inherited trauma. Weaving together scientific research with practical exercises and stories from the therapy room, Dr. Buqué teaches readers how trauma is transmitted from one generation to the next and how they can break the cycle through tangible therapeutic practices, learning to pass down strength instead of pain to future generations.