We're meeting to discuss In Deadly Company by L.S. Stratton!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, January 27 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Romance Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT  IN DEADLY COMPANY

We're meeting to discuss A Fighting Dream: The Political Writings of Claudia Jones by Claudia Jones!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, January 20 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Romance Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT A FIGHTING DREAM

We're meeting to discuss The Echo of Forever by Asia Monique!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, January 13 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Romance Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT THE ECHO OF FOREVER

Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological climate of the school and obligingly adapting his beliefs to it. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints Puttbutt as academic dean, the fun really begins—for Puttbutt sets out to stir things up and settle old scores.

Turning every contemporary political and social movement on its head—from feminism to nationalism to jingoism—this boistrois and irreverent novel manages to be by turns hilarious and totally serious.

"One of the funniest satires of university politics I've ever read. Ishmael Reed is funnier than Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal." —Leslie Marmon Silko

"Reed is, as always, an American original; a wiseguy whose wisdom is the real thing," —The Boston Sunday Globe

Hit the ground running with all five books in Jason Reynolds’s award-winning and New York Times bestselling Track series, now available together in one hardcover boxed set.

Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. A fast and fiery group of kids from wildly different backgrounds, chosen to compete on an elite track team. They all have a lot to lose, a lot to gain, and, most of all, a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Under the caring yet firm-handed guidance of their coach, however, they may achieve more than they ever dreamed possible.

Here are all their stories, even Coach’s from when he was a boy coming into his own as a track superstar, in this explosive five-book series.

This hardcover boxed set includes:
Ghost
Patina
Sunny
Lu
Coach

Race through Jason Reynolds’s New York Times bestselling Track series, now in a complete boxed set.

Ghost. Patina. Sunny. Lu. A fast but fiery group of kids from wildly different backgrounds, chosen to compete on an elite track team. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Discover each of their stories in this complete collection of Jason Reynolds’s explosive New York Times bestselling Track series.

This collection includes:
Ghost
Patina
Sunny
Lu

All Aboard! The sequel to Jax Freeman and the Phantom Shriek has pulled into the station!

From the award-winning author of the best-selling Tristan Strong trilogy comes a magical series about a special boy who is granted summoning powers from his ancestors.

Seventh grader Jackson "Jax" Freeman recently learned two important facts: one, he's a summoner—someone who can call on the magical powers of his ancestors to help him do amazing things—and two, he isn’t the only person with this ability.

After much training, Jax and four of his summoner classmates from DuSable Middle school in Chicago are thrust into a competition called the Tournament of Spirits where they'll face the most skilled summoners from around the world.

But while everyone is focused on winning, Jax is given a special side quest by the elders of the four magical families: he has to spy on each of the competitors—including his own teammates—in order to uncover who is releasing endangered, and very dangerous, cryptids into the arena.

Can Jax take the top spot in the tournament and save himself and his friends from a mysterious foe?

Kwame Mbalia's incredible imagination and world-building talents are on full display in this thrilling adventure that's packed with magic, friendship, non-stop action, and a lot of heart.

Jayylen is extra excited for Christmas this year. His brother Manuel, who is serving in the Army, will be home for the first time in three years! But when Momma gets the call that Manuel won't be able to make it because he's needed on base in Alaska, Jayylen doesn't know what to do. Can he figure out a way for the whole family to be together?

This workshop invites participants into a deep, reflective process, one that uses jazz as a portal into memory, personal truth, and ancestral presence. Through layered prompts and intentional pacing, it creates space to explore the quiet corners of the self, to name what’s been buried, and to reconnect with the parts of our history that often go unspoken. 

A vital and surprising hardcover collection of poems about, and inspired by, jazz music. AN EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY POCKET POET. Selected and Edited by Kevin Young.

Ever since its first flowering, jazz has had a powerful influence on American poetry; this scintillating anthology offers a treasury of poems that are as varied and as vital as the music that inspired them.

From the Harlem Renaissance to the beat movement, from the poets of the New York school to the contemporary poetry scene, the jazz aesthetic has been a compelling literary force—one that Jazz Poems makes palpable. We hear it in the poems of Langston Hughes, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Frank O’Hara, and Gwendolyn Brooks, and in those of Yusef Komunyakaa, Charles Simic, Rita Dove, Ntozake Shange, Mark Doty, William Matthews, and C. D. Wright. Here are poems that pay tribute to jazz’s great voices, and poems that throb with the vivid rhythm and energy of the jazz tradition, ranging in tone from mournful elegy to sheer celebration.

Includes:

• “Jazz Band in a Parisian Cabaret” by Langston Hughes
• “God Bless the Child” by Billie Holiday and Arthur Herzog, Jr.
• “Jazz Fantasia” by Carl Sandburg
• “Ol’ Bunk’s Band” by William Carlos Williams
• “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks
• “Chasing the Bird” by Robert Creeley
• “Victrola” by Robert Pinsky
• “Pres Spoke in a Language” by Amiri Baraka
• “The Day Lady Died” by Frank O’Hara
• “Art Pepper” by Edward Hirsch
• “Snow” by Billy Collins
 
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.

An affordable, compact primer on the artist who drastically shifted the course of late 20th-century art

This reader provides a concise introduction to the widely popular yet oft-misunderstood artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Guided by the steady hand of Basquiat scholar Larry Warsh, it is one of the few books of this kind to be directly approved by the artist’s estate and family: a notable distinction amid all of the buzz.
Jean-Michel Basquiat Handbook begins with a portrait of the young Basquiat, from his years as a precocious child in Brooklyn, to his rebellious teenagedom, to his meteoric rise in fame, to his tragic early death. The book then discusses the development of his groundbreaking style through the recurrent themes of his practice: urban life, the human figure, music and sports, to name just a few. The backend of the book provides a sampling of sketches from Basquiat’s notebooks, a chronology and incisive essays from scholars Henry Geldzahler and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
One of the first African American artists to reach international stature and wealth in the art world, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–88) was celebrated for his fusion of multicultural symbols, social commentary and distinctive graphic style. He has been the subject of numerous exhibitions across the globe, and his work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, among many others.

Naomi has always felt different-like she doesn't belong at home, at school, or anywhere at all. No matter how hard she tries, she just can't seem to fit in.

One night, after feeling especially discouraged, Naomi drifts off to sleep and finds herself in a surprising place. There, she meets someone who reminds her of a powerful truth: God created her on purpose and for a purpose.

Through this heartwarming story, young readers will be reminded that they are wonderfully made, deeply loved, and uniquely gifted by God. Naomi's Journey encourages children to embrace who they are, stop comparing themselves to others, and discover the beauty of the gifts God has placed inside of them.

Perfect for children ages 5-12, this book is filled with hope and encouragement that will inspire kids to see themselves the way God does-special, chosen, and enough.

The first major publication on Baltimore-based painter Jerrell Gibbs, whose contemplative portraits of Black sitters thrum with a vivid sense of place and reflect the complexity and emotional depth of everyday Black life.

This book captures a prolific period of self-examination and observation for contemporary artist Jerrell Gibbs (b. 1988). Known for his luminously rendered, expressionistic oil paintings, Gibbs uses the figure as a dynamic and recurring motif to explore themes of Black masculinity, fatherhood, legacy, and remembrance.

Drawing from archival family photographs, Gibbs emphasizes placement, size, and proportion, blending intimate mark-making with bold painterly gestures. By complicating and subverting visual stereotypes, Gibbs engages deeply with the materiality of painting, offering tender, emotionally evocative portrayals of Black men as husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. These allegorical and autobiographical works underscore quiet moments of joy, sorrow, and beauty as vital components of Black life. Additionally, commissioned portraits of such figures as Elijah Cummings and August Wilson are juxtaposed with allegorical figures from Gibbs’s dreams, reflecting his growth as an artist and individual. Gibbs’s work offers a fresh approach to painting the human form, following in the footsteps of other Black figurative painters Kerry James Marshall, Henry Taylor, and Amy Sherald.

America's favorite series returns with a new look and a Netflix tv show.

The Mancusis don't have any kids . . . but they sure have a lot of pets! So when they're desperate for a sitter, whom do they call? The Baby-sitters Club!

Kristy's insulted. The Baby-sitters don't pet-sit. But Jessi's always liked animals, and she talks Kristy into letting her have the job.

With snakes on the loose and sick hamsters, Jessi's got plenty of pet-sitting troubles. And the Baby-sitters aren't making life any easier for her when they get into a big fight.

Will Jessi be able to handle her pet-sitting job when things are going wrong with the baby-sitters, too?

A Baby-sitters Club graphic novel adapted by National Book Award longlister and Eisner-nominated cartoonist Ellen T. Crenshaw!

The Mancusis don't have any kids... but they sure do have a lot of pets! So when they're desperate for a sitter, who do they call? The Baby-sitters Club! Kristy feels pretty sure that the BSC does not pet-sit. But Jessi has always liked animals, and she talks Kristy into being okay with her taking the job.

With snakes on the loose and sick hamsters, Jessi's got plenty of pet-sitting troubles, and things don't get any easier when she and her friends get into a big fight. Will Jessi be able to handle her pet-sitting job when things are going wrong with the baby-sitters, too?

America's favorite series returns with a new look and a Netflix tv show.

Jessi knows a secret language! She learned it from Matt Braddock, the BSC's newest charge. Matt's been deaf since birth, and he uses sign language to speak. Since Jessi is Matt's baby-sitter, she's been using sign language, too.

Soon all the kids in Stoneybrook want to learn to sign . . . which keeps the Baby-sitters busy. Jessi's the busiest of all: she working on another secret just for Matt. Will she be able to keep the secret and pull off her special event?

A brand-new Baby-sitters Club graphic novel adapted by Eisner-nominated artist Chan Chau!

Jessi recently moved to Stoneybrook and is one of the newest members of The Baby-sitters Club. She's getting ready to start regularly sitting for the BSC's newest charge, Matt Braddock. Matt has been Deaf since birth and uses sign language to communicate, so Jessi has to use it, too. It's a secret language!

Soon all the neighborhood kids want to learn how to sign, which keeps the BSC busy. Jessi's the busiest of all -- she's preparing for her dance school's big show, plus working on another secret, just for Matt. Will Jessi be able to keep the secret and pull off her performance?

Famously known as the text that Martin Luther King Jr. sought inspiration from in the days leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott, Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited helped shape the civil rights movement and changed our nation’s history forever.

In this classic theological treatise, the acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1900-1981) demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed and the example of His life offers a solution to ending the descent into moral nihilism. Hatred does not empower--it decays. Only through self-love and love of one another can God's justice prevail.

*ships or ready for pick up in 7 - 10 business days*

Celebrate James Baldwin’s one-hundredth birthday anniversary with the first-ever illustrated biography of this legendary writer, orator, activist, and intellectual.

Before he became a writer, James “Jimmy” Baldwin was a young boy from Harlem, New York, who loved stories. He found joy in the rhythm of music, family, and books.

But Jimmy also found the blues, as a Black man living in America.

When he discovered the written word, he discovered true power. Writing gave him a voice. And that voice opened the world to Jimmy. From the publication of the groundbreaking collection of essays The Fire Next Time to his passionate demonstrations during the civil rights movement, Jimmy used his voice fearlessly.

Michelle Meadows, author of Brave Ballerina and Flying High, introduces young readers to the great American novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, orator, and artist James Baldwin, who, with the fire of his pen, dared a nation to dream of a more equitable world filled with love. Brought to life with warm illustrations by Jamiel Law, Jimmy’s Rhythm & Blues chronicles the life of an incredible visionary who left an indelible mark on American literature and history.

Through paintings, sculptures, drawings and more, John Wilson's work foregrounds the human experience and refuses invisibility

American artist John Wilson was not only a master draftsman, printmaker, painter and sculptor active for over seven decades, but he was also a keen observer and social activist. In his representations of Black Americans in particular, he sought to pay homage to the beauty and truths of ordinary Black people in such a way that all viewers, across race and culture, might see themselves reflected. His multidisciplinary works include unflinching representations of racial violence and war, tender family portraits, monumental bronze heads and landmark commissions such as the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., which stands in the United States Capitol.
The first major retrospective of the artist’s work, Witnessing Humanity sheds light on Wilson’s life and artistic evolution. Reproductions of artworks and photographs accompany critical essays and personal reflections, including analyses by art historians, interviews with Wilson’s peers, remembrances from fellow Black creatives and a full chronology by the late artist’s gallerist. The varied voices which resonate through this catalog illustrate that it is long past time to recognize Wilson’s art―to celebrate his lifelong dedication to depicting what he described as the "reality of being Black in this impossible world."
John Woodrow Wilson (1922–2015) was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University. He lived in Mexico for five years and became a friend and colleague of artist Elizabeth Catlett. Wilson taught fine art at Boston University from 1964 until 1986.

Jonah's Gourd Vine, Zora Neale Hurston's first novel, originally published in 1934, tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, "a living exultation" of a young man who loves too many women for his own good. Lucy, his long-suffering wife, is his true love, but there's also Mehaley and Big 'Oman, as well as the scheming Hattie, who conjures hoodoo spells to ensure his attentions. Even after becoming the popular pastor of Zion Hope, where his sermons and prayers for cleansing rouse the congregation's fervor, John has to confess that though he is a preacher on Sundays, he is a "natchel man" the rest of the week.

And so in this sympathetic portrait of a man and his community, Zora Neale Hurston shows that faith, tolerance, and good intentions cannot resolve the tension between the spiritual and the physical. That she makes this age-old dilemma come so alive is a tribute to her understanding of the vagaries of human nature.

The first monograph on Jordan Casteel, one of the most critically acclaimed artists working today

Jordan Casteel is a New York-based artist known for her larger-than-life paintings, which highlight the humanity of her subjects while affirming ideas of social justice.

At once tender and powerful, Casteel’s intimate portraits include friends, family members, and classmates as well as diverse subjects whom she meets and photographs on the streets of her neighborhood, thus effectively transforming strangers into close friends and collaborators. This near-anthropological pursuit puts viewers into a position where they are asked to contend with their preconceived notions of masculinity and race.

Casteel’s debut monograph features nearly 150 beautifully reproduced images, with sections specially conceived and designed by the artist herself.

Celebrate a Black boy's first haircut in this joyful book from the creator of the popular Princess Hair and Don't Touch My Hair!

Jordan loves his hair: soft like a cloud, regal like a crown. He doesn't want a haircut to change all that.

Jordan’s friends are getting new haircuts for picture day at school. Shape-ups, low fades, frohawks, and more—there are way too many styles to choose from. But when Mama brings Jordan to the barbershop, he sees everyone’s haircuts are like magic.

Can Jordan find a style that’s just right for him?

With her trademark bright colors and expressive characters, Sharee Miller teaches confidence and self-love through the timeless tradition of school picture day.

*ships in 7 -10 business days*

Like all kids, Josefina loves to eat sweets. She loves warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven, cupcakes and candy! One night, while eating a piece of flan, Mami asks her to consider giving up sweets for Lent, the 40 days leading up to Easter. "That's impossible!" Josefina says. When Mami promises to teach her how to make her favorite dessert, habichuelas con dulce, she agrees to give it a try.

Josefina can't wait to end her fast and eat the delicious sweet cream beans, her family's traditional Easter dessert. While she and her mom, tías and abuela prepare the dish, they dance to merengue music and tell stories about life back in the Dominican Republic. The kitchen fills with the aromatic smells of cinnamon and sugar, but it's the feelings of love and happiness Josefina will never forget. On Easter Sunday, when the family eats the special dessert she prepared, the girl's grandmother proclaims, "It's the best pot of habichuelas con dulce I've tasted in my life!"

This heart-warming, bilingual picture book for children shares a universal story all kids can relate to-learning about one's culture through food, music and family stories-while focusing on a cultural tradition specific to the Dominican Republic. As a bonus, the book includes the recipe for this special dessert-in both English and Spanish!

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

In exuberant verse and stirring pictures, Patricia Hruby Powell and Christian Robinson create an extraordinary portrait for young people of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker, the woman who worked her way from the slums of St. Louis to the grandest stages in the world. Meticulously researched by both author and artist, Josephine's powerful story of struggle and triumph is an inspiration and a spectacle, just like the legend herself.

A vibrant, deeply researched biography of A’Lelia Walker—daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance—written by her great-granddaughter.

Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and the author’s great-grandmother and namesake, is a fascinating figure whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance.

After inheriting her mother’s hair care enterprise, A’Lelia would become America’s first high profile black heiress and a prominent patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her three New York homes—a mansion, a townhouse, and a pied-a-terre—where she entertained Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, W.E.B. DuBois, and other cultural, social and intellectual luminaries of the Roaring Twenties.

Now, based on extensive research and Walker’s personal correspondence, her great-granddaughter creates a meticulous, nuanced portrait of a charismatic woman struggling to define herself as a wife, mother, and businesswoman outside her famous mother’s sphere. In Joy Goddess, A’Lelia’s radiant personality and impresario instincts—at the center of a vast, artistic social world where she flourished as a fashion trendsetter and international traveler—are brought to vivid and unforgettable life.

The acclaimed poetic force celebrates the practice of poetry as healing and prayer in this vital, life-affirming collection about surviving the void and touching the divine—the second book in a creative collaboration between Amistad and Moore Black Press.

At age fifteen, Barbara Fant tragically lost her mother, and her world was suddenly upended. “I became an angry teenager. I was mad at the world.,” she recalls. “I even stopped praying, but I began to write. Poetry became my way of communication, my way of processing . . . it became my way to pray.”

Rebirth, renewal, and healing are the heart of Joy in the Belly of a Riot. Fant’s monumental collection is a continuation of her lifelong project of using poetry as prayer; this is healing-informed poetry to restore herself, her community, and the world. Exquisitely lyrical and boldly resonant, Fant’s poems excavate the nightmares of a childhood marked by poverty, violence, racism, and the loss of countless loved ones. Suffering seemed endemic to neighborhoods like hers, and yet, in Fant’s own words, “I keep trying to write about the trauma, but the joy won’t let me.”

Steeped in a rich Black Christian tradition and drawing on Scripture for artistic inspiration, Fant’s verse offers solace and guidance for all, from the devout to the skeptical. In these poems Fant demands that we see her, and her community, throug more than our grief. As she closes this profound collection, Fant gently preaches that we choose life and reminds us that “wholeness is our birthright.”

Joy in the Belly of a Riot is a healing balm in times of sustained uncertainty and a rock upon which we can build and sustain a foundation of joy. Fant’s essential message demands to be heard, now more than ever.