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  • November 2024: Adult Fiction Book Club - November 26 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, November 26 @ 7PM 

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you're coming and RSVP WITH BOOK to get your copy of James and support our store programming. 

    ABOUT JAMES

    When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

    While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

    Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

  • November 2024: Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club - November 21 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, November 21 @ 7PM 

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you are attending or RSVP WITH BOOK to support our store programming

    ABOUT SHE WHO KNOW

    When there is a call, there is often a response.

    Najeeba knows.

    She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What’s just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it’s not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there’s neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it’s a dream come true: travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she’s only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba’s presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.

    Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

  • NOVEMBER 2024: Non Fiction Book Club - November 19 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    Book Club Meeting DEETS

    When: Tuesday, November 19 @ 7PM

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend or RSVP WITH BOOK to support Non Fiction Book Club and our other programming. 

    About We Refuse 

    Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.  
     
    The dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force—from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt—has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. But violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away. 
     
    Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

  • November 2024: Romance Book Club - November 12 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, November 12 @ 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 Romance Book Club!

    ABOUT DEJA BREW

    Ex-celebrity chef Sirena Caraway has had the wackiest October ever. Her cooking powers are on the fritz, she failed to land a career-saving job, and she embarrassed herself at the town’s Halloween party. Just before midnight, she makes a desperate wish for a second chance to fix her life. The next morning Sirena wakes up and realizes that she’s repeating the entire pumpkin spice-flavored month. Even sweeter, she runs into Gus Dearworth, whose magic leaves her spellbound.

    A former reality star, Gus moved to Freya Grove to rebuild his reputation and heal his broken heart, but his restless magic is tempting him to return to the spotlight. And his secret crush on Sirena is making him want to try something dangerous like fall in love again. When Sirena realizes he can help her fix her powers, Gus makes her a deal. If she’ll help decipher a mysterious cookbook in his collection, he'll help get her magical groove back.

    Every encounter offers a new adventure—from tasting menus, harvest mazes, and a growing attraction that’s taking on an irresistible enchantment of its own. But as the month winds down and the wish grows stronger, Sirena and Gus have a decision to make. Will their second chance be their happy-ever-after ending or a bittersweet memory?

  • October 2024: Adult Fiction Book Club - October 23 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Wednesday, October 23 @ 7PM 

    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 Adult Fiction Book Club 

    ABOUT PASSIONTIDE

    When a female musician is found murdered on a small tropical island, after a string of similar deaths, outraged local women take matters into their own hands.

    The quiet calm of Ash Wednesday morning. Carnival is over. Everyone on the small island of St. Colibri is sleeping peacefully. Everyone except Sora Tanaka, a young pan player lying under the cannonball tree. Sora, a professional musician, had been visiting St. Colibri to take part in the island’s famous steel pan competition. But Sora isn’t asleep; she’s dead: brutally murdered, and still in her costume. And as the women of this island know all too well, Sora is far from the first woman to be killed, and she probably won’t be the last, either. In fact, the problem of women being killed on the island is so bad, there’s even a dedicated unit within the police department: OMWEN, the Office for Murdered Women, headed by Inspector Cuthbert Loveday. 

    In this powerful new rewriting of the detective novel, Sora’s death is the last straw and the beginning of something much larger, a "revolution" some are calling it. The event draws together four women who have never before seen each other as allies: a friend of the victim, the organizer of a sex workers’ collective, a local activist, and the prime minister’s wife. Tenderly, sometimes hilariously, Passiontide chronicles how these women join forces and find new ways to help one another.

  • October 2024: SFF Book Club - October 22 @ 6:30 PM CST
    from $0.00

    SCI-FI/FANTASY BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Wednesday, October 22 @ 6:30 PM

    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 the Sci-fi/Fantasy Book Club 

    ABOUT SKY FULL OF ELEPHANTS

    In a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black?

    One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.

    Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

    Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
  • October 2024: Non Fiction Book Club - October 15 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

     BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, October 15 @ 7PM CST

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

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

    ABOUT SYSTEMIC: HOW RACISM IS MAKING US SICK

    In the spirit of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body; A science-based, data-driven, and global exploration of racial disparities in health care access by virologist, immunologist, and science journalist Layal Liverpool.

    Layal Liverpool spent years as a teen bouncing from doctor to doctor, each one failing to diagnose her dermatological complaint. Just when she’d grown used to the idea that she had an extremely rare and untreatable skin condition, one dermatologist, after a quick exam, told her that she had a classic (and common) case of eczema and explained that it often appears differently on darker skin. Her experience stuck with her, making her wonder whether other medical conditions might be going undiagnosed in darker-skinned people and whether racism could, in fact, make people sick.

    The pandemic taught us that diseases like Covid disproportionately affect people of color. Here, Liverpool goes a step further to show that this disparity exists for all types of illness and that it is caused by racism. In Systemic, Liverpool shares her journey to show how racism, woven into our societies, as well as into the structures of medicine and science, is harmful to our health. Refuting the false belief that there are biological differences between races, Liverpool goes on to show that racism-related stress and trauma can however, lead to biological changes that make people of color more vulnerable to illness, debunking the myth of illness as the great equalizer.

    From the problem of racial bias in medicine where the default human subject is white, to the dangerous health consequences of systemic racism, from the physical and psychological effects of daily microaggressions to intergenerational trauma and data gaps, Liverpool reveals the fatal stereotypes that keep people of color undiagnosed, untreated, and unsafe, and tells us what we can do about it.

  • OCTOBER 2024: Romance Book Club - October 8 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, October 8 @ 7PM

    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 Romance Book Club 

    ABOUT BETWEEN FRIENDS & LOVERS

    o her countless Instagram followers Josephine Boateng is the dazzling Dr. Jojo—and her opinions on health, growth, and self-love matter. Her message: be smart (she has a medical degree after all), be significant, and do not put up with foolish men.

    But behind the camera, Jo’s story is more complicated—she finds her influencer career underwhelming; her potential career in medicine overwhelming, and she’s hung up on her best friend, nepo-baby and romcom heartthrob Ezra Adelman. When Ezra shows up to his thirtieth birthday party with her childhood bully on his arm, however, Josephine realizes that it’s time to take her own advice and prioritize herself for once.

    No one is more shocked than Malcolm Waters when his debut novel turns him into a critic’s darling. When he’s invited to a swanky penthouse party to discuss turning his book into a film, he knows rubbing elbows with the elites of entertainment will be great for his career. The only problem: he’s not good with people, and even worse at networking.

    Just when he’s about to throw in the towel, he’s rescued by none other than Dr. Jojo. He’s been following her on social media for years, and she’s even more impressive in real life. And to his bewilderment, the feeling is mutual.

    But in a world where the lines between private and public are as blurred as those between friendship and love, can they risk it all for something real?

  • SEPTEMBER 2024: Adult Fiction Book Club - September 26 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, September 26 @ 7PM 

    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 Adult Fiction Book Club 

    ABOUT MARTYR

    Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of the Persian Gulf in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed.

    Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves, others.

  • September 2024: Non Fiction Book Club - September 17 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

     BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, September 17 @ 7PM CST

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

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

    ABOUT WHEN CRACK WAS KING

    When Crack Was King follows four individuals who give us a startling portrait of the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s—arguably the least examined crisis in American history—destruction and devastating legacy. Beginning with the myths inspired by Reagan's war on drugs, journalist Donovan X. Ramsey's exacting work exposes the undeniable links between the epidemic and the consequences we live with today—a racist criminal justice system, continued mass incarceration and gentrification, and increased police brutality. Through the stories of: Elgin Swift, an archetype of American industry and ambition and son of a crack-addicted father who turned their home into a “crack house”; Lennie Woodley, a former crack addict and a sex worker; Kurt Schmoke, former mayor of Baltimore and an early advocate of decriminalization; and lastly, Shawn McCray, community activist, basketball prodigy, and a founding member of the Zoo Crew, Newark's most legendary group of drug traffickers. 

    When Crack Was King is a crucial re-evaluation of the era and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.

    Noteworthy Discoveries

    • How the crack epidemic really began
    • How both Democrats and Republicans failed urban America during the crack epidemic
    • How Dr. Dre's The Chronic helped turn the page on the crack epidemic
    • How young people of color ended the crack epidemic
    • Why Joe Biden owes urban Americans an explanation for the crack epidemic
    • Lessons from the crack epidemic for the opioid epidemic
  • SEPTEMBER 2024: SFF Book Club - September 18 @ 6:30 PM CST
    from $0.00

    SCI-FI/FANTASY BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Wednesday, September 18 @ 6:30 PM

    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 the Sci-fi/Fantasy Book Club 

    ABOUT THE DEAD CAT TAIL ASSASSINS

    The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats.

    Nor do they have tails.

    But they are most assuredly dead.

    Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins—resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories—have only three unbreakable vows.

    First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade.

    Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. Eveen’s a professional. She’s never missed her mark.

    The third and the simplest: once you accept a job, you must carry it out. And if you stray? A ?nal death would be a mercy. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.

  • SEPTEMBER 2024: Romance Book Club - September 10 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, September 10 @ 7PM 

    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 Romance Book Club 

    ABOUT ONLY FOR THE WEEK

    You are cordially invited to the wedding of Amerie Cross and Arnold Hightower.

    And now a toast from the maid of honor, Janelle Cross!

    Hi everyone, thank you for being here.

    Some of you may know me as the sister of the bride.

    Some of you may know me as the ex-girlfriend of the groom.

    But I'm willing to bet none of you know me as the woman secretly sleeping with the best man.

    I am.

    I know, I'm just as surprised as you.

    It was only supposed to be for the week; but every kiss, adventure, and stolen moment with Rome Martin feels like it could last forever.

    Oh well. What happens in Tulum stays in Tulum.

    Right?

  • AUGUST 2024: Adult Fiction Book Club - August 22 @7PM
    from $0.00

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Thursday, August 22 @ 7PM 

    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 Adult Fiction Book Club 

    ABOUT LITTLE ROT

    One weekend. The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city. A breakup that starts a spiral. A party that goes awry. A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed. Little Rot is a whirling journey through the city’s dark side, told through the eyes of five people, each determined to run from the twisted powers out to destroy them.

    Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from his loss, visits a sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, intersect with the three old friends as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt underworld, they’re all looking for a way out of the trouble they’ve instigated, driven by loss and fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them. They careen madly in the face of the poison of power, sexual violence, murder, betrayals. Little Rot tests how far these five will go to save each other—or themselves—when confronted by evil, culminating in a shattering denouement.

    With each novel, with each creation, Akwaeke Emezi shows their genius as a storyteller, as a visionary force who has created a thrilling tale of sex, power, and deviance in Little Rot. You won’t be able to look away.

  • August 2024: Non Fiction Book Club - August 20 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

     BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Tuesday, August 20 @ 7PM 

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

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

    ABOUT BLACK AF HISTORY

    America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our collective memory. It is the story of the pilgrims on the Mayflower building a new nation. It is George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin. It is the fantastic tale of slaves that spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and negro spirituals. It is a sugarcoated legend based on an almost true story.

     

    It should come as no surprise that the dominant narrative of American history is blighted with errors and oversights—after all, history books were written by white men with their perspectives at the forefront. It could even be said that the devaluation and erasure of the Black experience is as American as apple pie.

     

    In Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history. Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center. With incisive wit, Harriot speaks hilarious truth to oppressive power, subverting conventional historical narratives with little-known stories about the experiences of Black Americans. From the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the unenslavable bandit who inspired America’s first police force, this long overdue corrective provides a revealing look into our past that is as urgent as it is necessary. For too long, we have refused to acknowledge that American history is white history. Not this one. This history is Black AF. 

  • JULY 2024: Young Adult Book Club for Adults - July 27 @ TBA
    $24.99

    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 2024: Adult Book Club - July 25 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    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.

  • Houston Reads Zora Neale Hurston by Project Row Houses, Chanecka, & Kindred Stories
    $0.00

    Kindred Stories is proud to partner with Project Row Houses and Chanecka Williams to present Houston Reads Zora Neale Hurston.

    Zora Neale Hurston Meeting Schedule 

    November 19 - Jonah’s Gourd (1934)

    December 17 - Mules and Men (1935)

    January 14 - Their Eyes are Watching God (1937)

    February 18 - Tell My Horse (1938)

    March 17 - Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)

    April 21 - Dust Tracks on a Road (1942)

    May 17 -  Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)

    July 7, 2024 11 AM - 2 PM I Love Myself When I'm Laughing

    July 28, 2024 11 AM - 2 PM The Completed Stories

    August 25, 2024 11 AM - 2 PM Every Tongue Got to Confess

    September 15 - Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” (2018)

    October 20 - Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (2020)

    November 19 - You Don’t Know Us Negros and Other Essays (2022)

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