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  • Joy's Holiday Shopping Party - Wednesday, December 18, 2024
    Sold out

    Invitation Only:

    Join me for a special holiday shopping party at Kindred Stories! Enjoy complimentary gift wrapping, cocktails, light bites, and 10% off your purchases.

    Supporting local Black-owned businesses during the holidays is incredibly important. I’m thrilled to invite you to join us in celebrating and supporting our dear friends at Kindred Stories! 

    To RSVP, please add this event RSVP to your cart and check out. 

    Event Deets:

    What: Holiday Shopping Party Hosted by Joy Sewing

    Where: Kindred Stories - 2304 Stuart Street

    When: Wednesday, December 18, 2024 - 6 - 8 PM

    RSVP by Friday, December 13, 2024

  • Joyful, Delicious, Vegan

    by Sherra Aguirre

    $16.95

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    A guide for preventing or reversing heart disease, augmented with personal anecdotes from the author, guidelines from two leading cardiologists, recipes and information about the unexpected joys of a vegan life, Joyful, Delicious, Vegan empowers women to protect themselves from the number one killer in America—by learning to prepare delicious, healing, plant-based foods in their own kitchens.

    We can all learn how to enjoy good health naturally at any age—and it starts in our kitchens by changing how we eat. In Joyful, Delicious, Vegan: Life Without Heart Disease, Sherra Aguirre equips readers with the simplest, most effective way to prevent or reverse heart disease, our number one killer here in the US—especially for African American women, who are on the front lines of the fight against heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses.

    In this empowering guide to healthy eating, Aguirre shares her own story of reversing hypertension and other heart disease symptoms, despite a long family history; she presents current knowledge about the effectiveness of a plant-based diet in reversing disease; and she offers up recommendations from two world-renowned cardiologists who have demonstrated results with patients for many years. Joyful, Delicious, Vegan: Life Without Heart Disease guides readers in building a simple food plan around their particular needs with delicious anti-inflammatory foods and provides support for developing the habit of mindful eating. Aguirre explores ways in which choosing a vegan diet and eating consciously are compassionate acts that can positively impact many areas of our lives—and includes tips to help readers sustain results. Full of tips for success based on Aguirre’s personal experience and the experience of others, Joyful, Delicious, Vegan: Life Without Heart Disease is a source of inspiration, encouragement, and staying power for all readers.

  • Jubilee (50th Anniversary Edition)

    Margaret Walker

    $17.99

    The best-selling classic about a mixed-race child in the Civil War–era South that “chronicles the triumph of a free spirit over many kinds of bondage” (New York Times Book Review).

    Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the antebellum South in both its opulence and its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction.

    Weaving her own family’s oral history with thirty years of research, Margaret Walker brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light in a novel that churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.

    “A revelation.”—Milwaukee Journal

    Includes a Foreword by Nikki Giovanni

  • Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking

    by Toni Tipton-Martin

    $35.00

    Toni Tipton-Martin, the first African-American food editor of a daily American newspaper, is the author of the James Beard Award-winning The Jemima Code, a history of African-American cooking found in—and between—the lines of three centuries’ worth of African-American cookbooks. Tipton-Martin builds on that research in Jubilee, adapting recipes from those historic texts for the modern kitchen. What we find is a world of African-American cuisine—made by enslaved master chefs, free caterers, and black entrepreneurs and culinary stars—that goes far beyond soul food. It’s a cuisine that was developed in the homes of the elite and middle class; that takes inspiration from around the globe; that is a diverse, varied style of cooking that has created much of what we know of as American cuisine.

  • Judge Stone: A Novel
    $32.00

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

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

  • Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice: A Cocktail Recipe Book

    by Toni Tipton-Martin

    $30.00

    Discover the fascinating history of Black mixology and its enduring influence on American cocktail culture through 70 rediscovered, modernized, or celebrated recipes, by the James Beard Award–winning author of Jubilee.

    Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs, and Juice spotlights the creativity, hospitality, and excellence of Black drinking culture, with classic and modern recipes inspired by formulas found in two centuries’ worth of Black cookbooks. From traditional tipples, such as the Absinthe Frappe or the Clover Leaf Cocktail, to new favorites, like the Jerk-Spiced Bloody Mary and the Gin and Juice 3.0, Toni Tipton-Martin shares a variety of recipes that shine a light on her influences, including underheralded early-twentieth-century icons, like Tom Bullock, Julian Anderson, and Atholene Peyton, and modern superstars, such as Snoop Dogg and T-Pain.

    Drawing on her expertise, research in historic cookbooks, and personal collection of texts and letters, Toni Tipton-Martin shows how these drinks have evolved over time and shares the stories of how Black mixology came to be—a culmination of generations of practice, skill, intelligence, and taste.

  • Julep: Southern Cocktails Refashioned

    by Alba Huerta

    $25.99
    A tribute to the spirits and drinking traditions of the South through a leading barwoman's glass, with 80 recipes and photos.

    Craft cocktail maven Alba Huerta succinctly tells the story of drinking in the South through themes such as "Trading with the Enemy," "the Rural South," "the Drinking Society," "the Saltwater South," and others that anchor the menu at her destination bar, Julep. With historical overviews, 15 bar snack recipes, and 65 bespoke cocktail recipes, ranging from the iconic Mint Julep (and variations such as Rye Julep and Sparkling Julep) to modern inventions like the Snakebit Sprout, Liquid Currency, and Hot July, Huerta recounts the tales and traditions that define drinking culture in the American South today. Approximately 80 evocative cocktail and location photographs convey the romance and style that distinguish Julep and serve to inspire beverage enthusiasts to relive Southern history via the bar cart.
  • Juliet Takes a Breath

    by Gabby Rivera

    $11.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    Juliet Milagros Palante is a self-proclaimed closeted Puerto Rican baby dyke from the Bronx. Only, she’s not so closeted anymore. Not after coming out to her family the night before flying to Portland, Oregon, to intern with her favorite feminist writer—what’s sure to be a life-changing experience. And when Juliet’s coming out crashes and burns, she’s not sure her mom will ever speak to her again.

  • July 2023 Adult Bookclub: Where the Line Bleeds by Jesymn Ward - July 27 at 7PM
    from $0.00

    The bookclub meeting will take place on July 27, 2023 at 7 PM in the Kindred Stories Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    About the Book

    Where the Line Bleeds is Jesmyn Ward’s gorgeous first novel and the first of three novels set in Bois Sauvage—followed by Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing—comprising a loose trilogy about small town sourthern family life. Described as “starkly beautiful” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), “fearless” (Essence), and “emotionally honest” (The Dallas Morning News), it was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell First Novelist Award.

    Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in rural Bois Sauvage, on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. They’ve just finished high school and need to find jobs, but after Katrina, it’s not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe’s not so lucky and starts to sell drugs. Christophe’s downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins’ parents: Cille, who left for a better job, and Sandman, a dangerous addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins.

    Where the Line Bleeds takes place over the course of a single, life-changing summer. It is a delicate and closely observed portrait of fraternal love and strife, of the relentless grind of poverty, of the toll of addiction on a family, and of the bonds that can sustain or torment us. Bois Sauvage, based on Ward’s own hometown, is a character in its own right, as stiflingly hot and as rich with history as it is bereft of opportunity. Ward’s “lushly descriptive prose…and her prodigious talent and fearless portrayal of a world too often overlooked” (Essence) make this novel an essential addition to her incredible body of work.
  • JULY 2024: Adult Book Club - July 25 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    This bookclub meeting is on July 25 at 7 PM in the Kindred Stories' Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    NOTE: Safiya Sinclair will be in town on July 28, at 4 PM to discuss her book. You can RSP here

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure, and believed a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

    In an effort to keep Babylon outside the gate, he forbade almost everything. In place of pants, the women in her family were made to wear long skirts and dresses to cover their arms and legs, head wraps to cover their hair, no make-up, no jewelry, no opinions, no friends. Safiya’s mother, while loyal to her father, nonetheless gave Safiya and her siblings the gift of books, including poetry, to which Safiya latched on for dear life. And as Safiya watched her mother struggle voicelessly for years under housework and the rigidity of her father’s beliefs, she increasingly used her education as a sharp tool with which to find her voice and break free. Inevitably, with her rebellion comes clashes with her father, whose rage and paranoia explodes in increasing violence. As Safiya’s voice grows, lyrically and poetically, a collision course is set between them.

  • JULY 2024: Young Adult Book Club for Adults - July 27 @ TBA
    Sold out

    The bookclub meeting will take place on July 27 at TBA in the Kindred Stories' Reading Garden. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read). You are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    New allies rise.
    The Blood Moon nears.
    Zélie faces her final enemy.
    The king who hunts her heart.

    When Zelie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland.

    Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her. Baldyr’s quest to harness Zélie’s strength sends Zélie, Amari, and Tzain searching for allies in unknown lands.

    But as Baldyr closes in, catastrophe charges Orïsha’s shores. It will take everything Zélie has to face her final enemy and save her people before the Skulls annihilate them for good.

  • JULY 2025: Fiction Book Club - July 24 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, July 24 @ 7PM CST

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

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

    ABOUT HAPPY LAND

    A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.

    Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years, due to a mysterious estrangement inherited from her mother. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can.

    But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen. 

    It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale—royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.

    Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.

  • JULY 2025: Mystery & Thriller Book Club - July 22 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, July 22 @ 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 KING OF ASHES

    Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Black Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.

    When eldest son Roman Carruthers is summoned home after his father’s car accident, he finds his younger brother, Dante, in debt to dangerous criminals and his sister, Neveah, exhausted from holding the family—and the family business—together. Neveah and their father, who run the Carruthers Crematorium in the run-down central Virginia town of Jefferson Run, see death up close every day. But mortality draws even closer when it becomes clear that the crash that landed their father in a coma was no accident and Dante’s recklessness has placed them all in real danger.

    Roman, a financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, has some money to help buy his brother out of trouble. But in his work with wannabe tough guys, he’s forgotten that there are real gangsters out there. As his bargaining chips go up in smoke, Roman realizes that he has only one thing left to offer to save his brother: himself, and his own particular set of skills.

    Roman begins his work for the criminals while Neveah tries to uncover the long-ago mystery of what happened to their mother, who disappeared when they were teenagers. But Roman is far less of a pushover than the gangsters realize. He is willing to do anything to save his family. Anything.

    Because everything burns.

  • JULY 2025: NO NAME BOOK CLUB - July 27 @ 1 PM CST
    Sold out
    No Name is a Black-owned worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, No Name uplifts two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. No Name believes building community through political education is crucial for our liberation and should be accessible to everyone—which is why all programming is free. 

    MEETING DEETS

    When: Sunday, July 27 @ 1 PM

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

    How: RSVP to let us know you're coming! Support Kindred Stories by purchasing a copy of the book from here!

    ABOUT Krik? Krak! 

    Arriving one year after the Haitian-American's first novel (Breath, Eyes, Memory) alerted critics to her compelling voice, these 10 stories, some of which have appeared in small literary journals, confirm Danticat's reputation as a remarkably gifted writer.

    Examining the lives of ordinary Haitians, particularly those struggling to survive under the brutal Duvalier regime, Danticat illuminates the distance between people's desires and the stifling reality of their lives. A profound mix of Catholicism and voodoo spirituality informs the tales, bestowing a mythic importance on people described in the opening story, "Children of the Sea," as those "in this world whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves." The ceaseless grip of dictatorship often leads men to emotionally abandon their families, like the husband in "A Wall of Fire Rising," who dreams of escaping in a neighbor's hot-air balloon. The women exhibit more resilience, largely because of their insistence on finding meaning and solidarity through storytelling; but Danticat portrays these bonds with an honesty that shows that sisterhood, too, has its power plays. In the book's final piece, "Epilogue: Women Like Us," she writes: "Are there women who both cook and write? Kitchen poets, they call them. They slip phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around their pork before frying it. They make narrative dumplings and stuff their daughter's mouths so they say nothing more."

    These stories inform and enrich one another, as the female characters reveal a common ancestry and ties to the fictional Ville Rose. In addition to the power of Danticat's themes, the book is enhanced by an element of suspense—we're never certain, for example, if a rickety boat packed with refugees introduced in the first tale will reach the Florida coast. Spare, elegant and moving, these stories cohere into a superb collection.

     

  • July 2025: Romance Book Club - July 10 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss Audre and Bash Are Just Friends by Tia Williams!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, July 10 @ 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 AUDRE AND BASH ARE JUST FRIENDS

    Scorching-hot summer. Scorching-hot chemistry. Two teens can’t forget they’re just friends in this sweet, funny, electrifying romance from New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams. Perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Nicola Yoon.
     
    MEET AUDRE. Junior class president. Debate team captain. Unofficial student therapist. Desperately in need of a good time.
     
    MEET BASH. Mysterious new senior. Everybody’s crush. Tall, floppy, great taste in jewelry. King of having a good time.
     
    It’s the last day of school at Cheshire Prep, Brooklyn’s elite academy—and Audre Mercy-Moore’s life is a mess. Her dad cancelled her annual summer visit to his Malibu beach house. Now? She’s stuck in a claustrophobic apartment with her mom, stepdad, and one-year-old sister (aka the Goblin Baby).
     
    Under these conditions, she’ll never finish writing her self-help book—ie, the key to winning over Stanford’s admissions board.
     
    Cut to Bash Henry! Audre hires him to be her “fun consultant.” His job? To help her complete the Experience Challenge—her list of five wild dares designed to give her juicy book material. She’ll get inspo; he’ll get paid. Everybody wins.
     
    He isn’t boyfriend material. And she’s not looking for one. Can they stay professional despite their obvious connection?
     
    Fun fact: Audre Mercy-Moore first appeared in the New York Times bestseller Seven Days in June and now stars in her own story!

  • JULY 2026: Fiction Book Club - July 30 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss Kin by Tayari Jones!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, July 30 @ 7PM CST

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

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

    ABOUT KIN

    A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

    Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.

    A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in 

  • JULY 2026: Horror Book Club - July 21 @ 7PM
    $0.00

    We're meeting to discuss Blood Slaves by Markus Redmond!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, July 21 @ 7PM CST

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

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

    ABOUT BLOOD SLAVES

    For readers of Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, this ingenious reimagining of the vampire origin story set during the early days of American slavery blends alternate history with supernatural horror, as the last surviving member of an ancient African vampire tribe meets a slave desperate for freedom, and together, they lead an army of enslaved people in a cinematically blood-soaked battle for freedom and revenge.

    What if nobody ever freed the slaves…because they freed themselves – 150 years before the Civil War?

    In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation.

    Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire tribe rendered nearly extinct by plague. Rafazi has roamed the world for centuries with an undying desire to replenish the power that once defined his heritage. In Willie, Rafazi has found his first biddable subject to be turned and to help in a hungry revolt. And Willie desires nothing more than to free his people from malicious bondage. Whatever it takes.

    One by one, as an army of blood slaves thirsting for revenge is gathered, the headstrong Gertie fears that no good can come from the vampiric legacy that courses through Rafazi’s veins. Willie knows that only evil can fight evil. And when the woman he loves stands between the reemergence of the Ramanga and the justified slaughter of the oppressors, Willie must make an irreversible decision. Only one thing is certain: on the Barrow plantation, and beyond, blood will spill.

    Part historical drama, part supernatural horror, and part alternate history, Blood Slaves is an ingenuous and defiant new creation myth of the vampire, one rooted in both justice and the sometimes-violent means necessary to achieve it.

  • JULY 2026: Mystery & Thriller Book Club - July 28 @ 7PM
    $0.00

    We're meeting to discuss Judge Stone by Viola Davis!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, July 28 @ 7PM CST

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

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

    ABOUT JUDGE STONE

    The most respected citizen in Union Springs, Alabama (population 3,314), is Judge Mary Stone. She holds two responsibilities sacred: running her family farm and presiding over her courtroom. It's there she draws the most controversial case in the history of the South.

    Criminally, it’s open-and-shut.

    Ethically, there is no middle ground. Essentially, it’s a choice between life and death.
     
    No judge can satisfy everyone. It would be dangerous to try. But Judge Stone is willing to fight to bring justice to the people and place she loves.

  • JULY 2026: NO NAME BOOK CLUB - July 26 @ 3 PM CST
    $0.00
    No Name is a Black-owned worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, No Name uplifts two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. No Name believes building community through political education is crucial for our liberation and should be accessible to everyone—which is why all programming is free. 

    MEETING DEETS
    When: Sunday, July 26 @ 3 PM
    Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)
    How: RSVP to let us know you're coming! Support No Name Bookclub by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

    ABOUT RAZORBLADE TEARS

    A black father and a white father join forces on a crusade for revenge against the people who murdered their gay sons, by the award-winning author of Blacktop Wasteland.

    Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid.

    The last thing he expects to hear is that his son Isiah has been murdered, along with Isiah’s white husband Derek. Isiah was a gay black man in the American South; Ike couldn’t bring himself to attend his son’s wedding. Isiah was a man Ike never understood. A boy he was never there for the way he should have been.

    Derek’s father Buddy Lee is also suffering. He’d barely spoken to his son in five years; he was as ashamed of Derek for being gay as Derek was ashamed his father was a criminal. Buddy Lee still has contacts in the underworld, though, and he wants to know who killed his boy.

  • JULY 2026: Romance Book Club - July 8 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss The Missed Connection!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Wednesday, July 8 @ 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!

    *This book is currently on PRE-ORDER and has an on sale date for June 9th. You can purchase now for your book to be picked up or shipped on June 9th. 

    ABOUT THE MISSED CONNECTION

    New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams returns with an intensely romantic, deliciously sexy tale about a woman searching for her handsome seatmate on a European flight--and the unexpected places her hunt for love leads her.

    Sasha Cruz knows types. As a booked-and-busy casting agent, she's always casting -- at happy hour, the post office, the grocery store, everywhere. She's all about finding the perfect person to slot into the perfect role. What she doesn't do, however, are relationships. Too much energy, not enough time. Men find her intimidating, and she likes it that way.

    But when Sasha's seated next to a mysterious, broodingly handsome Italian man on the way to a work trip in Paris, sparks fly - but they miss the chance to exchange contact information. Now, convinced that she's lost out on her soulmate, Sasha is on a manhunt to find Seat F.

    Sasha enlists her work friend for help in the search, but when she accidentally emails the entire global company, colleagues around the world begin looking for Seat F, too - with some finding love along the way. Meanwhile, Sasha takes matters into her own hands, hiring a smoldering detective who complicates matters in unforeseen ways

  • July Adult Book Club - Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
    Sold out

    Join us for our monthly adult book club.  Our July pick is Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson. 

    Book club will happen on Thursday, July 28 at 7:00 pm in our reading garden.  RSVP required.  See ya'll there!

    About the Book:

    In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking journey Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their family, and themselves.
     
    Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor's true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right?” Will their mother's revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever? 

    Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch.

  • July Sun: Stories
    $29.00

    “Ahmad’s compassion, her deep care for the psychological and emotional nuances of her characters, never wavers.” – The New York Times Book Review

    In a searing collection by the award-winning author of The Return of Faraz Ali, characters seek to make their futures their own in a Pakistan riven by class, gender and religion

    In these seven powerful stories, Aamina Ahmad finds a world of pathos in the narrowest circumstances, from the fugitive intimacies of villages where nothing escapes notice to the crevices where city dwellers seek refuge from urban striving and indifference. Capturing the plight of ordinary people caught between love and duty, freedom and social constraint—a man who witnesses an illicit moment of tenderness, a police officer who must choose whether to follow the laws of God or of man, a woman who takes matters into her own hands in the face of an unexpected pregnancy—July Sun more than sustains the promise of Ahmad’s sure-footed debut.

  • July YA Book Club - Things We Couldn't Say
    from $0.00

    Join us for our monthly adult book club.  Our July pick is Things We Couldn't Say by Jay Coles. 

    Book club will happen on Sunday, July 31 at 2:00 PM  in our reading garden.  RSVP required.  See ya'll there!

    About The Book

    From one of the brightest and most acclaimed new lights in YA fiction, a fantastic new novel about a bi Black boy finding first love . . . and facing the return of the mother who abandoned his preacher family when he was nine.

    There's always been a hole in Gio's life. Not because he's into both guys and girls. Not because his father has some drinking issues. Not because his friends are always bringing him their drama. No, the hole in Gio's life takes the shape of his birth mom, who left Gio, his brother, and his father when Gio was nine years old. For eight years, he never heard a word from her . . . and now, just as he's started to get his life together, she's back.

    It's hard for Gio to know what to do. Can he forgive her like she wants to be forgiven? Or should he tell her she lost her chance to be in his life? Complicating things further, Gio's started to hang out with David, a new guy on the basketball team. Are they friends? More than friends? At first, Gio's not sure . . . especially because he's not sure what he wants from anyone right now.

    There are no easy answers to love -- whether it's family love or friend love or romantic love. 

  • Jumping the Broom - Hers Card
    $6.00
    Blank Inside. A7 size (5" x 7"). Printed on 110lb Pure White recycled, archival and acid-free paper. Comes with Kraft envelope and protective sleeve.
  • Jumping the Broom - His Card
    $6.00

    Blank Inside. A7 size (5" x 7").

    Printed on 110lb Pure White recycled, archival and acid-free paper.

    Comes with Kraft envelope and protective sleeve.

  • Jumping the Broom - His/Her Card
    $6.00

    Blank Inside. A7 size (5" x 7").

    Printed on 110lb Pure White recycled, archival and acid-free paper.

    Comes with Kraft envelope and protective sleeve.

  • June 2023 Adult Bookclub: Belly of the Beast by Da'Shaun L. Harrison
    from $0.00

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, June 22, 2023, at 7:00 PM CST at KINDRED STORIES. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).  If you haven't read the book at all, that's ok too.

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    About the Book

    Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.

    To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma.
     
    Da’Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated.
     
    Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of “health” and “healthiness” for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us “fat is bad,” and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.

  • JUNE 2024: Adult Book Club - JUNE 27 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    This bookclub meeting is on June 27 at 7 PM. We're be in the Kindred Stories Reading. Be sure to show up with the book read (or partially read) but you are always welcome to just come and take up space. 

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    On the night of her husband Matt’s fortieth birthday, Rachel Abbott receives a sexy, explicit text from her husband that she quickly realizes was meant for another woman. Divorce is inevitable, and Rachel is determined not to leave her thirteen-year marriage empty handed. Meanwhile, Matt, a rising star mayor with his eye on the White House, can’t afford a messy split in the middle of his reelection campaign. They strike a deal: Rachel gets one million dollars and their lavish house in the wealthy DC suburb of Oasis Springs, as long as she keeps playing the ideal Black trophy wife until the election.

    Then Rachel meets Nathan Vasquez, a very handsome, very lost twenty-six-year-old artist, and their connection makes Rachel forget about being the perfect politician’s wife. As Rachel reawakens Nathan’s long-dormant artistic aspirations, their attraction becomes impossible to resist. But secrets are hard to keep in a town like Oasis Springs, and Nathan has a few of his own. With the risk of scandal looming and their hearts on the line, they’ll have to decide whether the possibility of losing everything is worth taking a chance on love. 

    The Art of Scandal is a sizzling, conversation-starting debut about rekindling passion, the transformative power of art, and finding love in unexpected places. 

  • JUNE 2025: Fiction Book Club - June 26 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss A Girl Within A Girl Within A Girl  by Nanda Reddy!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, June 26 @ 7PM CST

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend and RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your book and support Fiction Book Club!

    ABOUT A Girl Within A Girl Within A Girl 

    A girl takes on a series of identities to survive, shrouding herself in layers of secrets, until years later when she is forced to reckon with her past.

    On an ordinary day in an upscale Atlanta suburb, Maya is making breakfast for her two sons, when her husband drops a red-and-blue striped envelope on the counter and asks a devastating question: Who is Sunny?

    Maya is sent reeling back to her childhood in Guyana―a time when Sunny was her only name. Unbeknownst to her husband, Maya is not who she claims to be. The letter, from her long-lost sister Roshi, now threatens to expose her true identity and shatter the seemingly perfect existence Maya worked so hard to build.

    As she frantically weighs the impact of the truth on her future, Maya relives the details of her childhood journey to America from Guyana–and the traumatic events that forced her to leave her past behind. Through the eyes of Maya’s innocent and scared younger self, we discover the power of hope, empathy, and the possibility of beginning again.

  • JUNE 2025: Mystery & Thriller Book Club - June 24 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss My Darkest Prayer by S.A. Cosby!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, June 24 @ 7PM CST

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend and RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your book and support Mystery & Thriller Book Club!

    ABOUT My Darkest Prayer 

    Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby’s debut novel, republished in a new edition, with a new introduction from the author.

    “I handle the bodies.”

    Whether it's working at his cousin's funeral home or tossing around the local riffraff at his favorite bar, Nathan Waymaker is a man who knows how to handle the bodies. A former marine and sheriff's deputy, Nathan has built a reputation in his small Southern town as a man who can help when all other avenues have been exhausted. When a beloved local minister is found dead, his parishioners ask Nathan to make sure the death isn’t swept under the rug.

    What starts out as an easy payday soon descends into a maze of mayhem filled with wannabe gangsters, vicious crime lords, porn stars, crooked police officers, and a particularly treacherous preacher and his mysterious wife. Nathan must use all his varied skills and some of his wit to navigate the murky waters of small town corruption even as dark secrets of his own threaten to come to the surface.

  • JUNE 2025: NO NAME BOOK CLUB - June 29 @ 1 PM CST
    Sold out
    No Name is a Black-owned worker cooperative connecting community members both inside and outside carceral facilities with radical books. Each month, No Name uplifts two books written by Black, indigenous, and other people of color. No Name believes building community through political education is crucial for our liberation and should be accessible to everyone—which is why all programming is free. 

    MEETING DEETS

    When: Sunday, June 29 @ 1 PM

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

    How: RSVP to let us know you're coming! 

    ABOUT BLESSINGS

    Moonlight meets Purple Hibiscus in this searing debut of self-acceptance, sexual awakening, and first love set in a Nigeria on the verge of criminalizing same-sex relationships

    Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and another boy, his deepest fears are confirmed, and Obiefuna is banished to boarding school.

    As he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence, Obiefuna both finds and hides who he truly is. Back home, his mother, Uzoamaka, must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s identity becomes more dangerous than ever before, and the life he wants drifts further out of reach.

    Set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2013, Blessings is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and what it takes for love to flourish despite it all.

  • JUNE 2025: Non Fiction Book Club - June 17 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing by Joy Degruy!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, JUNE 17 @ 7PM CST

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend and RSVP WITH BOOK to purchase your book and support Fiction Book Club!

    ABOUT POST TRAUMATIC SLAVE SYNDROME

    In the 16th century, the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and emancipation in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse. Given such history, isn't it likely that many of the enslaved were severely traumatized? And did the trauma and the effects of such horrific abuse end with the abolition of slavery?

    Emancipation was followed by one hundred more years of institutionalized subjugation through the enactment of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, peonage, convict leasing, domestic terrorism and lynching. Today the violations continue, and when combined with the crimes of the past, they result in yet unmeasured injury. What do repeated traumas, endured generation after generation by a people produce? What impact have these ordeals had on African Americans today?

    Dr. Joy DeGruy, answers these questions and more. With over thirty years of practical experience as a professional in the mental health field, Dr. DeGruy encourages African Americans to view their attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors through the lens of history and so gain a greater understanding of how centuries of slavery and oppression have impacted people of African descent in America.

    Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome helps to lay the necessary foundation to ensure the well-being and sustained health of future generations and provides a rare glimpse into the evolution of society's beliefs, feelings, attitudes and behavior concerning race in America.

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