When Mary-Mathilda, one of the most respected women of the island of Bimshire (also known as Barbados) calls the police to confess to a crime, the result is a shattering all-night vigil that brings together elements of the island's African past and the tragic legacy of colonialism in one epic sweep.

Set in the West Indies in the period following World War II, The Polished Hoe -- an Essence bestseller and a Washington Post Book World Most Worthy Book of 2003 -- unravels over the course of twenty-four hours but spans the collective experience of a society characterized by slavery.

Set in the blockbuster and award-winning universe of League of Legends: Arcane and written by award-winning author C. L. Clark, discover a thrilling epic fantasy novel where Ambessa Medarda truly learns what it means to be a Chosen of the Wolf.

Medarda over all.

Ambessa Medarda: Warrior, general, mother. She is a woman to be feared, and the Medardas are unrivaled in their pursuit of glory. She has led conquests and armies. She has slain legendary beasts. She has made grave sacrifices in her ascent up the ranks. And for this she was rewarded: She entered the realm of death and was granted a vision of herself upon the throne of the vast Noxian empire.

But before she can lead her empire, she must become head of her own clan. Yet the title is contested by her cousin and former confidante, Ta’Fik. He knows the bloody sins of Ambessa’s past. And he knows he cannot allow her to rise.

They will fight a war for the very soul of the Medardas.

But the war won’t be fought on battlefields alone. Ambessa’s daughter, Mel, can deftly break through the walls around anyone’s heart, and she’ll put her talents to use for her mother. Yet despite Mel’s strength, Ambessa sees only a child who lacks her killer instincts. Mel knows she can be the leader Ambessa wants her to be, if only she gives her time.

With her family betraying her, enemies closing in on all sides, and unseen forces moving in the shadows, every day proves more dangerous than the last. But Ambessa will not bow. She will burn the world down to claim her place in it.

A never before published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great—not the villain the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of valor and vision.

In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.

From the peaks of triumph to the depths of human misery, the historical Herod “appears to have been singled out and especially endowed to attract the lightning of fate,” Hurston writes. An intimate of both Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, the Judean king lived during the first century BCE, in a time of war and imperial expansion that was rife with political assassinations and bribery, as the old world gave way to the new.

Portraying Herod within this vivid and dynamic world of antiquity, little known to modern readers, Hurston’s unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling, and misunderstood leader fully into focus. Hurston shared her findings about Herod’s rise, his reign, and his waning days in letters to friends and associates. Text from three of these letters concludes the manuscript in an intimate way. Scholar-Editor Deborah Plant’s "Commentary: A Story Finally Told" assesses Hurston’s pioneering work and underscores Hurston’s perspective that the first century BCE has much to teach us and that the lens through which to view this dramatic and stirring era is the life and times of Herod the Great.

A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom

When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school’s elite subcultures—internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies—which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper’s skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?

Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you’ve ever read—and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.

In the vein of Get Out and Razorblade Tears, a feast of noir fiction and probing social commentary that asks us to consider what would happen if reparations were finally charged and exacted. Nate Evers, a young black political activist, struggles with rage as his people are still being killed in the streets 62 years after Emmett Till. When his little cousin is murdered, Nate shuns the graffiti murals, candlelight vigils, and Twitter hashtags that are commonplace after these senseless deaths. Instead, he leads 3 grief-stricken friends on a mission of retribution, kidnapping the descendants of long-ago perpetrators of hate crimes, confronting the targets with their racist lineages, and forcing them to pay reparations to a community fund. For 3 of the group members, the results mean justice; for Nate – pure revenge. Not all targets go quietly into the night, though, and Nate and his friends' world spirals out of control when they confront the wrong man. Now the leader of a white supremacist group is hot on their tail as is a jaded lawman with some disturbingly racist views of his own. As the 4 vigilantes fight to thwart their ruthless pursuers, they’re forced to accept an age-old truth: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." Smoke Kings is a powerful and propulsive novel with a diverse and unforgettable cast of characters. Like Steph Cha’s Your House Will Pay it explores decades of racial tensions through a fictional landscape where the line between justice and revenge is blurred.

Secrets emerge and romance sparks in this irresistible romance from the USA Today bestselling author Kennedy Ryan.

Kerris Moreton should be the happiest woman in the world: She has a successful business and is about to start the family she's always wanted. But the man of her dreams--the one whose green eyes see straight into her soul and whose gentle hands make her body hum with pleasure--is not hers.

Each secret moment with Walsh Bennett serves to remind Kerris of what she's missing. And every stolen hour makes it harder to see her future without him. But being with Walsh would betray a sacred promise and upend her perfect life. When tragedy strikes, the razor's edge between love and loyalty grows sharper than ever. And Kerris must decide where her heart will fall . . .

Don't miss the beginning of Kerris and Walsh's story in When You Are Mine.

Aria is no stranger to tragedy -- as a young girl, she and her older sister and mother survived a car crash that took the lives of their father and beloved baby sister. And although relations with her remaining family are strained, she's done her best to establish a solid, normal life for herself, living in Atlanta and teaching literacy to girls who have fallen on hard times.

But now she has a secret that she's not yet ready to share with Dwayne, her devoted boyfriend, or Rochelle, her roommate and best friend: Aria is pregnant. Or so she thinks. The truth is about to make her question her every assumption and reevaluate the life she has worked so hard to build for herself...as it sends her reeling in a direction she had no idea she was destined to go.

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Two young girls. Two disparate stories. One unlikely friendship....

Dani comes from the richest, most famous Black family in Texas and seems to have everything a girl could want. So why does she keep using and engaging in other self-destructive behavior?

Camila’s Colombian-American family doesn’t have much, but she knows exactly what she wants out of life and works her ass off to get it. So why does she keep failing, and why does she self-harm every time she does?

When Dani and Camila find themselves rooming together at Peach Tree Hills, a treatment facility in beautiful rural Georgia, they initially think they’ll never get along—and they’ll never get better. But then they find a mysterious music box filled with letters from a former resident of PTH, and together they set out to solve the mystery of who this girl was . . . and who she’s become. The investigation will bring them together, and what they find at the end might just bring them hope.

From award-winning author Stephanie Kuehn comes a breathtaking tale of friendship and healing. Both poignant and timely, We Weren’t Looking to Be Found is complex, hopeful, and heartbreaking all at once.

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Now in paperback, from New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey—named one of USA Today’s 100 Black Novelists and Fiction Authors You Should Read—comes his final work: an unflinchingly timely novel about history, hearts, and family.

It’s the summer of 2019, and Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure—not only as a Black man in Trump’s America but in his hard-earned career as an adjunct professor. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, he’s being blackmailed by a powerful professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite, trapping him in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win.

When he meets Gemma Buckingham, a sophisticated entrepreneur who has just moved to Memphis from London to escape a deep heartbreak, things begin to look up. Though Gemma and Pi hail from separate cultures, their differences fuel a fiery and passionate connection that just may consume them both.

This edition of Native Son reprints the original edition in which Wright omitted several passages which book club editors feared would prove offensive to readers in 1940 and which were restored to the book in later editions.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright’s powerful novel is just as meaningful today as when it was written, both in its unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and in what it means to be black in America. An undisputed classic since it was first published, Native Son has sold close to three million copies.

This abridged edition—the original 1940 text—includes an afterword by John Reilly and contains an introduction, “How ‘Bigger’ was Born” by Richard Wright.

A powerful look at an affluent black community from Gloria Naylor (1950-2016), the National Book Award-winning author of The Women of Brewster Place

A world away from Brewster Place, yet intimately connected to it, lies Linden Hills. With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of Wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of “making it.” Although no one knows what the precise qualifications are, everyone knows that only certain people get to live there - and that they want to be among them. In a resonant novel that takes as it’s model Dante’s Inferno, Gloria Naylor reveals the truth about the American dream - that the price of success may very well be on a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.

A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer (“A bombshell of a book... Sharp, explosive, hilarious'--New York Times)

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.

There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.

When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?

Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of modernity and superstition, vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. With its unforgettable cast of characters, it asks us what it means to be given a second chance and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.

Hamilton University’s Homecoming is always a good time. Typically, it’s just a weekend of football, fun, and reconnecting. But this year is different.

My wildly popular and incredibly sexy college crush is finally single!

Nick Williams had no idea who I was. He was completely out of my league in undergrad.
But we’re grown now.

And this homecoming weekend, I’m going to find out if the big man on campus is really a big man

Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black feminist writer who stands alongside giants like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, curated by National Book Award winner Imani Perry with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Tarana Burke.
 
            In the late ’60s, Ntozake Shange was a student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school’s literary journal, and finding her unique voice. By the time she left us in 2018,  Shange had scorched blazing trails across countless pages and stages, redefining genre and form as we know them, each verse, dance, and song a love letter to Black women and girls, and the community at large.
            Sing a Black Girl’s Song is a new posthumous collection of Shange’s unpublished poems, essays, and plays from throughout the life of the seminal Black feminist writer. In these pages we meet young Shange, learn the moments that inspired for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf…, travel with an eclectic family of musicians, sit on “The Couch” opposite Shange’s therapist, and discover plays written after for colored girls’ international success. Sing a Black Girl’s Song houses, in their original form, the literary rebel’s politically charged verses from the Black Arts Movement era alongside her signature tender rhythm and cadence  that capture the minutia and nuance of Black life. Sing a Black Girl’s Song is the continuation of a literary tradition that has bolstered generations of writers and a long-lasting gift from one of the fiercest and most highly celebrated artists of our time.  

Loreli Winters never imagined she'd end up a "mail-order bride" in middle-of-nowhere Kansas -- until the two adorable orphan nieces of a dusky dream named Jake Reed beg her to be their new "mama." And one look at the dark, devastatingly handsome man is enough to entice her to abandon her California plans and stay put for a while in this one-horse frontier town.

Strong, sensible Jake was hoping for a wife to help him raise his girls, but Loreli may be more than he can handle. He can't stop wondering what it would be like to hold the fiery enchantress close and kiss her deeply. Surely he could never compete with the sophisticated gents she has known, yet he intends to try. But will his honest passion be enough to take a chance on a long-shot called love?

Paperback Release - April 14, 2026

A mesmerizing spin through the high-rolling high times of 1970s New York and Detroit, Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales is a lost classic taking its rightful place in the spotlight.

Lewis Jones is a party girl for the ages. Confident and cavalier, she seeks freedom and a good time, leaving mayhem in her wake. Strutting between the bohemian demimonde of New York City and the affluent Black community of Detroit, she is supported in her adventures by her husband, Woody, and accompanied by her friend Kitty-Kat, a gay hustler with impeccable style and a knack for finding all the best spots. She guzzles champagne, snorts piles of cocaine, wakes up on silk sheets with a variety of lovers. And then she is upended by the handsome, erudite, often cruel Brook―a man who has his own bevy of admirers. Soon, Lewis and Brook are ensnared in a struggle for dominance that launches them into a shock of violence.

A bold exploration of the blurred line between love and control, pleasure and addiction, Fish Tales offers a glittering, devastating portrait of a woman’s pursuit of her own kind of freedom. It is a striking deluge of longing, anxiety, ego, identity, and love. As provocative as it is moving, as profane as it is artful, Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales illuminates the warring forces of power, desire, intimacy, and fear, and exposes the raw nerve of our yearning to be loved on our own terms.

Trinidad Velasquez plays by the rules. Now she has one chance—one sizzlin’ Carnival weekend—to leave it all behind.

Go on, get spicy…

For the last sixteen years, Trinidad Velasquez has done everything right. Raised her twin sons on her own, worked her butt off and created a stable life. But Trinidad is done waiting for a happy ending to show up at her door, and when her current boyfriend proposes, she can’t help but wonder if, at her age, love should be practical, not butterflies and heart-racing chemistry.

But then her teenage sons trick her into a Caribbean Carnival vacation. And she finds herself staying with the one guy who’s always revved her engine…even if he’s a decade south of her dating range.

Orlando Wiggins has never been able to take his eyes off Ms. V. He’s mentored her boys for two years, and she’s never suggested there could be more. But at Carnival, between the sensual dancing, heated looks and electric touches, whatever he’s been feeling for her is definitely reciprocated.

Now Trinidad is having the time of her life. Every cell in her body is charged, alive. But will this new version of who she’s become stick around for the return to real life?

From showing up to glowing up, the characters in Afterglow Books are on the path to leading their best lives and finding sizzling romance along the way. Don’t miss any of these other fun titles…

Out of Office by A.H. Cunningham

The Summer of Perfect Mistakes by Cynthia St. Aubin

Church Girl by Naima Simone

Devils Kill Devils is perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Certain Dark Things and Southern gothic horror. Johnny Compton brings his trademark terror and dread that readers fell in love with in The Spite House to a new roster of monsters―angels, devils, vampires―and a heart-pounding race to save the world.

When all hell breaks loose, you need a devil on your side

Sarita has been watched over by a guardian angel her entire life. She calls him Angelo, and keeps him a secret. But secrets can’t stay buried forever…

When Angelo murders someone she loves, Sarita begins to see what's really been lurking in the shadows surrounding her. And she will have to embrace the evil within if she hopes to make it out alive.

Johnny Compton, critically acclaimed author of The Spite House and master of dread, takes you on a terrifying race of one woman against the hordes of hell.

Also by Johnny Compton:
The Spite House

When life rewrites the story, only friendship will see them through.

After years of hard work, four best friends—Celeste, Yasmeen, Toni and Leslie—are finally on the verge of opening the bookstore of their dreams. A place where their community can find solace with an intriguing new read, a comforting beverage and book-loving friends.

But before they can cut the ribbon, their worlds are upended.

Toni receives devastating news just months before her wedding, while Celeste’s struggling marriage threatens to collapse completely. Leslie learns a shocking secret about her family, and a lotto ticket changes Yasmeen’s life—but not for the better.

As the bookstore’s grand opening fast approaches, the four women must lean on each other now more than ever to navigate their grief and uncertainty. And together, they’ll learn that sometimes, even life’s most unexpected plot twists can lead to beautiful new beginnings.

The View cohost and three-time Emmy Award winner Sunny Hostin transports readers to Highland Beach in the captivating third novel of her New York Times bestselling Summer Beach series.

In this awakening, spirited novel, Sunny Hostin celebrates family, friendship, and community and reminds us of the importance of the legacies of our collective past and finding one’s way in the world.

Founded in the late 1800s by the son of Frederick Douglass, Highland Beach along the Chesapeake Bay is the oldest Black resort community in America. Inside this proud and secluded beach community of about 100 private homes is Olivia Jones’s legacy.

But Oliva’s legacy comes with thorns—intertwined are secrets of her aunt’s death; a controlling grandmother who is determined to crush anyone or anything that will interfere with her son’s political career; and a father who wants to rebuild the family he rejected decades ago.

In the midst of tense family drama, Olivia must decide if she wants to return to the beautiful life she’s created in Sag Harbor—with the neighbors and wonderful man who’ve become central to her happiness—or finally achieve her dream of having a family and home to call her own in Highland Beach.

Foreword by Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

Edited with an introduction by Genevieve West, professor and chair of the English, Speech, and Foreign Languages department at Texas Woman’s University

A collection of remarkable stories of the Harlem Renaissance from “one of the greatest writers of our time” (Toni Morrison) Zora Neale Hurston.

In May 1925, Zora Neale Hurston—then a fledgling writer—was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” For the next decade, she wrote short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.

Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick is an outstanding collection of stories that flash with Hurston’s biting, satiric humor, as they share revelations about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism, that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem gems, which were found in dusty periodicals and archives. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.

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A vibrant collection of love stories from a debut author, retelling myths, folktales, and histories from around the world.

A high-born Nigerian goddess, who has been beaten down and unappreciated by her gregarious lover, longs to be truly seen.

A young businesswoman attempts a great leap in her company, and an even greater one in her love life.

A powerful Ghanaian spokeswoman is forced to decide whether she should uphold her family’s politics or be true to her heart.

In her debut collection, internationally acclaimed writer Bolu Babalola retells the most beautiful love stories from history and mythology with incredible new detail and vivacity. Focusing on the magical folktales of West Africa, Babalola also reimagines Greek myths, ancient legends from the Middle East, and stories from long-erased places.

With an eye towards decolonizing tropes inherent in our favorite tales of love, Babalola has created captivating stories that traverse across perspectives, continents, and genres.

Love in Color is a celebration of romance in all its many splendid forms.

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Anthony James weighs 315 pounds, is possibly schizophrenic, and he’s just been kicked out of college. He’s rescued by his mother, sister, and grandmother, but they may not be altogether sane themselves. Living in the basement of their home in Queens, New York, Anthony is armed with nothing but wicked sarcasm and a few well-cut suits. He intends to make horror movies but takes the jobs he can handle, cleaning homes and factories, and keeps crossing paths with a Japanese political prisoner, a mysterious loan shark named Ishkabibble, and packs of feral dogs. When his invincible 13-year old sister enters yet another beauty pageant—this one for virgins—the combustible Jameses pile into their car and head South for the competition.

Will Anthony’s family stick together or explode? With electrifying prose, LaValle ushers us into four troubled but very funny lives.

When the body of reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her twenty-fifth birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. A tragedy, certainly, but not a crime.

Yet Columbia grad student Lena—principled, headstrong, and allergic to the spotlight—knows that can’t be the case. Despite the bitter truth that the two hadn’t spoken in two years, they were half-sisters. Lena knew Desiree. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. Something is very wrong with the facts. So why is no one listening?

While the two sisters had been torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their difficult father, Lena becomes determined to find justice for Desiree. Even if that means untangling her family’s darkest secrets—or ending up dead herself.

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Star-crossed lovers get a second chance at romance when they’re reunited at a wedding in Nigeria, in a heartfelt novel from the acclaimed author of The Sweetest Remedy.

Dunni hasn’t seen her high school boyfriend, Obinna, since she left Nigeria to attend college in America. Before their devastating separation, they vowed to find their way back to each other one day.
 
Twelve years later, and their vow is a thing of the past. Dunni works as a geneticist in Seattle and is engaged to a man she doesn’t love but one her parents approve of. Her future is laid out for her, and everything is going according to plan until she returns to Nigeria for a friend’s wedding and runs into Obinna. The shy, awkward boy she loved as a teenager is now a sophisticated, confident man. Things have changed, but there’s still an undeniable connection between them.
 
As they rediscover each other, their days filled with desire and passion, Dunni is reminded of the beautiful future she once planned with Obinna. But when devastating secrets are revealed and the reckless actions of their past bring new challenges, she’s left questioning everything, including if the love that consumed her as a teenager is still worth holding on to.

Rival Chicago photographers are forced to collaborate on a body-positive lingerie campaign, but they might have to readjust their focus when sparks fly.

Photographer Cassie Harris loves her job—her company Buxom Boudoir makes people look beautiful and feel empowered with her modern twist on classic pinup photography. Cassie’s best friend, Dana, is about to launch her own dangerously dreamy lingerie line and wants Cassie to shoot and direct the career-changing national campaign. But company politics and Dana’s complicated pregnancy interfere, and Cassie finds herself—a proud plus size Black woman—not behind the camera but in front of it.

Though she’s never modeled herself, Cassie’s pretty sure she can handle the sheer underwear and caution tape bralettes. She’s not sure she can work so intimately with the chosen photographer, her long-time competitor in the Chicago photography scene, Reid Montgomery. Their chemistry is undeniable on set, however, and feelings can develop faster than film…

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In The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, activist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, exploring how different threads of liberation—queerness, race, gender plurality, and love—become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape…and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms.

Whoever controls our memories controls the future.

Janelle Monáe and an incredible array of talented collaborating creators have written a collection of tales comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts—as a means of self-conception—could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether human, A.I., or other, your life and sentience was dictated by those who’d convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate.

That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free.

Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it’s like to live in such a totalitarian existence…and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the traditions of speculative writers such as Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor—and filled with the artistic genius and powerful themes that have made Monáe a worldwide icon in the first place—The Memory Librarian serves readers tales grounded in the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, but also reaching through to the worlds of memory and time within, and the stakes and power that exists there.

Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he's met the love of his life—and no, it's not Joy—she's heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.

 
Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?