Fiction

  • Nervous Conditions: A Novel (Nervous Conditions Series)
    $17.00

    A modern classic from the Booker-shortlisted author of This Mournable Body

    The groundbreaking first novel in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s award-winning trilogy, Nervous Conditions, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and has been “hailed as one of the 20th century’s most significant works of African literature” (The New York Times). Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. She yearns to be free of the constraints of her rural village and thinks she’s found her way out when her wealthy uncle offers to sponsor her schooling. But she soon learns that the education she receives at his mission school comes with a price.

  • You Could Do Damage Too

    K.C. Mills

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    From USA Today bestselling author K.C. Mills comes a scorching romance about a ruthless crime boss who discovers his greatest weakness may be the woman he vowed to protect—a gripping tale of power, protection, and the kind of love that breaks all the rules.

    “You Could Do Damage Too weaves a delicious tale of romance, arranged marriage, and family secrets. The character development, storytelling, and romance showcase K.C. Mills’s talent and the power of her stories. This is a must read!” —DANIELLE ALLEN, USA Today bestselling author of Curvy Girl Summer

    In a world where power and survival intertwine, Nari—a resilient former foster child—finds herself unexpectedly married to Kincaid Akel, a ruthless businessman with a complicated past.

    What begins as a calculated arrangement transforms into a passionate and dangerous journey of love, loyalty, and survival. Kincaid’s fierce devotion to Nari is matched only by his willingness to eliminate anyone threatening her safety. But when the shadows of their past—including Nari’s criminal father, Eli Manchester—begin to close in, their marriage is tested in ways neither could have imagined.

    Pregnant and caught between her husband’s dark world and her own search for identity, Nari must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice to protect the life they’re building together. With enemies lurking and secrets threatening to destroy everything, Kincaid and Nari must trust each other completely . . . or risk losing everything they’ve fought so hard to create.

  • Parable of the Talents: A Graphic Novel Adaptation

    Octavia E. Butler

    $25.99

    This powerful graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking dystopian novel stands beside the acclaimed previous graphic novel adaptations, Kindred, a #1 New York Times bestseller, and Parable of the Sower, winner of the Hugo Award

    Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents: A Graphic Novel Adaptation is the continuation of the travails of Lauren Olamina. Brought to life by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the creative team behind the #1 New York Times bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, Parable of the Talents is told in the voice of Lauren Olamina’s daughter, Asha Vere—from whom she has been separated for most of the girl’s life—interspersed with sections in the form of Lauren’s own journals.

    Against a background of a war-torn continent under the control of a Christian fundamentalist fascist state, Asha searches for answers about her own past while struggling to reconcile with her mother’s legacy—caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future among the stars.

    Octavia E. Butler's bestselling literary science-fiction masterpieces are essential works in feminist, Afrofuturist, and fantasy genres, and this compelling graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Talents is a major event.

  • Make Your Way Home : Stories

    Carrie R. Moore

    $17.99

    A debut collection of stories set across the American South, featuring characters who struggle to find love and belonging in the wake of painful histories. How can you love where you come from, even when home doesn’t love you back?

    In eleven stories that span Florida marshes, North Carolina mountains, and Southern metropolitan cities, Make Your Way Home follows Black men and women who grapple with the homes that have eluded them. A preteen pregnant alongside her mother refuses to let convention dictate who she names as the father of her child. Centuries after slavery separated his ancestors, a native Texan tries to win over the love of his life, despite the grip of a family curse. A young deaconess, who falls for a new church member, wonders what it means when God stops speaking to her. And at the very end of the South as we know it, two sisters seek to escape North to freedom, to promises of a more stable climate.

    Artfully and precisely drawn, and steeped in place and history as it explores themes of belonging, inheritance, and deep intimacy, Carrie R. Moore’s debut collection announces an extraordinary new talent in American fiction, inviting us all to examine how the past shapes our present—and how our present choices will echo for years to come.

  • Krik? Krak!

    Edwidge Danticat

    $17.00

    Discover the 20th Anniversary edition of Edwidge Danticat’s unforgettable National Book Award Finalist story collection—complete with a new story.

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

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

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

  • Immaculate Conception: A Novel

    Ling Ling Huang

    $28.00

    From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection

    Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.
     
    Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.

    Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.

  • The Man Who Cried I Am: A Novel

    by John A. Williams

    $19.99

    Rediscover the sensational 1967 literary thriller that captures the bitter struggles of postwar Black intellectuals and artists

    With a foreword by Ishmael Reed and a new introduction by Merve Emre about how this explosive novel laid bare America's racial fault lines


    Max Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames, a character loosely modelled on Richard Wright.

    In Amsterdam, among Harry’s papers, Max uncovers explosive secret government documents outlining “King Alfred,” a plan to be implemented in the event of widespread racial unrest and aiming “to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society.” Realizing that Harry has been assassinated, Max must risk everything to get the documents to the one man who can help.

    Greeted as a masterpiece when it was published in 1967, The Man Who Cried I Am stakes out a range of experience rarely seen in American fiction: from the life of a Black GI to the ferment of postcolonial Africa to an insider’s view of Washington politics in the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, including fictionalized portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. John A. Williams and his lost classic are overdue for rediscovery.

    Few novels have so deliberately blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality as The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), and many of its early readers assumed the King Alfred plan was real. In her introduction, Merve Emre examines the gonzo marketing plan behind the novel that fueled this confusion and prompted an FBI investigation. This deluxe paperback also includes a new foreword by novelist Ishmael Reed.

  • Blaque Pearle

    by Tarris Marie

    $16.95

    Ships in 7-10 business days

    Before her Hollywood dreams were shattered, Pearle Monalise Brown was the tenacious aspiring actress from Compton's unforgiving, scarred streets. Never broken, Pearle switches gears to a fallback plan—resorting to her beauty and acting skills to swindle money and expensive jewels. When she's hired by the Colombian cartel to steal a priceless Basquiat from the debonair kingpin and art collector, Blaque, her talents might not be enough to keep her from falling into a trap she never saw coming. 

    Blaque is sagacious and handsome—not to mention the legacy of two powerful organized crime families: the Laurent’s—known dons hailing from Kingston, Jamaica, and the Savage’s—a sophisticated syndicate with criminal enterprises across the U.S. As Blaque and Pearle become passionately entangled, Pearle falls prey to a darker underworld. Time is ticking. Lives are at stake. Will these love outlaws be able to outsmart their enemies, or will they wage an all-out war, leaving the bodies to fall wherever they may?

  • Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell: A Novel

    by Taj McCoy

    $15.99

    A delicious debut rom-com about a plus-size sweetheart who gets a full-life makeover after a brutal breakup.


    Savvy Sheldon spends a lot of time tiptoeing around the cracks in her life: her high-stress and low-thanks job, her clueless boyfriend and the falling-apart kitchen she inherited from her beloved grandma—who taught her how to cook and how to love people by feeding them. But when Savvy’s world starts to crash down around her, she knows it’s time for some renovations.

    Starting from the outside in, Savvy tackles her crumbling kitchen, her relationship with her body, her work–life balance (or lack thereof) and, last but not least, her love life. The only thing that doesn’t seem to require effort is her ride-or-die squad of friends. But as any home-reno-show junkie can tell you, something always falls apart during renovations. First, Savvy passes out during hot yoga. Then it turns out that the contractor she hires is the same sexy stranger she unintentionally offended by judging based on appearances. Worst of all, Savvy can’t seem to go anywhere without tripping over her ex and his latest "upgrade." Savvy begins to realize that maybe she should’ve started her renovations the other way around: beginning with how she sees herself before building a love that lasts.

  • White is For Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
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    There’s something strange about the Silver family house in the closed-off town of Dover, England. Grand and cavernous with hidden passages and buried secrets, it’s been home to four generations of Silver women—Anna, Jennifer, Lily, and now Miranda, who has lived in the house with her twin brother, Eliot, ever since their father converted it to a bed-and-breakfast. The Silver women have always had a strong connection, a pull over one another that reaches across time and space, and when Lily, Miranda’s mother, passes away suddenly while on a trip abroad, Miranda begins suffering strange ailments. An eating disorder starves her. She begins hearing voices. When she brings a friend home, Dover’s hostility toward outsiders physically manifests within the four walls of the Silver house, and the lives of everyone inside are irrevocably changed. At once an unforgettable mystery and a meditation on race, nationality, and family legacies, White is for Witching is a boldly original, terrifying, and elegant novel by a prodigious talent.
  • The Ways of White Folks by Langston Hughes
    $17.00
  • Year of the Mer
    $30.00

    A dark, bloody epic fantasy reimagining of The Little Mermaid that goes far beyond the fairy tale to explore family legacy, war, and what we will sacrifice for vengeance—the perfect read for fans of The Priory of the Orange Tree and Circe.

    The fairy tale mermaid Arielle might have gotten her happily-ever-after, but her granddaughter Yemi is having a much harder time. Her father, the king of Ixia, was assassinated years ago, her mother is slowly dying of a poisoned wound, and she faces whispers and slights from her own people. Yemi has been raised as the shield of the kingdom and is soon to inherit the throne, but she cannot shake her fury at how Ixia has treated her family after all they’ve sacrificed. Only her patient mother and steadfast personal bodyguard (and fiancée), Nova, help Yemi rein in that fury...most of the time.

    When the kingdom’s discontented rumblings reach a fever pitch, a coup erupts and Yemi’s throne is usurped, stripping her of her family and forcing her into exile. Now, only one being has the power to help her: Ursla.

    Like her grandmother before her, Yemi is tempted by a deal with the sea-witch. With powerful and ancient magic behind her, Yemi could avenge her family, take back her throne, and protect the love of her life. But she should know more than anyone that there is always a price. As much as Yemi wants vengeance, Ursla has been waiting a very, very long time for her own—and it may take more fortune than Yemi possesses to keep her from losing everything all over again.

  • Reclaiming Possession: A Collection of Houston Skyhawks Shorts (Houston Skyhawks)

    Alexandra Warren

    $14.99

    Reclaiming Possession is a collection of second chance short stories set in the Houston Skyhawks Universe.

    In The Off-Season (A Two Minute Warning Spin-off), a run-in at a party leads former lovers Gianna and Amari to question if their relationship deserved more than just a summer.

    In Hail Mary, dessert shop owner Mara is solely focused on running her business until newly hired Skyhawks coach - and the only man she's ever loved - Quincy O'Neal walks through the door with a proposition.

    In Second Down, Christmas provides a backdrop for co-parents Lauryn Greer and Carmelo Calloway, running back for the Houston Skyhawks, to confront their messy past and indulge in an unexpected present that could change their future.

  • Black Girl, Bloom Bright (Black, Brown, and Beautiful)
    $18.99

    Dear Black Girl
    You teach the world
    The power of creativity
    Just by being yourself

    Celebrate the creativity, bravery, dreams, and laughter of Black girls with this purposeful, powerful text from poet and author Mahogany L. Browne. With lush, bright illustrations from artist Sawyer Cloud, this picture book is perfect for honoring big milestones and finding joy in everyday moments―a heartwarming and jubilant love letter to Black girls everywhere.

  • Not Without Laughter (Herald Classics)
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    Langston Hughes's debut novel, a moving portrait of African American family life in 1930s Kansas, newly reissued for Union Square & Co.’s Herald Classics line.

    Originally published in 1930, Not Without Laughter follows Sandy Rogers as a boy living in rural Kansas to his arrival in Chicago as a young man, set against a backdrop of poverty, racial segregation, and the onset of World War I. Orbiting Sandy are a host of vividly realized family members, including his mother Annjee, a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his irresponsible father Jimboy, who plays guitar and is constantly in search of work; his aunts, blues-singing Aunt Harriet and social-climbing Aunt Tempy; and his pious, strong-willed grandmother Hager, who holds the generations together.

    Partly inspired by Langston Hughes’s early life in the Midwest, Not Without Laughter is the debut novel of the literary giant, a sweeping and elegiac family drama that traces Black life in the early twentieth century, an important setting in the history of a racially divided America.

  • Amari and the Metalwork Menace (Supernatural Investigations, 4)
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    The gripping fourth book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Supernatural Investigations series that began with Amari and the Night Brothers! 

    Perfect for fans of Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and Nevermoor.

    In the wake of the extreme losses to the Bureau during the war with Dylan Van Helsing and the magicians, Amari has stepped back from being a Junior Agent to spend the school year as a normal kid. But as she prepares to graduate eighth grade, she's faced with a decision: Return to the Bureau and join the elite new Junior Special Agent Program, or retire for good—which would mean safety, but also losing her memories of the supernatural world.

    But soon she finds that she may not have a choice. A deadly new curse is threatening both the supernatural and mortal worlds as, beneath their skin, people are slowly becoming machines—and losing their very humanity. And it's somehow related to the First Magician.

    Hundreds of cases have been cropping up, with no cure in sight. And when the curse hits someone close to Amari, it's up to her to get to the bottom of this deadly mystery—even if it means trusting an old enemy.

  • The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics)
    $16.00

    Alexandre Dumas’s epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment—nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

    Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo, and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.

    Robin Buss’s lively translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas’s original. This edition includes an introduction, explanatory notes, and suggestions for further reading.

    Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

  • The Midnight Shift
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    A bestseller in Korea, a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness.

    When four isolated elderly people die back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn't understand why she's the only one at her precinct that seems to care. But her colleagues at the police force dismiss the case as a series of unfortunate suicides due to the patients' loneliness. But Su-Yeon doesn't have the privilege of looking away: her dearest friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, lives on the sixth floor, and Su-Yeon is terrified that something will happen to her next.

    As Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman named Violette at the crime scene. Violette claims to be a vampire hunter, searching for her ex-lover, Lily, and is insistent that a vampire is behind the mysterious deaths. Su-Yeon is skeptical at first, but when a fifth victim jumps from the window, her investigation reveals the body was completely drained of blood. Desperate to discover the cause of the deaths, Su-Yeon considers Violette's explanation-that something supernatural is involved.

    The Midnight Shift is a gripping mystery, overflowing with commentary about societal isolation and loneliness, the sharp knife of grief, and the effects of marginalization, perfect for readers of Cursed Bunny; Woman, Eating; and A Certain Hunger.

  • Hekate (Standard Edition): The Witch (Goddesses of the Underworld, 1)
    $19.99

    In this stunning reimagining of Greek myth for fans of Circe and Lore, Nikita Gill showcases the underworld and its chthonic deities in all their glory, weaving a gripping story about the young goddess coming of age within their midst.

    Hekate sings the story of its eponymous heroine. Born into a world on fire and at war, she and her mother are left behind by the menfolk of their Titan family as the battle against the new Gods–the Olympians–begins. Soon, Hekate and her mother are forced to flee their home as the Olympians overpower and enslave the Titans, including Hekate’s father, Perses, and gain dominion over the universe. In a bid to protect Hekate from the clutches of Zeus and Poseidon, her mother leaves her in the underworld with the goddess Styx and king of the underworld, Hades, where she must make a life for herself and discover her divine purpose.
     
    Here begins Nikita Gill’s beautiful and propulsive reimagining of Hekate’s myth which unfolds into a coming-of-age adventure story and quest in which our young protagonist – not yet a goddess – sets out to discover what has happened to her parents, heal from the trauma of her separation from them, make a new home for herself in the underworld, and, eventually, step into her true power as a woman and goddess, before it’s too late.

  • Sparks Fly

    Zakiya N. Jamal

    $19.00

    A late bloomer thought a visit to a sex club might jump start her love life, but instead makes an instant connection that turns her whole world upside down, in this adult debut from author Zakiya N. Jamal.

    When Stella Renee Johnson's roommate invites her to a sex club party but bails at the last minute, Stella decides to use the opportunity to finally cash in her V-card. But just when things are heating up between Stella and a sexy stranger, they realize they don’t have protection and Stella, taking it as a sign this wasn't meant to be, flees.

    Frustrated in more ways than one, Stella is shocked to learn that the digital media website where she works is partnering with an AI company. She's even more shocked when the alluring man from the previous night walks in. Max Williams is the CEO's brother and the creator of the AI program now threatening her job.

    Despite the conflict of interest, Stella and Max can't resist their magnetic attraction toward each other, and agree to keep their personal lives separate from what’s happening at work. But the more similarities they discover at home—both Black, book smart, and bisexual—the more they butt heads at work. Stella and Max must decide whether to think with their heads and walk away from their budding relationship, or follow their hearts and take a chance on love, no matter the cost.

  • You Are My Shiny Star

    Lala Watkins

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    Featuring a star-shaped die-cut and shiny mirror that peeks through the cover, this sweet story encourages little ones to dream big, shine bright, and always reach for the stars!

    Dream big, my little one,

    wherever you go,

    Never be afraid

    to learn and grow

    An eye-catching new mirror novelty board book from author-illustrator, Lala Watkins, You Are My Shiny Star is a charming story that celebrates the importance of dreaming big, being brave, and embracing your creativity. A sweet book full of little life lessons, this inspiring read-aloud shows kids that dreaming big has the power of unlocking a magic spark inside of their own hearts.

    With simple heartfelt text and adorable illustrations on every page, this inspiring board book is a must-have for every first library!

  • Dork Diaries 1: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life (1)

    Rachel Renée Russell

    $14.99

    Nikki Maxwell is starting eighth grade at a new school—and her very first diary is packed with hilarious stories and art in this SUPER SQUEE updated edition of the first book in the #1 New York Times bestselling Dork Diaries series!

    Nikki confesses all in her first diary ever: her epic battle with her mom for an iPhone, meeting her new soon-to-be BFFs Chloe and Zoey, falling for adorably sweet crush Brandon, dealing with her zany little sister Brianna’s antics—and the immediate clashes with mean girl MacKenzie, who becomes Nikki’s rival in a school-wide art competition.

    Nearly 30 million books in print worldwide!

  • Here Forever

    Zee Reneè

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    Here, in, at, or to this place or position.

    Truce Wright is soft when it comes to who he loves, and ruthless when it comes to everything else. The kind of man who’ll build Sanai a safe space with one hand and tear the world down with the other. He isn’t a man that folds, not even when the past comes knocking like it still has a key.

    Forever, for all future time; for always.

    Sanai Lee is learning how to breathe in love again. She’s no longer asking to be saved, she’s choosing to stay open, even when it hurts. With enemies watching and old wounds reopening, she’s learning that peace doesn’t come without a fight.

    Lust brought them here. Love built the foundation. Now, they must decide which will stand the test of time, the challenges of life, the test of loyalty, or the power of love?

  • Sing a Black Girl's Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange

    by Imani Perry

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    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.  

  • Psychopomp & Circumstance

    Eden Royce and DaVaun Sanders

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    Ignyte and Mythopoeic Award-winning author Eden Royce pens a Southern Gothic historical fantasy story of a contentious funeral in her adult fiction debut.

    Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled to within an inch of her life by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she's capable of more than simply marrying well.

    When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother's wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp―the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt's unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death.

  • Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right: A King Oliver Novel (King Oliver, 3)

    Walter Mosley

    $19.99

    In the latest from “mystery master” Walter Mosley, a family member’s terminal illness leads P.I. Joe King Oliver to the investigation of his life: tracking down his long-lost father, and meanwhile, a new case pits King’s professional responsibility against his own moral code. (TheWashington Post)

    Joe King Oliver’s beloved Grandma B has found a tumor, and at her age, treatment is high-risk. She’s lived life fully and without regrets, and now has only a single, dying wish: to see her long-lost son. King has been estranged from his father, Chief Odin Oliver, since he was a young boy. He swore to never speak to the man again when he was taken away in handcuffs. But now, Grandma B’s pure ask has opened King’s heart, and through his hunt, he gains a deeper understanding of his father as a complicated, righteous man—a man defined by women, a man protected by women, a man he wants to know. Although Chief was released from prison years ago, he’s been living underground ever since. Now, King must not only find his father, but prove his innocence, and protect the future of his entire family.

    Simultaneously, King finds himself in a moral bind. Marigold Hart, the wife of a powerful Californian billionaire, has gone missing, along with their seven-year-old daughter. Orr is brutish and dangerous, and King realizes after locating her that it’s in her best interest to stay hidden. But are his motives pure? There is something magnetic about Marigold; he can’t help but want her near.  

    In the latest installment in the Joe King Oliver series, no good deed goes unpunished. Emotionally stirring, pulse-pounding, and undeniably sexy, Been Wrong So Long It Feels Like Right shows Walter Mosley at his best.

  • Butter : A Novel of Food and Murder

    Asako Yuzuki, Polly Barton (Translated by)

    $19.99

    The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story

    There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine

    Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, whom she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination, but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

    Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a master class in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii, but it seems that Rika might be the one changing. Do she and Kajii have more in common than she once thought?

    Inspired by the real case of a convicted con woman and serial killer—the “Konkatsu Killer”—Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance, and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

  • Watershed

    by Percival Everett

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    A classic of politics, murder, and espionage "Watershed has all the makings of a social thriller...In this novel about water and the struggle for a life free of injustice, the mix doesn't just work, it flows." — Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio "It’s hard . . . to imagine a novelist today with fresher eyes than Percival Everett."―Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune On a windswept landscape somewhere north of Denver, Robert Hawks, a feisty and dangerously curious hydrologist, finds himself enmeshed in a fight over Native American treaty rights. What begins for Robert as a peaceful fishing interlude ends in murder and the disclosure of government secrets. Everett mines history for this one, focusing on the relationship between Native American activists and Black Panther groups who bonded over their shared enemies in the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Watershed is an excellent example of Percival Everett’s famed bitingly political narrative style.

  • Smoke Kings

    by Jahmal Mayfield

    $19.99

    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.

  • Moses, Man of the Mountain

    by Zora Neale Hurston

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    *Ships/ready for pick-up in 7-10 business days*

    “A narrative of great power. Warm with friendly personality and pulsating with . . . profound eloquence and religious fervor.”

    —New York Times

    In this novel based on the familiar story of the Exodus, Zora Neale Hurston blends the Moses of the Old Testament with the Moses of black folklore and song to create a compelling allegory of power, redemption, and faith.

  • Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance

    by Zora Neale Hurston

    $17.99

    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.

  • The Late Americans: A Novel

    by Brandon Taylor

    $28.00

    *ships in 7-10 business days

    The author of the Booker Prize finalist Real Life and the bestselling Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads

    In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. At the group’s center are Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicates her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These three are buffeted by a cast of poets, artists, landlords, meat-packing workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of Iowa City, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.

    A novel of intimacy and precarity, friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life. 

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