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In this beautifully crafted, Rashomon-like novel, Maryse Conde has written a gripping story imbued with all the nuances and traditions of Caribbean culture. Francis Sancher--a handsome outsider, loved by some and reviled by others--is found dead, face down in the mud on a path outside Riviere au Sel, a small village in Guadeloupe.  None of the villagers are particularly surprised, since Sancher, a secretive and melancholy man, had often predicted an unnatural death for himself.  As the villagers come to pay their respects they each--either in a speech to the mourners, or in an internal monologue--reveal another piece of the mystery behind Sancher's life and death.  

Like pieces of an elaborate puzzle, their memories interlock to create a rich and intriguing portrait of a man and a community. In the lush and vivid prose for which she has become famous, Conde has constructed a Guadeloupean wake for Francis Sancher.  Retaining the full color and vibrance of Conde's homeland, Crossing the Mangrove pays homage to Guadeloupe in both subject and structure.

Set in a diner where the food isn't very good and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, this bestselling novel from the author of Mama Day and The Women of Brewster Place is a feast for the senses and the spirit. "A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humor."--New York Times Book Review.

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From the start of this extraordinary debut, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s writing will grab you, haunt you, enrage and invigorate you. By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice, and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day in this country.

These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In “The Finkelstein Five,” Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unforgettable reckoning of the brutal prejudice of our justice system. In “Zimmer Land,” we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And “Friday Black” and “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King” show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.

Entirely fresh in its style and perspective, and sure to appeal to fans of Colson Whitehead, Marlon James, and George Saunders, Friday Black confronts readers with a complicated, insistent, wrenching chorus of emotions, the final note of which, remarkably, is hope.

A book of loss, looking back, and what binds us to life, by a towering poetic talent, called “one of the poetry stars of his generation” (Los Angeles Times).

“We sleep long, / if not sound,” Kevin Young writes early on in this exquisite gathering of poems, “Till the end/ we sing / into the wind.” In scenes and settings that circle family and the generations in the American South—one poem, “Kith,” exploring that strange bedfellow of “kin”—the speaker and his young son wander among the stones of their ancestors. “Like heat he seeks them, / my son, thirsting / to learn those / he don’t know / are his dead.”
 
Whether it’s the fireflies of a Louisiana summer caught in a mason jar (doomed by their collection), or his grandmother, Mama Annie, who latches the screen door when someone steps out for just a moment, all that makes up our flickering precarious joy, all that we want to protect, is lifted into the light in this moving book. Stones becomes an ode to Young’s home places and his dear departed, and to what of them—of us—poetry can save.

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Annie John is a haunting and provocative story of a young girl growing up on the island of Antigua. A classic coming-of-age story in the tradition of The Catcher in the Rye and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood. Annie's voice--urgent, demanding to be heard--is one that will not soon be forgotten by readers.

An adored only child, Annie has until recently lived an idyllic life. She is inseparable from her beautiful mother, a powerful presence, who is the very center of the little girl's existence. Loved and cherished, Annie grows and thrives within her mother's benign shadow. Looking back on her childhood, she reflects, "It was in such a paradise that I lived." When she turns twelve, however, Annie's life changes, in ways that are often mysterious to her. She begins to question the cultural assumptions of her island world; at school she instinctively rebels against authority; and most frighteningly, her mother, seeing Annie as a "young lady," ceases to be the source of unconditional adoration and takes on the new and unfamiliar guise of adversary. At the end of her school years, Annie decides to leave Antigua and her family, but not without a measure of sorrow, especially for the mother she once knew and never ceases to mourn. "For I could not be sure," she reflects, "whether for the rest of my life I would be able to tell when it was really my mother and when it was really her shadow standing between me and the rest of the world."

The year is 2008 and eighteen year old Kenni, and her best friend Saylor are Brooklyn's hottest thing walking. Kenni, looking for a man to wife her up and spoil her, and Saylor, looking for a man to put her onto the hustle. Both have different goals, but same outcome; money. While Kenni is giving every hustler with money her attention, Haze, her neighbor is in love with her. Kenni could care less about Haze because his braids are nappy, sneakers are dirty and he doesn't live in a big mansion, he lives in the apartment next to hers in Marcy Projects. After finally be tired of Kenni playing him, Haze decides to let her see what the life of a hustler's wife is really about. When Bridge comes onto the block and locks eyes with Kenni, he knows that he has to make her his. Bridge, A Kingpin from Maryland, decided to spend his summer in Brooklyn, and make money at the same time. Once his eyes are set on Kenni, he can't forget the beauty, and he won't stop until he makes her his. Being Bridge's girl comes with a lot more than money, clothes and cars. And Kenni soon finds out that being a hustler's girl isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Darren is Bridge's cousin, and has eyes for Saylor. While Darren works for Bridge, he still has enough money to spread around. Especially to his wife and children in Philly. Saylor and Darren enter a dangerous situation where any one of their hearts could end up broken. While Darren just wants a side piece in Brooklyn for the summer, Saylor wants to learn the drug game and be on top, while being with Darren. The golden rule Saylor makes Darren promise is not to break her heart... Will Darren break the rule? Or, will he become so caught up in Saylor that he's ready to leave his wife? Two girls with two different goals, but one thing for sure; All The Dope Boys 'Gon Feel Her.

Yoshon Santana once ruled Brownsville, Brooklyn with an iron fist. When his fiancée fell ill, he stepped back and allowed his sister, Yolani, to take his place. After her death, the streets no longer fulfilled him. The same streets he gave everything to seemed to offer him nothing in return. From a distance, he now watches as Yolani runs things his way.

With a possible girlfriend on the horizon, Yoshon finds himself wanting something different. At thirty-eight, he is ready for a wife, children, and the white picket fence surrounding his mansion. Every woman he meets fails to hold his interest until one night during one of New York's infamous blizzards. He comes across a woman and her young son sleeping in a car. Offering his help to the beautiful stranger changes his life, though he does not realize it at the time.

Twenty-five-year-old Golden was once accustomed to cars, mansions, and money. That life came crashing down when her husband, Grand, decided she deserved bruises to match the luxury he provided. After packing up and disappearing with her son, Golden returns to her hometown, hoping to reconnect with the grandmother she left behind. When things do not go as planned, she finds herself working two jobs, washing up in public restrooms, and sleeping in her 2004 Nissan Maxima with her seven-year-old son, Gyan.

There is no such thing as a guardian angel, especially one wearing Timberlands and driving a Tesla. The question is, will Golden lower her guard and pride enough to accept Yoshon's help, or will she continue struggling on the same Brownsville streets she once escaped?

Hazel is married to Yolani and loves her wife deeply. What she cannot tolerate is the constant disrespect and Yolani's unwavering loyalty to the streets. Hazel is tired of coming second to the life Yolani refuses to leave behind. While running her nail shop, an old boyfriend resurfaces and begins to complicate things. Will Hazel turn back to her past, or will she fight for the marriage she vowed to protect?

Yolani stepped into her brother's size thirteen Timberlands and runs the streets the way she sees fit. With a frustrated wife at home, women constantly within reach, and more money than she can spend, settling down is the last thing on her mind. What she has yet to understand is that the same streets she controls are the same ones that can swallow you whole. With a secret weighing on her, will the truth finally come to light? And when it does, will Hazel remain by her side, or walk away in search of the love she truly deserves?

From Wall Street Journal bestselling author Dylan Allen writing as Lucy Wilson-Tagoe comes the first story in her new Blurred Lines Duet series…

Who gets to tell this story?
The sinner who lived it?
Or the saint who stole it?

Sin Sackey is driven by the same hardwired need as every eldest first-generation daughter—to make her family proud. And she built her career and chose her partners with that single goal as her north star.

Everyone said she had it all. And for more than twenty years, Sin let herself believe they were right.

Until a near-death experience makes the truth impossible to deny.

Her relationship is on life support. Her journalism career is in freefall. And the city she thought she’d conquer has chewed her up and spit her out.

With everything to prove—and everything to lose—Sin moves back home to Washington, DC, determined to start over. No more chasing shadowy criminals. And no more men who look too good to be true.

But on the eve of the first day of the rest of her new life, the saying about old habits proves painfully accurate.

A new lead falls into her lap, and Sin dives back into the story that nearly cost her everything.
Then, when a man who is all the things she’s sworn to avoid invites her to dinner, she says yes.

After everything she’s been through, it’s reckless.

But this story could resurrect her career—and take down an entire black-market empire. She’s closer than ever to catching its elusive leader, and she can’t let go now.

And this man—who makes her blush, makes her laugh, and understands things she usually has to explain—could be the one. So, she lowers her walls just enough for him to climb over.

But just when it seems her gamble might pay off, her lead starts to feel more like a trap. And the man she’s let herself love appears to be the one who set it.

To Catch a Sinneris a steamy, suspenseful friends-to-lovers romance between a relentless journalist and a mysterious lawyer with a complicated shared past. Set against a fictionalized Washington, DC, this fast-paced, high-stakes story explores reclaiming identity, challenging power, and the pursuit of a new American dream.

National Book Award finalist Mónica Ojeda returns with a blazing, psychedelic novel about girlhood, violence, and the loss of innocence.

In the near future, best friends Noa and Nicole flee their home in Guayaquil, Ecuador to attend the Solar Noise Festival, a week-long, retro-futuristic gathering at the foot of an active volcano. While Noa fully embraces the haze of narcotics and hedonism in an effort to obscure her true reason for attending, Nicole senses something darker at play behind the festival’s so-called “celebration of life.” Amid technoshamanic poetry, collective hallucinations, and ritualistic dances, each girl navigates her own path in an effort to escape her past and reclaim her right to a future.

Vivid, terrifying, and celebratory, Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun blends the primal with the supernatural, solidifying Mónica Ojeda as one of the most singular and exciting voices in Latin American and world literature today.

A limited hardcover deluxe edition of the modern classic Pachinko—named one of the New York Times' 100 Best Books of the 21st Century—following four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family fighting to control their destiny in 20th-Century Japan.

Features:
* New hardcover jacket with special effects
* Four-color specially designed endpapers
* Specially designed foil stamped case
* Four-color stenciled edges
* Ribbon bookmark

History is seldom kind. In Min Jin Lee’s acclaimed and magisterial novel, four generations of a poor, proud immigrant family fight to control their destinies while exiled from their homeland.

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to bend to his will. Instead she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home and reject her son’s powerful father sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of one of Japan’s finest universities to pachinko parlors and the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters—resilient, fierce women, devoted sisters, bright sons, fathers shaken by moral crises—survive and flourish against the indifferent arc of history.

Trapped at a luxurious resort off the coast of Florida, a group of elite teens are about to have a spring break they will never forget . . . but not all of them are coming home. The star-studded team of authors behind New York Times bestsellers Blackout and Whiteout returns with a thrillerfull of intrigue, betrayal, and heart-stopping romance.

For Thurgood Marshall Academy's best and brightest--five friends who've been thick as thieves since kindergarten--this spring break is all about forgetting: they want nothing more than to wash away last year's tragedy, and the human-shaped hole it left in their friend group.

It's a hole the new kid, Anthony Brooks, seems to fit right into. So when he invites the Five to join him on a private island for a week at his dad's luxury resort, they agree with zero hesitation. No one's counting on a freak tropical storm swooping in and killing the vibe. And speaking of killing, they're also ill-prepared for the mounting collection of dead bodies... including (another) one of their own.

As their dream trip unravels, everything they tried to leave behind--secrets, lies, betrayals, dead best friends--seems to be washing up on the shore of their lives for everyone to see. Will any of them make it out alive?

From the bestselling, award-winning team behind Blackout and Whiteout—Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon—comes a thriller that begs the question: is it possible to outrun the worst thing you've ever done?

Combining the political intrigue of She Who Became the Sun with the gorgeous world-building of Children of Blood and Bone, Birth of a Dynasty is the start of a thrilling epic fantasy trilogy centered around three families’ fight for power in Ahkebulin, a land where magic is feared, giants are real, and prophecy holds sway. 

We shall not forgive. We shall not forget. We will have our vengeance.

After witnessing the massacre of everyone he’s ever known and loved, M’Kuru Mukundi, the sole surviving member of the High Noble House Mukundi of Madada, vows revenge. M’kuru flees to a small village where he hides under the guise of farm boy Khalil Rausi… unaware that the real Khalil’s father is the bloodthirsty General of Zenzele army, and under the direction of the King’s scheming son, Prince Effiom, was responsible for the murder of M’kuru’s people. When an imposter claiming to be M’kuru shows up in the village, the real M’kuru—now Khalil—must bide his time amongst his enemies, pretending to be everything that he hates in order to get vengeance.

In another part of the country where giants roam free, young Zikora Nnamani, the only daughter of Lord Nnamani, knows nothing of political intrigue—she wants little more than to be a fierce Seh Llinga warrior. But a well-known prophecy places too much potential power on her small shoulders, and—as far as Prince Effiom and the King know—she is the only living threat to their dynasty ruling forever. However, when a messenger arrives to “invite” Zikora to stay at the palace, her family is not in a position to refuse. Before she is taken away, she begins The Rite of Blessing, a magical inheritance that she will need to learn how to use, but that may also bring the world one step closer to the completion of the prophecy that Prince Effiom so fears.

Between scheming ladies at court, backstabbing princes on the prowl, and paranoid kings, M’kuru and Zikora must do what they can, no matter how terrible, to save their people and claim vengeance for their families. But they are just two young people against an entire kingdom—and a prophecy destined to thwart their dreams—and the last thing they can do is trust anyone…even each other.

Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person—no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.

Aurelia George was prepared to let the world believe she was dead. Tangled in the arms of her mountain men and bound only by the rules they make, the twice disgraced pop star had found her happily ever after.

Or so she thought.

The only thing surprising about learning her uncle wants her dead is realizing how eager she is to return the favor. Convincing her mountain men to leave their world behind and step into hers won't be easy. Thorin is desperate to disappear again, Khalil is quietly drowning, and Zeke wants her gone.

For better or worse, this quartet of villains will have to leave their Eden.

And now that the tables have turned, Aurelia's the one they'll need to survive. But as she and the rest of the world are about to learn, you can take these men out of the wilds, but you can't take the wilds out of them.

WINNER of the French Voices Grand Prize, Prix Ahmadou Kourouma, and Grand Prix du Roman Métis

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s searing and thought-provoking debut novel, Brotherhood takes place in the imaginary town of Kalep, where a fundamentalist Islamist government has spread its brutal authority.

Under the regime of the so-called Brotherhood, two young people are publicly executed for having loved each other. In response, their mothers begin a secret correspondence, their only outlet for the grief they share and each woman’s personal reckoning with a leadership that would take her beloved child’s life.

At the same time, spurred on by their indignation at what seems to be an escalation of The Brotherhood’s brutality, a band of intellectuals and free-thinkers seeks to awaken the conscience of the cowed populace and foment rebellion by publishing an underground newspaper. While they grapple with the implications of what they have done, the regime’s brutal leader begins a personal crusade to find the responsible parties, and bring them to his own sense of justice.

In this brilliant analysis of tyranny and brutality, Mbougar Sarr explores the ways in which resistance and heroism can often give way to cowardice, all while giving voice to the moral ambiguities and personal struggles involved in each of his characters’ search to impose the values they hold most dear.

From best-selling author B.B. Reid comes a sizzling romance set in shadows and glamour.

Ocean Kilpatrick has starred in many wet dreams.
As for best friends Hunter Parrish and Coby Perry, he's become their worst nightmare.
When Coby is sold to the mafia prince to settle her brother’s debt, Ocean vows to take what he's owed and then some.
Obviously, he's never heard that trouble comes in two because Hunter has made a vow of her own—to rescue her twin flame or die trying. She’ll burn down Ocean’s world and dance on the ashes before letting him take what’s hers.
But Ocean isn't just the heir to the Fola. He's a master manipulator.
Every move the friends make, he's two steps ahead, and the game won't end until he says so.

Say So is a standalone romance compiled from the original serial and revised to be enjoyed as a full-length novel.

The most widely read book in modern African literature tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around a fearless Igbo warrior in Nigeria in the late 1800s, before and after the European colonization of the continent.

“African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison

The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the first is ancient, and which elevates the book to a tragic plane, concerns the clash of cultures and the destruction of Okonkwo's world through the arrival of aggressive, proselytizing European missionaries. These twin dramas are perfectly harmonized, and they are modulated by an awareness capable of encompassing at once the life of nature, human history, and the mysterious compulsions of the soul. THINGS FALL APART is the most illuminating and permanent monument we have to the modern African experience as seen from within.

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read.

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ”

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, BOOKPAGE, AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Superb. . . . A celebration of a place and time when people held onto their own ways, and basked in ordinary joys even as outside forces conspired to take them away.” —New York Times

From the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, a sweeping, multi-generational saga of displacement, loss, and love, set against the brutal colonization of east Africa.

When he was just a boy, Ilyas was stolen from his parents on the coast of east Africa by German colonial troops. After years away, fighting against his own people, he returns home to find his parents gone and his sister, Afiya, abandoned into de facto slavery. Hamza, too, returns home from the war, scarred in body and soul and with nothing but the clothes on his back–until he meets the beautiful, undaunted Afiya. As these young people live and work and fall in love, their fates knotted ever more tightly together, the shadow of a new war on another continent falls over them, threatening once again to carry them away.

From tragedy to triumph, witness the rise of one of DC’s greatest minds in this gripping modern origin story of Mr. Terrific!

Before he was the world’s third-smartest man, Michael Holt was a grieving genius who lost everything. As Michael struggles to find purpose after a devastating tragedy, his journey from despair to heroism takes him from the depths of self-doubt to the heights of scientific discovery, while a sinister conspiracy threatens to rewrite his destiny. As Mr. Terrific investigates a mysterious new rift in the present, he uncovers a shocking connection to his own past, one that may be tied to the fate of Darkseid himself! Written by acclaimed storyteller Al Letson (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters) with stunning art by Valentine De Landro (Black Manta), plus sequences drawn by Edwin Galmon (Superman), this electrifying Year One tale redefines the legacy of a legend!

Collects Mr. Terrific: Year One #1-6

Sometimes, a single moment is the start of forever.

Everett

Legacy is carved into my bloodline, centuries deep.

Power, wealth, duty-none of it feels like a choice.

Now I wear the crown of LEVMARK, the empire my family built, and I'm tasked with creating what my mother once dreamed of-a fine jewelry line that will outlast us all.

But the designer I need is the one woman I should keep at a distance.

The woman I've already saved once, though she never knew my name.

River

Design is the language of my soul.

Metal, fire, and vision-I bend them into beauty, creating pieces that whisper of who I am and who I want to become.

But in this industry, ambition comes at a cost.

Blacklisted. Betrayed. Still, I rise.

And now my dream collides with him-the man who could shatter my defenses, or set everything I've built ablaze.

This is our story.

One night.

One secret.

One love.

A story forged in fire and etched in steel.

"Still" is a standalone, billionaire, contemporary Black romance.

Breaking things off with her college sweetheart seemed like the right choice at the time, but Amira never anticipated the heartache it would bring them both. Every day since she's regretted the decision that derailed her future. So, when Saleem reappears years later with an irresistible proposition, Amira is torn.

Walking away and not fighting for their relationship ate at Saleem more than he'd like to admit. He never wanted to end things, but he loved her enough to give her what she wanted. Life had taken them on different journeys, but when an opportunity presented itself to make her his wife, Saleem wasted no time trying to win her heart back.

This was supposed to be fake. Just a favor...

What starts as a practical arrangement quickly stirs up old feelings that never left, blurring the line between convenience and forever.

Amira and Saleem's love for one another was too deep to ignore, but will their past wounds keep them apart, or are second chances worth taking?

When Drew Honey moved into a shared house with 5 other girls, all she wanted was to get through her last semester of college and start living the life she always dreamed of. However, the universe had other plans when a charismatic and kind-hearted woman named Adrian Jackson slid her way into the picture.

From that first day, the two of them were drawn to each other, easily becoming closer as the months passed. Their feelings grew and as graduation approached, they both decided to confess to each other, but of course, the universe once again threw them a curveball. Because of this, they both reluctantly went their separate ways after graduation, clinging to the hope that they’d one day be reunited.

Fast forward 5 years later, Adrian finally relocates back to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The city where she spent 4 years of her life. The city where she met the only woman she ever loved. The city where she had to let that woman go.

She never planned to run into her again, but when a random trip to a clothing store brings these two lovers back together, they realize that the universe has given them yet another chance, so they take it.

This story is full of love, but also full of grief. With past traumas and anxieties starting to rear their nasty heads, these two realize that the only thing that can help them heal is each other. Thus a love that is sweet like honey starts to blossom.

Adrian

Kiara has been my only desire since the moment I laid eyes on her. Radiantly beautiful and effortlessly kind, she resembled a goddess of the sun One smile, one conversation, one dance - one kiss was all it took for me to make my decision: Kiara was going to be mine. And now, with the perfect opportunity falling in my lap, I was going to claim her.

Kiara

Opening my own restaurant was always my dream. When it finally came true, I had no idea it would bring a living nightmare to my doorstep.The establishment I'd nourished and re-branded was deep in debt to one of the most dangerous families in the city, and the debt collector was no one other than the unhinged heir. This situation wouldn't be so bad if Adrian accepted payments. But, he doesn't want money - he wants me.

The first thrilling novel in a new adult romantasy duology following a young woman who finds herself the Chosen One to two conflicting prophecies—from the author of Lore of the Wilds.

Magic has always been something at the periphery of Audra’s life. As a human, she knows that magic exists, but it is something that is beyond the mist. Until one day the mist comes to shore, bringing with it the all too real Fae and upending Audra’s life entirely.

She is kidnapped from her home and taken to a school to be trained as a soldier by the Priestesses, Fae beings who are an ominous presence with a cult-like mentality. Audra must band together with a group of other prisoners to survive their new world filled with guilds, magic, and danger. The Priestesses are searching for the mythical Heir of Prophecy who will save them from an eternal winter. They know the Heir is among the student prisoners at the school and are getting more and more desperate to flush out him or her.

What Audra needs to know is what exactly it means to be the Heir... because she’s pretty sure it’s her. Her magic is wonky in exactly the way it was foretold. As she tries to hide her true nature, something strange keeps happening. A vision, a very hot and very underwordly vision comes to her. And what he has to say will put her life in even more danger and force her to make a decision that puts the fate of the entire world at risk.

The latest in writer and visual artist Renee Gladman’s ever-expanding body of imaginative investigation is a sui generis novel of queerness and art-making, philosophy and sex.

The narrator of My Lesbian Novel is Renee Gladman, an artist and writer who has produced the same acclaimed body of experimental art and prose as real-life Renee Gladman, and who is now being interviewed by an unnamed interlocutor about a project in process, a seeming departure from her other works, a lesbian romance. 
 
Between reflections on art making and on the genre of lesbian romance—“though aspects of the formula drive me crazy . . . people who write these stories understand how beautiful women are”—a romance novel of her own takes shape on the page, written alongside the interview, which sometimes skips whole years between questions, so that time and aging become part of the process. 
 
The result is a beautifully orchestrated dialogue between reflection and desire, or clarity and confusion, between the pleasures of form and the pleasures of freedom in the unspooling of sentences over time.

“Jasmine Reid writes a shapeful, theoretical work involved in the rigorous attending to emergent selves and the languages made in calling them into being.” —aracelis girmay

Interlocutor Goddess explores the creation of a trans language for selfhood within an exilic state of "ecstatic grief."

Reid's experimental work challenges societal norms, particularly the family as a political construct while reflecting on the trans experiences of a queer Black woman. The poems grapple with oppressive systems of separation and colonial legacies, rejecting extractive, empire-driven paradigms, and gender essentialism. Within her collection, Reid envisions alternative, ethical ways of being, rooted in unity and wholeness and finds kinship with the rhythms and lifeways of the natural world—soil, stars, and water. 

Her poetry employs a trans-lyricism, weaving together dual meanings through homonyms, homophones, and portmanteaus to create a layered, fugitive language that resists rigid classifications. At its core, Interlocutor Goddess is an act of transfiguration, a celebration of girlhood, and a reclamation of wholeness for all who exist beyond imposed boundaries.

Winner of the 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Fiction Anthology

Showcasing the work of literary giants like Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and writers whom readers may be surprised to learn were "in the life," Black Like Us is the most comprehensive collection of fiction by African American lesbian, gay, and bisexual writers ever published. From the Harlem Renaissance to the Great Migration of the Depression era, from the postwar civil rights, feminist, and gay liberation movements, to the unabashedly complex sexual explorations of the present day, Black Like Us accomplishes a sweeping survey of 20th century literature.

She's the figure skater. He's the hockey player. And the only thing more dangerous than falling for each other is the truth buried beneath the ice.

Welcome to Valcérre. An elite university in the middle of the snowy mountains with the best hockey and figure skating programs in the world...and secrets no one talks about.

Luna Del Sol is the new figure skater trying to prove she belongs. As a Black Latina, she's used to pressure. She's fought for every opportunity she's ever had.

She came here to focus on skating, not to get distracted by Valcérre's broody hockey star, who calls her an ice princess on her first day, like she's just another pretty face. She hates him for it.

Zayden Aldenhurst is the coach's son, a legacy hockey star, and the only Black player on the team. Everyone thinks he has it all, but he's just good at pretending. Until Luna walks in like a storm and reminds him of the things he tried to bury and everything he shouldn't want.

They're supposed to hate each other. But an anonymous message leads them to a hidden rink where a student died five years ago.

No matter how hard they try to stay away, they are drawn back together like magnets. And the closer they get, the thinner the ice beneath them becomes. One crack, and everything could shatter.

For fans of ICEBREAKER meets A GOOD GIRL'S GUIDE TO MURDER-at an elite, gothic university with buried secrets.

From debut author Chandra Blumberg comes a playful, heartfelt romance about chasing your dreams and finding love in the process.

Alisha Blake works her magic in the kitchen, creating delectable desserts for her grandfather’s restaurant in rural Illinois. Though Alisha relishes the close relationship she has with her family, she can’t help but dream about opening a cookie shop in Chicago. She may be a small-town baker, but Alisha has big ambitions.

Then a dinosaur bone turns up in her grandparents’ backyard. When paleontologist Quentin Harris arrives to see the discovery for himself, he’s hoping that the fossil will distract him from a recent painful breakup. Instead, he finds Alisha―and sparks fly. The big-city academic and the hometown baker seem destined for a happily ever after.

But Alisha is scared to fall in love. And Quentin’s trying to make a name for himself in a competitive field, which gets even more complicated when the press shows up at the dig site. For love to prevail, the two may have to put old bones aside―and focus on the future.

In Gauthier, love isn’t just found. It’s forever.

Phylicia “Phil” Simmons has built her life around restoring the past. Her craftsmanship and eye for beauty have made her one of Louisiana’s most sought-after artisans, but taking on the renovation of Belle Maison, a once grand bed and breakfast in her hometown, means more than reviving an old house. It means facing Jamal Johnson, the ambitious architect whose bold ideas test her patience as much as they stir something she isn’t ready to name.

He believes in innovation. She believes in preservation. But the more they clash over blueprints and late-night plans, the harder it becomes to fight the pull between them.

In the heart of a small Southern town where history lingers and hearts rarely rest, two people on opposite sides of a dream begin to blur the line between rebuilding what was lost and reaching for something that could last always and forever.