Yesterday

After her marriage ends in bitter divorce, all Lorren Jacobs wants is to leave California behind. Returning to her roots in Texas seems to be just what the doctor ordered…until she meets real-life physician Justin Madaris. Lorren has vowed never to give her heart to another man, but she can't stop herself from responding to the handsome widower's sensuous whispers of love….

Today…

Justin thought no woman could ever move him as deeply as his wife had. Until Lorren. She rekindles a desire he never believed he'd feel again. But sharing a life together means letting go of the past. Somehow, Justin and Lorren must fight through the painful memories to fulfill the passionate promise of tomorrow….

From the artist behind Mystic Mondays comes a deluxe deck and guidebook set featuring 56 richly detailed, vibrantly illustrated plant cards and accompanying information on their meanings and their uses in personal growth and healing.
* Features 56 full-color Healing Herbology cards: Discover the potential contained within 56 plants, herbs, and flowers corresponding to the four elements, rendered in stunning colors and on these durable divination cards in a unique square shape.
* Designed and written by Grace Duong, founder of Mystic Mondays: Connect to the replenishing power of nature through this brand-new set from Grace Duong, founder and designer of Mystic Mondays.
* Includes guidebook: An accompanying 80-page guidebook features plant profiles and rituals for using the cards.
* Deluxe keepsake box: Housed in a magnetic-closure keepsake box, with a separate interior travel box for the cards, this one-of-a-kind collection is a must-have for modern mystics.

A note on packaging: In order to help honor our planet and reduce waste, we have only shrink wrapped the interior cards, rather than the keepsake box. Please feel confident that your product is not defective or used, but rather represents a step we are taking to protect our collective home. When you open your deck, you will find that the actual cards inside the box are shrink wrapped for protection and to ensure first use by the buyer.

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

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

The celebrated author of Ezra Jack Keats Award winner Nell Plants a Tree and a Caldecott Honor artist come together for a poetic picture book introduction to Juneteenth and its origin.

Oh, how you would dance! How you would sing! How you would celebrate!

With lyrical text from Anne Wynter and radiant artwork from Jerome Pumphrey, this poetic picture book explains the history behind Juneteenth celebrations. So Many Years simultaneously acknowledges the history of slavery in the US as well as the astonishing Black resilience that has led to an enduring legacy of Black joy.

A vibrant collection of 100 postcards featuring affirmations on self-love, inner peace, and healing, from WE THE URBAN founder Willie Greene.

A platform that celebrates self-love, inclusivity, and empowerment, WE THE URBAN shares signature affirmations that have resonated with millions of people, many of whom share posts with friends on social media and use them to guide their personal journeys.

Now, fans can share WE THE URBAN’s magic with this collection of 100 postcards that bring to life the powerful quotes the platform is famous for. Exploring inner peace, self-love, healing, growth, and more, these colorful postcards feature 50 original affirmations, each repeating once, that capture and validate our shared humanity. Whether you’re mailing a postcard to lift the spirits of a loved one or framing one for a daily dose of empowerment, these postcards offer 100 vibrant opportunities to share joy and positivity with someone who needs it.

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Ibi Zoboi comes her groundbreaking contemporary fantasy debut—a novel in verse based on Caribbean folklore—about the power of inherited magic and the price we must pay to live the life we yearn for.

“Our new home with its

thick walls and locked doors

wants me to stay trapped in my skin—

but I am fury and flame.”

Fifteen-year-old Marisol is the daughter of a soucouyant. Every new moon, she sheds her skin like the many women before her, shifting into a fireball witch who must fly into the night and slowly sip from the lives of others to sustain her own. But Brooklyn is no place for fireball witches with all its bright lights, shut windows, and bolt-locked doors.… While Marisol hoped they would leave their old traditions behind when they emigrated from the islands, she knows this will never happen while she remains ensnared by the one person who keeps her chained to her magical past—her mother.

Seventeen-year-old Genevieve is the daughter of a college professor and a newly minted older half sister of twins. Her worsening skin condition and the babies’ constant wailing keep her up at night, when she stares at the dark sky with a deep longing to inhale it all. She hopes to quench the hunger that gnaws at her, one that seems to reach for some memory of her estranged mother. When a new nanny arrives to help with the twins, a family secret connecting her to Marisol is revealed, and Gen begins to find answers to questions she hasn’t even thought to ask.

But the girls soon discover that the very skin keeping their flames locked beneath the surface may be more explosive to the relationships around them than any ancient magic.

In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz revealed how the process of our education, or "domestication," can make us forget the wisdom we were born with. Throughout our lives, we make many agreements that go against ourselves and create needless suffering. The Four Agreements help us to break these self-limiting agreements and replace them with agreements that bring us personal freedom, happiness, and love.

In The Fifth Agreement, don Miguel Ruiz joins his son, don Jose Ruiz, to offer a fresh perspective on The Four Agreements, and a powerful new agreement for transforming our lives into our personal heaven. The Fifth Agreement takes us to a deeper level of awareness of the power of the Self, and returns us to the authenticity we were born with. In this compelling sequel to the book that has changed the lives of millions of people around the world, we are reminded of the greatest gift we can give ourselves: the freedom to be who we really are.

From multi Grammy-award winning artist and songwriter Victoria Monét comes a lyrical picture book that's perfect for children with separation anxiety, while also offering some healing for hard working parents.

I’ll always be your moon
You’ll always be my star

Just keep me in your heart and
I’ll be everywhere you are

In this melodic picture book from chart-topping musical sensation Victoria Monét, a gentle moon comforts a young star as night ends and they separate. Paired with the whimsical and imaginative art of Alea Marley, Everywhere You Are reminds us that even when someone isn’t right next to us, their love still carries on in our hearts.

The poetry of Tom Postell, believed lost since a tragic death in 1980, appears here in its first authorized, comprehensive volume. While Postell ran with the masters of Beat, Black Power, and Hardbop in the 50's and 60's, he has remained elusive, enigmatic, unsung. His poems provide an astonishing look into how issues of race, music, and the political avant-garde intersect at this pivotal moment in post-WWII America. Essays and hybrid work by giovanni singleton, Derrick Harriell, and Aldon Lynn Nielsen complement interviews, typescripts, and archival photos, making this retrospective of Postell the first of its kind.

ABOUT TOM POSTELL

Tom Postell, born Thomas Freeman Postell Jr., was a Black American poet born in Cincinnati in 1927 and closely associated with the Beat Generation, Black Mountain School, and Black Arts Movement in New York City's Greenwich Village from 1953 to 1969. A close friend and mentor of poet Amiri Baraka, Postell's circle included musicians like Ornette Coleman and Archie Shepp and fellow poets like Allen Ginsberg and Ted Joans. Hindered by institutionalization, mental health struggles, and substance abuse, Postell disappeared from the literary scene in 1970, leaving a trove of innovative work thought lost upon his death in 1980.

"Postell wrote moon poems that would concern the authorities. A nature poet, jazz poet, love poet, and surrealist raconteur. He was multitudinous, hilarious, occasionally terrifying and always interstellar. In the pages of this iridescent collection, his voice arrives as if from another planet, another place in space-time, to call us forward.” —Dr. Joshua Bennett

"Tom Postell emerged from the mid-1960s Village literary scene as a self-sculpted, deft, barely-listened-to imaginal incessance. And yet, with this surprising new collection of unheralded poems, his work continues to radiate with incantatory significance. —Will Alexander

You have within you infinite promise. How big will YOU dream? This striking companion to I Am My Ancestors' Wildest Dreams celebrates Black female achievement and is perfect for fans of I Am Enough, Little Leaders, and She Persisted.

"Magnificently compelling....Lets Black girls know each time they turn the page that all of their dreams are possible." ―Angela Bassett, Award-winning Actress and Producer

I AM dope!

My crown shines bright

in all its glory.

When I dream big,

I can do anything!

In this inspiring tribute to Black girl pride and excellence, a young child discovers her place in a radiant heritage. As she meets twelve extraordinary Black women―historic and contemporary heroines who have blazed a trail for her own future success―she internalizes their strength and sets out to change the world in her own way.

Just like them, she can reach her dreams. And readers will discover that they can reach theirs too.

Welcome to Forest Magic School, where young mystics learn the basics of African spiritualty through astrology, plant magic, cowrie divination, breathwork, and the magic within melanin!

There’s a portal you can enter that will you help you remember your magic. Join Yawa and Kossi as a forest scholar and begin your journey to discovering what African spirituality is all about. With the help of these almost-twins, their classmates, and their professors, you will learn about your magically melanated skin and how to harness the power within you to become more connected to your ancestors and to the universe.

Forest Magic School teaches you how to connect with your ori through breathing and presence, to celebrate the four elements, and to become connected to mystical spirits, or Òrìṣàs. Learn to calculate your birth chart, to use plant magic for healing and personal growth, and feel empowered through proverbs, mantras, and symbols while celebrating what makes you special and a part of the cosmos. Through a beautifully woven narrative and with easy-to-digest prompts and thought questions throughout, this is the guide for any juvenile mystic seeking deeper knowledge about their heritage and the principles of African spirituality.

A celebration of Black History for babies and toddlers!

We Are Black History Board Book from Mudpuppy is a wonderful introduction to the black leaders and trailblazers who have shaped our world! From the inspiring words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the incredible calculations of Katherine Johnson, celebrate the achievements of Black pioneers featuring colorful illustrations by Tequitia Andrews.

* Celebratory Message – This book celebrates prominent Black individuals from the past and the present and includes information about each person featured in the book
* Bright and Bold Artwork – Bright and colorful illustrations on 22 pages will make this a happy and rewarding experience for toddlers to experience and understand inclusion.
* Perfect Size - Small 7” x 7” board book is just the size for little hands.
* Great Gift Idea – This board book makes a wonderful gift for birthdays and special occasions all year through.

This sweet little picky eater will steal your heart as he learns to appreciate how his parents nourish him!

Little Sebastian has a lot of opinions when it comes to food, so his parents call him their own baby food critic! He even has a personal rating system, from one to five binkies, and he’s prepared to knock off a binky or two if his food is too gooey, doesn’t smell quite right, or is touching other food. When a restaurant outing throws him for a loop, a one-binky review seems inevitable . . . but then his parents save the day and Sebastian realizes the special ingredient they’ve been adding to every meal—one that definitely deserves five binkies!

In Sisters of the Yam, bell hooks reflects on the ways in which the emotional health of black women has been and continues to be impacted by sexism and racism. Desiring to create a context where black females could both work on their individual efforts for self actualization while remaining connected to a larger world of collective struggle, hooks articulates the link between self recovery and political resistance. Both an expression of the joy of self healing and the need to be ever vigilant in the struggle for equality, Sisters of the Yam continues to speak to the experience of black womanhood.

If My Flowers Bloom is about desire. Is there room to bloom or does the harvest only come in the afterlife? Is it okay to be Black and queer and woman in this world?

Overflowing with love and aching for more space, DeShara Suggs-Joe questions the powers that be while longing for space carved out for her flourishing.

Meet Chase and his amazing chef-dad, Courtney Lindsay, the real-life culinary genius who will whisk you away on a mouthwatering journey! Dive into the kitchen with this father-son duo as they whip up a healthy, vegan, kid-approved recipe that is as fun to make as it is to eat. With a focus on kitchen safety and foundational prep skills, ''Chase the Chef'' is a book that invites kids of all ages to roll up their sleeves and become kitchen superstars

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

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

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

A national bestseller in Canada, hailed by The New York Times as an “intimate expression of self-acceptance and forgiveness, tenderly written to fellow trans women and others.”

“Required reading.”—Glennon Doyle, #1 bestselling author of Untamed

A THEM AND AUTOSTRADDLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

What happens when we imagine loving the people—and the parts of ourselves—that we do not believe are worthy of love?

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she’s always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.

But then Kai Cheng found herself in a crisis of faith, overwhelmed by the viciousness with which people treated one another, and barely clinging to the values and ideals she’d built her life around: justice, hope, love, and healing. Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith: she wrote. Whether prayers or spells or poems—and whether there’s a difference—she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.

Drawing on first-hand clinical insight and scientific research, Dr. Wilborn offers much-needed advice on how women of color can be high-performing and successful professionally, without sacrificing their physical, mental, and emotional wellness. 

Black and brown women have been making profound strides in leadership and professional achievement, despite facing the added hurdles of both sexism and racism in the workplace. But so often, excelling at work comes at the expense of their wellness: the chronic stressors and demands on Black women can result in negative physical health outcomes such as sleep disturbance, hypertension, and diabetes, and negative mental health outcomes including anxiety and depression. We cannot talk about career advancement for Black and brown women without talking about strategies that promote their total wellbeing.

Playing a New Game offers women a new way forward, in which ambition and wellness can not only coexist, but bolster each other. With insights from her 20 years of professional counseling experience and extensive research, mental health expert Dr. Tammy Wilborn expands the dialogue on BIPOC women’s experiences of race and gender stereotypes at work, exploring them as a wellness issue.  Through her evidence-based best practices that promote self-care and self-empowerment as necessary tools for professional success, Black and brown women can flip the script by prioritizing their wellness even as they advance professionally. 

An accessible and popular introduction to African photography and film from the mid-twentieth century to the present day

Drawing from archival imagery and documents, interviews with the photographers and filmmakers (in some cases family members and/ or close associates), and with contributions from writers, scholars, and curators, The African Gaze is a mapping of and an introduction to the postcolonial African moving and still image.

In The African Gaze, based on the university course of the same title, author Amy Sall looks at ways in which artistic expression in photography and cinema engendered discourses concerning identity, power, and self-determination.

Colonial photography deprived Africans of agency, rendered them voiceless, and classified them as subaltern. In colonial photography, African people were subjected to a physical positioning and gaze which took away their autonomy and allowed western viewers to perceive them as primitive. African photographers and filmmakers from just before independence and onward (and in some cases even earlier), were able to reclaim this power and allow their communities to see themselves as they were, and explore their social, economic, and political conditions from their own perspective.

This is a timely publication as engagement with Black and African histories is stronger than ever before (and long overdue). The major names of African photography, such as Malick Sidibé, Sanlé Sory, and Seydou Keita have become highly collectible in the art market and African cinema, pioneered by Ousmane Sembene in 1960s Senegal, is now recognized for its creative innovation and storytelling.

The poems in Here is the Sweet Hand explore solitude as a way of seeing. In particular, the speakers in francine j. harris’ third collection explore the mystique, and myth, of female loneliness as it relates to blackness, aging, landscape and artistic tradition. The speakers in these poems are often protagonists. Against the backdrop of numerous American cities and towns, and in a time of political uncertainty, they are heroines in their quest to find logic through their own sense of the world.

The poems here are interested in the power of observation. But if there is authority in the individual versus the collective, Here is the Sweet Hand also poses questions about the source of that power, or where it may lead.

As in her acclaimed previous collections, harris’ skillful use of imagery and experimentation with the boundaries of language set the stage for unorthodox election commemoration, subway panic, zoomorphism, and linguistic battlefields. From poems in dialogue with the artistry of Toni Morrison and Charles Burnett to poems that wrestle with the moods of Frank Stanford and Ty Dolla $ign, the speakers in this book signal a turn at once inward and opening.

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." Like all of Steve Biko's writings, those words testify to the passion, courage, and keen insight that made him one of the most powerful figures in South Africa's struggle against apartheid. They also reflect his conviction that black people in South Africa could not be liberated until they united to break their chains of servitude, a key tenet of the Black Consciousness movement that he helped found.

I Write What I Like contains a selection of Biko's writings from 1969, when he became the president of the South African Students' Organization, to 1972, when he was prohibited from publishing. The collection also includes a preface by Archbishop Desmond Tutu; an introduction by Malusi and Thoko Mpumlwana, who were both involved with Biko in the Black Consciousness movement; a memoir of Biko by Father Aelred Stubbs, his longtime pastor and friend; and a new foreword by Professor Lewis Gordon.

Biko's writings will inspire and educate anyone concerned with issues of racism, postcolonialism, and black nationalism.

Funny, thoughtful, inspiring, and deeply personal essays about yoga, wellness, and life from author of EVERY BODY YOGA, Jessamyn Stanley. Stanley explores her relationship (and ours) to yoga (including why we practice, rather than how); wrestles with issues like cultural appropriation, materialism, and racism; and explores the ways we can all use yoga as a tool for self-love. 

Finding self-acceptance both on and off the mat.
In Sanskrit, yoga means to “yoke.” To yoke mind and body, movement and breath, light and dark, the good and the bad. This larger idea of “yoke” is what Jessamyn Stanley calls the yoga of the everyday—a yoga that is not just about perfecting your downward dog but about applying the hard lessons learned on the mat to the even harder daily project of living.
In a series of deeply honest, funny autobiographical essays, Jessamyn explores everything from imposter syndrome to cannabis to why it’s a full-time job loving yourself, all through the lens of yoke. She calls out an American yoga complex that prefers debating the merits of cotton versus polyblend leggings rather than owning up to its overwhelming Whiteness. She questions why the Western take on yoga so often misses—or misuses—the tradition’s spiritual dimension. And reveals what she calls her own “whole-ass problematic”: Growing up Baháí, loving astrology, learning to meditate, finding prana in music.
And in the end, Jessamyn invites every reader to find the authentic spirit of yoke—linking that good and that bad, that light and that dark.

Rapper Bun B lends his street cred and occasionally his face to the creative, hilarious, and just flat-out fun imaginings of Shea Serrano in Bun B’s Rap Coloring and Activity Book. Described by the Washington Post as “what every hip-hop head wishes they had as a child,” this imaginative work started as a series of printable rap-related coloring and activity images. The 48-page, fully interactive book of coloring pages, unbelievably clever activities, and smart plays on rap culture brings these stars and their music right into your living room.Featured rappers include:

Bun B
Queen Latifah
Drake
Talib Kweli
Ice-T
Common
Wiz Khalifa
Ludacris
LL COOL J
Big Boi
Childish Gambino
Questlove
B.o.B
Mac Miller

And many, many more!

“Reading it is almost like reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, but for two-year olds—full of pictures and rhymes and a little cat to find on every page that will delight the curious toddler and parents alike.”—Occupy Wall Street

A is for Activist is an ABC board book written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and everything else that activists believe in and fight for. 

The alliteration, rhyming, and vibrant illustrations make the book exciting for children, while the issues it brings up resonate with their parents' values of community, equality, and justice. This engaging little book carries huge messages as it inspires hope for the future, and calls children to action while teaching them a love for books.

Jasminne Mendez didn't speak English when she started kindergarten, and her young, white teacher thought the girl was deaf because in Louisiana, you were either black or white. She had no idea that a black girl could be a Spanish speaker.

In this memoir for teens about growing up Afro Latina in the Deep South, Jasminne writes about feeling torn between her Dominican, Spanish-speaking culture at home and the American, English-speaking one around her. She desperately wanted to fit in, to be seen as American, and she realized early on that language mattered. Learning to read and write English well was the road to acceptance.

Mendez shares typical childhood experiences such as having an imaginary friend, boys and puberty, but she also exposes the anti-black racism within her own family and the conflict created by her family's conservative traditions. She was not allowed to do things other girls could, like date boys, shave her legs or wear heels. "I wanted us to find some common ground," she writes about her parents, "but it seemed like we were from two different worlds, and our islands kept drifting farther and farther apart."

Despite her father's old-style approach to raising girls, he valued education and insisted his daughters do well in school and maintain their native language. He took his children to hear Maya Angelou speak, and hearing the poet read was a defining moment for the black Dominican girl who struggled to fit in. "I decided that if Maya Angelou could be the author of her own story and rewrite her destiny to become a phenomenal woman, then somehow, so could I." Teens-and adults too-will appreciate reading about Mendez's experiences coming of age in the United States as both black and Latina.

What’s new, now and next from contemporary Black artists

This book surveys the work of a new generation of Black artists, and also features the voices of a diverse group of curators who are on the cutting edge of contemporary art. As mission-driven collectors, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi have championed emerging artists of African descent through museum loans and institutional support. But there has never been an opportunity to consider their acclaimed collection as a whole until now.

Edited by writer Antwaun Sargent (author of The New Black Vanguard: Photography Between Art and Fashion), Young, Gifted and Black draws from this collection to shed new light on works by contemporary artists of African descent. At a moment when debates about the politics of visibility within the art world have taken on renewed urgency, and establishment voices such as the New York Times are declaring that “it has become undeniable that African American artists are making much of the best American art today,” Young, Gifted and Black takes stock of how these new voices are impacting the way we think about identity, politics and art history itself.

Young, Gifted and Black contextualizes artworks with contributions from artists, curators and other experts. It features a wide-ranging interview with Bernard Lumpkin and Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; and an in-depth essay by Antwaun Sargent situating Lumpkin in a long lineage of Black art patrons. A landmark publication, this book illustrates what it means (in the words of Nina Simone) to be young, gifted and Black in contemporary art.

Artists include: Mark Bradford, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, Pope.L, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Henry Taylor, Mickalene Thomas, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Sadie Barnette, Kevin Beasley, Jordan Casteel, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Bethany Collins, Noah Davis, Cy Gavin, Allison Janae Hamilton, Tomashi Jackson, Samuel Levi Jones, Deana Lawson, Norman Lewis, Eric N. Mack, Arcmanoro Niles, Jennifer Packer, Christina Quarles, Jacolby Satterwhite, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sable Elyse Smith, Chanel Thomas, Stacy Lynn Waddell, D’Angelo Lovell Williams, Brenna Youngblood, and more.

A piercing, unflinching new volume offers necessary music for our tumultuous present, from “perhaps the best public poet we have” (Boston Globe).

In her first volume of new poems in twelve years, Rita Dove investigates the vacillating moral compass guiding America’s, and the world’s, experiments in democracy. Whether depicting the first Jewish ghetto in sixteenth-century Venice or the contemporary efforts of Black Lives Matter, a girls’ night clubbing in the shadow of World War II or the doomed nobility of Muhammad Ali’s conscious objector stance, this extraordinary poet never fails to connect history’s grand exploits to the triumphs and tragedies of individual lives.

Meticulously orchestrated and musical in its forms, Playlist for the Apocalypse collects a dazzling array of voices: an elevator operator simmers with resentment, an octogenarian dances an exuberant mambo, a spring cricket philosophizes with mordant humor on hip hop, critics, and Valentine’s Day. Calamity turns all too personal in the book’s final section, “Little Book of Woe,” which charts a journey from terror to hope as Dove learns to cope with debilitating chronic illness.

At turns audaciously playful and grave, alternating poignant meditations on mortality and acerbic observations of injustice, Playlist for the Apocalypse takes us from the smallest moments of redemption to catastrophic failures of the human soul. Listen up, the poet says, speaking truth to power; what you’ll hear in return is “a lifetime of song.”

Meet Henley, an all-around good kid, who hates to read. When he's supposed to be reading, he would rather do anything else. But one day, he gets the scariest homework assignment in the world: find your favorite book to share with the class tomorrow.

What's a kid to do? How can Henley find a story that speaks to everything inside of him?