Kanzi, the immigrant girl of Aya Khalil and Anait Semirdzhyan’s bestselling picture book The Arabic Quilt, has come to feel welcome in her American school—that is, until an entire shelf of books about immigrant kids and kids of color suddenly disappears from the school library.

Upon learning that the books with kids who look like her have been banned by her school district, Kanzi descends into fear and helplessness. But her classmates support her, and together—with their teacher’s help—they hatch a plan to hold a bake sale and use the proceeds to buy diverse books to donate to libraries. The event is a big success; the entire school participates, and the local TV station covers it in the evening news. Prodded by her classmates to read the poem she has written, Kanzi starts softly but finds her voice. “You have banned important books, but you can’t ban my words,” she reads. “Books are for everyone.” The crowd chants, “No banned books! No banned books!” and the next week, the ban is reversed.

Aya Khalil appends a note about how The Arabic Quilt was briefly banned from the York, Pennsylvania school system, and the backmatter also includes a recipe for baklawa, the Egyptian pastry that Kanzi prepares for the bake sale.

A powerful novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister’s surgery. When she sees a young man—Omar—who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice. 

Searing and empathetic,The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.

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The author of the award-winning Sally Hemings now brings to life Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the early 1900s, in this mesmerizing novel swirling with atmosphere and steeped in history.

A murder and a case of mistaken identity brings the police to Hannah Elias’ glitzy, five-story, twenty-room mansion on Central Park West. This is the beginning of an odyssey that moves back and forth in time and reveals the dangerous secrets of a mysterious woman, the fortune she built, and her precipitous fall.

Born in Philadelphia in the late 1800s, Hannah Elias has done things she’s not proud of to survive. Shedding her past, Hannah slips on a new identity before relocating to New York City to become as rich as a robber baron. Hannah quietly invests in the stock market, growing her fortune with the help of businessmen. As the money pours in, Hannah hides her millions across 29 banks. Finally attaining the life she’s always dreamed, she buys a mansion on the Upper West Side and decorates it in gold and first-rate décor, inspired by her idol Cleopatra.

The unsolved murder turns Hannah’s world upside-down and threatens to destroy everything she’s built. When the truth of her identity is uncovered, thousands of protestors gather in front of her stately home. Hounded by the salacious press, the very private Mrs. Elias finds herself alone, ensnared in a scandalous trial, and accused of stealing her fortune from whites.

Packed with glamour, suspense, and drama, populated with real-life luminaries from the period, The Great Mrs. Elias brings a fascinating woman and the age she embodied to glorious, tragic life.

Part history and part cultural analysis, The Grift chronicles the nuanced history of Black Republicans. Clay Cane lays out how Black Republicanism has been mangled by opportunists who are apologists for racism.

After the Civil War, the pillars of Black Republicanism were a balanced critique of both political parties, civil rights for all Americans, reinventing an economy based on exploitation, and, most importantly, building thriving Black communities. How did Black Republicanism devolve from revolutionaries like Frederick Douglass to the puppets in the Trump era?

Whether it's radical conservatives like South Carolina Senator Tim Scott or Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, they are consistently viral news and continuously upholding egregious laws at the expense of their Black brethren. Black faces in high places providing cover for explicit bigotry is one of the greatest threats to the liberation of Black and brown people. By studying these figures and their tactics, Cane exposes the grift and lays out a plan to emancipate our future.

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In this inspiring follow-up to his iconic memoir, Gucci Mane gifts us with his playbook for living your best life. Packed with stunning photographs, The Gucci Mane Guide to Greatness distills the legend’s timeless wisdom into a one-of-a-kind motivational guidebook. Gucci Mane emerged transformed after a turbulent life of violence, crime, and addiction to become a dazzling embodiment of the power of positivity, focus, and hard work. Using examples from his life of unparalleled success, Gucci Mane looks inward and upward to offer his blueprint for greatness. A must-read for anyone with big ambitions and bigger dreams.

"No matter your hair, you are welcome anywhere!"

A bold, graphic board book celebrating all types of hair.
With striking, colorful graphics and simple alliterative text, this board book features poufy hair, wavy hair, Afro hair, hair covered in a hijab, and more. A surprise mirror at the end encourages young children to reflect on their own characteristics. The message is clear: no matter what you look like, you are beautiful, valued, and welcome everywhere.

An introduction to the spiritual source of the beliefs and practices that have so profoundly shaped African American religious traditions.

Most of the Africans who were enslaved and brought to the Americas were from the Yoruba nation of West Africa, an ancient and vast civilization. In the diaspora caused by the slave trade, the guiding concepts of the Yoruba spiritual tradition took root in Haiti, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Brazil, and the United States.

In this accessible introduction, Baba Ifa Karade provides an overview of the Yoruba tradition and its influence in the West. He describes the sixteen Orisha, or spirit gods, and shows us how to work with divination, use the energy centers of the body to internalize the teachings of Yoruba, and create a sacred place of worship. The book also includes prayers, dances, songs, offerings, and sacrifices to honor the Orisha.

The Hate U Give is a groundbreaking, thought-provoking debut novel inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, about a teen girl who is the only witness to her friend’s fatal shooting by a police officer.

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor black neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, Khalil’s death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Starr’s best friend at school suggests he may have had it coming. When it becomes clear the police have little interest in investigating the incident, protesters take to the streets and Starr’s neighborhood becomes a war zone. What everyone wants to know is: What really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr.

But what Starr does—or does not—say could destroy her community. It could also endanger her life.

A. C. Thomas’s searing debut about an ordinary girl in extraordinary circumstances addresses issues of racism and police violence with intelligence, heart, and unflinching honesty.

In an alternate Cairo, humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane.

Senior Agent Hamed Nasr shows his new partner Agent Onsi Youssef the ropes of investigation when they are called to subdue a dangerous, possessed tram car. What starts off as a simple matter of exorcism, however, becomes more complicated as the origins of the demon inside are revealed.

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A new edition of a National Book Award finalist follows a black faith healer whose shrewd observations about human nature are told with the rich lyricism of the oral storytelling tradition.

From the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing follows Harlan Jane Eagleton as she travels to small towns, converting skeptics, restoring minds, and healing bodies. But before she found her calling, Harlan had been a minor rock star’s manager and, before that, a beautician. Harlan retraces her story to the beginning, when she once had a fling with the rock star’s ex-husband and found herself infatuated with an Afro-German horse dealer. Along the way she’s somehow lost her own husband, a medical anthropologist now traveling with a medicine woman across eastern Africa. Harlan draws us deeper into her world and the mystery at the heart of her tale: the story of her first healing.

The Healing is a lyrical and at times humorous exploration of the struggle to let go of pain, anger, and even love. Slipping seamlessly back through Harlan’s memories in a language rich with the textured cadences of unfiltered dialogue, Gayl Jones weaves her story to its dramatic—and unexpected—beginning.

The essential resource and guide to African American spirituality and traditions.

This is a fabulous resource for anyone who wants to understand African American spirituality, shamanism, and indigenous spiritual practices and beliefs. It is designed to be informative while providing hands-on recipes, rituals, projects, and resources to help you become an active participant in its wonderfully soulful traditions.

Inside you will find:
1. A celebration of healing, magic, and the divination traditions of ancient African earth-based spirituality
2. An explanation of how these practices have evolved in contemporary African American culture
3. A potpourri of recipes, rituals, and resources that you can use to heal your life

Among the topics covered:
* African spiritual practices of Santeria, Obeah, Lucumi, Orisa, and Quimbois
* Hoodoo—and how to use it to improve your health
* Ancient healing rituals and magical recipes of Daliluw
* Talking drums, spiritual dancing, clapping, tapping, singing, and changing
* Power objects, tricks and mojo bags, and herbal remedies

Previously published as The Big Book of Soul.

A sweeping history—and counter-narrative—of Native American life from the Wounded Knee massacre to the present.

The received idea of Native American history—as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee—has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did one hundred fifty Sioux die at the hands of the U. S. Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well.

Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative. Because they did not disappear—and not despite but rather because of their intense struggles to preserve their language, their traditions, their families, and their very existence—the story of American Indians since the end of the nineteenth century to the present is one of unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention.

In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, Treuer melds history with reportage and memoir. Tracing the tribes' distinctive cultures from first contact, he explores how the depredations of each era spawned new modes of survival. The devastating seizures of land gave rise to increasingly sophisticated legal and political maneuvering that put the lie to the myth that Indians don't know or care about property. The forced assimilation of their children at government-run boarding schools incubated a unifying Native identity. Conscription in the US military and the pull of urban life brought Indians into the mainstream and modern times, even as it steered the emerging shape of self-rule and spawned a new generation of resistance. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee is the essential, intimate story of a resilient people in a transformative era.

From James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

    As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

    Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird.

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This epic work―named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, Time, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a notable book by the New York Times―tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826.

This inspirational picture book biography, a collaboration between two Coretta Scott King Honor winners, tells the story of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the Supreme Court. Now available in paperback.

Growing up in segregated Baltimore, Thurgood Marshall saw that things weren’t fair. Laws said Black and white people couldn’t attend the same schools, play in the same parks, or even drink from the same water fountains. When he was assigned to read the Constitution as a school punishment, his eyes were opened. Thurgood knew that Jim Crow laws were wrong, and he was willing to do whatever it took to change them.

His determination to fight for equality for all Americans led him to law school and then to the NAACP, where he argued cases like Brown v. Board of Education before being appointed as a Supreme Court justice. But to get to the highest court in the land, Thurgood had to make space for himself every step of the way.

Coretta Scott King Honor winners Kekla Magoon and Laura Freeman unite to tell the incredible story of the first Black Supreme Court justice, who was a remarkable fighter for civil rights and equality throughout his life.

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On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe. Her poem “The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country” can now be cherished in this special gift edition. Including an enduring foreword by Oprah Winfrey, this keepsake celebrates the promise of America and affirms the power of poetry.

A divination deck and guidebook rooted in the American Hoodoo tradition

• 2021 Coalition of Visionary Resources Silver Award

• Includes 78 full-color Tarot cards that depict legendary rootworkers past and present as well as important Hoodoo archetypes and symbols

• Provides in-depth card meanings for each card in the Major Arcana and the four suits of the Minor Arcana, including the history of the rootworker or symbol featured, any associated magical plants, and guidance based on the card’s meaning

• Offers a history of Hoodoo and its complex heritage, including its roots in multiple African and Native American ethnic groups as well as its European influences

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, many Indigenous Americans and people of African descent intermarried and socialized more often than is acknowledged by mainstream history books and scholars. These interactions produced not only a multicultural people but also a body of knowledge that is known today as Hoodoo or Rootwork.

Celebrating the complex American Rootwork tradition, The Hoodoo Tarot integrates esoteric and botanical knowledge from Hoodoo with the divination system of the Tarot. Structured like a traditional Tarot deck, each of the 78 cards features full-color paintings by magical-realist artist Katelan Foisy and elegantly interprets the classical Tarot imagery through depictions of legendary rootworkers past and present as well as important Hoodoo symbolism.

In the accompanying guidebook, Tayannah Lee McQuillar provides a history of Hoodoo and its complex heritage, including its roots in multiple African and Indigenous American ethnic groups as well as its European influences. She explores the traditional forms of divination used by rootworkers, including cartomancy, explaining how pairing the Tarot with Hoodoo is a natural fit. For each card in the Major Arcana and the four suits of the Minor Arcana (sticks, baskets, needles, and knives), McQuillar provides an in-depth card meaning that draws on both Tarot and Hoodoo tradition. She shares the history of the rootworker or symbol featured, any associated magical plants, a related scriptural quote, and guidance and advice based on the card’s meaning. She also offers instructions on card spreads and shares sample card readings.

Offering a divination system rooted in the Indigenous and African experience in North America, The Hoodoo Tarot provides a hands-on way to honor and explore the magic of Hoodoo for personal growth and spiritual inspiration.

Strong female friendships and a snappy enemies-to-lovers theme take center stage in this highly anticipated romantic comedy from the USA Today bestselling author of The Dating Playbook.

Successful pediatric surgeon London Kelley just needs to find some balance and de-stress. According to her friends Samiah and Taylor, what London really needs is a casual hookup. A night of fun with no strings. But no one—least of all London—expected it to go down at her high school reunion with Drew Sullivan, millionaire, owner of delicious abs, and oh yes, her archnemesis.

Now London is certain the road to hell is paved with good sex. Because she’s found out the real reason Drew’s back in Austin: to decide whether her beloved hospital remains open. Worse, Drew is doing everything he can to show her that he’s a decent guy who actually cares. But London’s not falling for it. Because while sleeping with the enemy is one thing, falling for him is definitely not part of the plan.

It’s another busy day at the hospital! Meet doctors and nurses, ride in an ambulance, and discover the magic of medicine in this nonfiction story for kids.

This book is perfect for any child who is nervous about a trip to the hospital. Dr. Christle Nwora takes readers behind the scenes to meet the incredible people who keep you healthy, from surgeons to mental health therapists. Dr. Nwora also explains the science behind how things work, from X-rays to operating theaters. Set over the course of one day, you’ll meet:

• A couple having a new baby
• A boy getting a cast for his broken arm
• A woman on her way to have an operation

Once you’ve read this book you’ll realize hospitals are full of heroes!

From the award-winning author of Yellow Wife, a daring and redemptive novel set in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC, that explores what it means to be a woman and a mother, and how much one is willing to sacrifice to achieve her greatest goal.

1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright.

Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC’s elite wealthy Black families, and his par­ents don’t let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William’s family and grant her the life she’s been searching for. But having a baby—and fitting in—is easier said than done.

With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date—a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance. A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag.

Central to RuPaul’s success has been his chameleonic adaptability. From drag icon to powerhouse producer of one of the world’s largest television franchises, RuPaul’s ever-shifting nature has always been part of his brand as both supermodel and supermogul. Yet that adaptability has made him enigmatic to the public. In this memoir, his most intimate and detailed book yet, RuPaul makes himself truly known.

In The House of Hidden Meanings, RuPaul strips away all artifice and recounts the story of his life with breathtaking clarity and tenderness, bringing his signature wisdom and wit to his own biography. From his early years growing up as a queer Black kid in San Diego navigating complex relationships with his absent father and temperamental mother, to forging an identity in the punk and drag scenes of Atlanta and New York, to finding enduring love with his husband Georges LeBar and self-acceptance in sobriety, RuPaul excavates his own biography life-story, uncovering new truths and insights in his personal history.

Here in RuPaul’s singular and extraordinary story is a manual for living—a personal philosophy that testifies to the value of chosen family, the importance of harnessing what makes you different, and the transformational power of facing yourself fearlessly.

A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings is a self-portrait of the legendary icon on the road to global fame and changing the way the world thinks about drag. “I've always loved to view the world with analytical eyes, examining what lies beneath the surface. Here, the focus is on my own life—as RuPaul Andre Charles,” says RuPaul.

If we’re all born naked and the rest is drag, then this is RuPaul totally out of drag. This is RuPaul stripped bare.

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This sweeping survey of Black history shows how Black humanity has been erased and how its recovery can save the humanity of us all.

Using history as a foundation, The Humanity Archive uses storytelling techniques to make history come alive and uncover the truth behind America's whitewashed history.

The Humanity Archive focuses on the overlooked narratives in the pages of the past.

Challenging dominant perspectives, author Jermaine Fowler goes outside the textbooks to find recognizably human stories. Connecting current issues with the heroic struggles of those who have come before us, Fowler brings hidden history to light.

After her mother's mysterious death, a young woman is summoned to the floating city of Sky in order to claim a royal inheritance she never knew existed in the first book in this award-winning fantasy trilogy from the NYT bestselling author of The Fifth Season.

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.

With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate -- and gods and mortals -- are bound inseparably together.

A joyous exploration of imagination and finding inspiration, The Idea in You is the debut picture book from Questlove—New York Times bestselling author, six-time GRAMMY Award–winning drummer, producer, and Academy Award–winning filmmaker—and Coretta Scott King Honor Award–winning illustrator Sean Qualls

An idea can come from anywhere.
Start here: reach up into the sky
And unhook a star.

Questlove’s debut picture book, an uplifting story about passion, creativity, and joy—exuberantly illustrated by award-winning artist Sean Qualls—will inspire kids to find their own creative pursuits.

An incisive and sympathetic examination of the case for ending the practice of imprisonment

Despite its omnipresence and long history, imprisonment is a deeply troubling practice. In the United States and elsewhere, prison conditions are inhumane, prisoners are treated without dignity, and sentences are extremely harsh. Mass incarceration and its devastating impact on black communities have been widely condemned as neoslavery or “the new Jim Crow.” Can the practice of imprisonment be reformed, or does justice require it to be ended altogether? In The Idea of Prison Abolition, Tommie Shelby examines the abolitionist case against prisons and its formidable challenge to would-be prison reformers.

Philosophers have long theorized punishment and its justifications, but they haven’t paid enough attention to incarceration or its related problems in societies structured by racial and economic injustice. Taking up this urgent topic, Shelby argues that prisons, once reformed and under the right circumstances, can be legitimate and effective tools of crime control. Yet he draws on insights from black radicals and leading prison abolitionists, especially Angela Davis, to argue that we should dramatically decrease imprisonment and think beyond bars when responding to the problem of crime.

While a world without prisons might be utopian, The Idea of Prison Abolition makes the case that we can make meaningful progress toward this ideal by abolishing the structural injustices that too often lead to crime and its harmful consequences.

Street fashion and urban culture have come a long way from humble beginnings in the ‘90s. From disparate local scenes in Japan, Europe, and the US, the youth-driven movements of hip-hop, punk, and skateboarding have finally infiltrated high fashion.  Brands are now eager to collaborate with the icons of music and art who are leading this creative crossover. Customers will stand in line for hours to be the first to own exclusive pieces designed by the likes of Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, and Tom Sachs.  Based in New York, Berlin, and Tokyo, lifestyle publication Highsnobiety is at the forefront of this global phenomenon. The Incomplete immortalizes the stories of brands ranging from Supreme to COMME des GARÇONS. Alongside the most influential designers and tastemakers, Higsnobiety highlights the pieces and brands in men’s fashion which have stood the test of time.