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  • The Space Cat

    Nnedi Okorafor

    $14.99

    Invaders from outer space have descended on Nigeria. They have no idea whose home they're messing with.

    Ah, yes, the luxurious life of a well-loved cat. It’s the best. And Periwinkle has it the cushiest. But there’s more to this pampered pet than meets the eye. He’s not just a house cat. He’s a space cat. By day, he’s showered with scritches, cuddles, and delicious chicken fillets. By night, he races through the cosmos in his custom-built spaceship.

    Between epic battles with squeaky toys and working on ways to improve his ship, Periwinkle is never bored. And when his humans decide to leave the United States and move to the small but bustling town of Kaleria, Nigeria, he’s excited to explore his new home―even after he learns that many Nigerians hate cats. After all, a born adventurer like Periwinkle doesn’t shy away from new experiences. But not everything in Kaleria is as it seems. Soon enough, Periwinkle finds himself on his most out-of-this-world adventure yet, right here on Earth.

  • Far Away from Here: A Novel

    Ambata Kazi

    $17.99

    Far Away from Here is a novel about three young Black American Muslims on the cusp of adulthood confronting faith, tradition, and the impact of their personal decisions in five years post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

    In New Orleans, it’s been five years since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the heart and soul of both the city and its residents. Three young Black Muslim friends have reconnected after drifting apart as teenagers: Fatima left with the floodwaters of Katrina following the murder of her childhood love and fiancé, Wakeel, and has now returned to reluctantly care for Wakeel’s mother. Tahani rebelled against a strict Muslim upbringing and feels stifled in her life as a single mother, trying to make ends meet while craving a creative outlet. And Saif, the cousin of Wakeel, must reconcile with Fatima over how his illicit past played a role in his cousin’s death.

    All three struggle to envision a future for themselves that they can actively shape. A testament to the stories we tell ourselves and each other, Far Away From Here is a coming-of-age novel threaded with themes of community, tradition, faith, and the courage to own one’s narrative.

  • The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers

    Cheryl McKissack Daniel

    $28.99

    The riveting story of the McKissack family—the founders of the leading Black design and construction firm in the United States, from its beginnings in the mid-1800s to its thriving status today—in a moving celebration of resilience and innovation.

    Captured in his native West Africa and enslaved on American shores by a North Carolina plantation owner, Moses McKissack I began to build his way to emancipation right from the start. Becoming an enslaved craftsman, he picked up the trade his family would become famous for in the earliest years of the 19th century, passing his learnings down to his children and seeing them off to freedom after the Civil War.

    The family would settle in Tennessee, getting its bearings in the building trades despite rampant discrimination, establishing a foothold that now sees its latest generations working at the absolute peak of its industry.

    The family’s fingerprints have been left all across the United States, spanning from Reconstruction to contemporary times, through projects like the Morris Memorial Building, Capers C.M.E. Church, John F. Kennedy International Airport, and Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.

    Here, Cheryl McKissack Daniel, CEO and president of McKissack & McKissack, reveals the full fascinating story of her family. So much more than an exploration of architectural achievements, The Black Family Who Built America is also a compelling illustration of how history rhymes and reverberates, and a celebration of the human spirit’s ability to overcome adversity and drive change. From Moses’s humble beginnings to Cheryl’s current role as a trailblazer and champion of diversity, the family’s journey underscores the importance of perseverance, innovation, and strategic vision in shaping a legacy that continues to inspire and impact the construction industry.

  • Easy Chinese Food Anyone Can Make

    Emma Chung

    $22.00

    Make your favorite Chinese dishes at home.

    Don’t get a takeout, make your own! From hugely popular online recipe creator Emma Chung @iam.chungry comes this must-have cookbook for anyone who loves to eat Chinese food. Brought up in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Emma knows the very best meals to cook and eat and, with these recipes, she shows you just how simple it is to whip up your own Sweet and Sour Pork, Crispy Chile Beef or Mapo Tofu . . . it's easier than you might think!

    From weeknight winners and takeout-style favorites to delightful dumplings and top-notch noodles—this cookbook is packed with easy-to-follow recipes, many of which include veggie and/or vegan alternatives as well as useful air-fryer options. So, no matter how confident you are in the kitchen, if you enjoy eating Chinese food, discover how easy it is to make old and new favorites including:

    Crispy Pork Chop with Soup Noodles

    Bang Bang Shrimp

    Lemon Chicken

    Chicken with Ginger and Scallion Sauce

    Cantonese-Style Eggplants

    Emma says: "In Mandarin, we use the term jiā cháng cài 家常菜 to describe home-style cooking. This type of food is unpretentious, delicious and deeply intertwined with the comfort of being at home. Having spent many years living abroad, this is the type of food I crave when I’m homesick. I don’t believe you need lots of time, money or equipment to make delicious Chinese food. That’s why this book is a collection of recipes that are easy, approachable and adaptable. Recipes that ANYONE, even those with limited time, space, budget or even cooking skills, can make at home."

  • My Abuela Is a Bruja

    Mayra Cuevas

    $18.99

    From an award-winning author comes a vibrant and heartwarming story of the bond between grandmother and grandchild, with a touch of Puerto Rican magic!

    My abuela is a bruja.
    There is magic in everything she does.

    There is nothing more magical than a grandmother's love. But one lucky girl suspects her grandmother has actual magic. It's in the tun-tun-tun of the way she dances salsa, in the warmth of her hugs, and the delicious smell of her cooking. The granddaughter wonders: will I have magic of my own one day?

    Follow the magic in this heartfelt picture book that features extensive backmatter that includes two special recipes from Mayra Cuevas and uplifiting illustrations from Lorena Alvarez Gómez.

  • Eggs, Please! (A to Z Foods of the World)

    Cheryl Yau Chepusova, Rebecca Hollingsworth

    $12.95

    From “Egg” to Z—crack open a global culinary adventure for babies and toddlers!

    This adorable, plate-shaped alphabet board book from the author of Noodles, Please! introduces your youngest reader to the alphabet in a delightful and tasty journey across 20 different countries and cultures.

    Eat the alphabet as you discover 26 egg-based dishes from countries around the world. From Nadan Mutta to Tunisian Shakshouka, this food board book will have young foodies and their grown-ups wowed by all the amazing ways you can use a simple egg.

    • As you read, look for the name of each dish in both English and the native language of the country it comes from.

    • This giftable die-cut alphabet book is shaped to mimic a dinner plate on each page.

    • Vibrant illustrations of 20 different egg dishes from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, India, Australia, and the Middle East

    Whether you’re a lifelong fan of frittata or a tiny emerging foodie, this children’s board book will have you screaming for more Eggs, Please!

  • Specs

    Van G. Garrett, Reggie Brown (Illustrated by)

    $19.99

    In this follow-up to Kicks, dynamic duo Van G. Garrett and New York Times bestselling artist Reggie Brown reunite to celebrate kids who wear glasses, or specs, and all the amazing, stylish things they can do and be while being true to themselves—in spectacular fashion!

    You shouldn’t pick SPECS carelessly. No rough-and-ready, unsteady, speedily selected pair of glasses will do.

    This is a love letter to glasses. But not just any glasses. Only the shiniest, flyest, you-est specs you can find—the ones that let you see things in a whole new way!

    In this playful and joyful ode to specs of all kinds, young readers follow one girl on her journey of acceptance and join the fun of picking the perfect pair of glasses. 

  • Solitaria: A Novel

    Eliana Alvez Cruz

    $26.00

    "Solitaria is a gem.” —Saidiya Hartman, author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments

    For fans of Fernanda Melchor and Tove Ditlevsen, a raw, propulsive novel by an award-winning Afro-Brazillian novelist about a Black mother and daughter who work as live-in maids for a rich family in an unnamed Brazilian city, and the tragedy to which they unwittingly bear witness.

    Mabel has been staying in the Golden Plate—the most expensive building on the block, in an unnamed city in Brazil—for almost her entire life. Yet her presence there is merely tolerated: she inhabits a miniscule room with her mother, Eunice, who alongside Mabel provides round-the-clock attention and care for the wealthy family who lives there. As Mabel grows up, her dissatisfaction with the forced smallness of her life becomes difficult to bear, and she is driven to work toward new possibilities for herself.

    Eunice does the best that she can—uneducated, and with a daughter and ailing mother both depending solely on her, her life is a series of limitations. She moves through the rooms of the penthouse suite in silent servitude, and though Mabel is ashamed of this invisibility act they've both perfected, the era of slavery is still fresh in the country's consciousness, and Eunice thinks it best not to dwell too hard on such things. But when tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, Eunice must decide if she can face the indifference and injustices of the ruling class she has spent so long orbiting.

    Told through direct, agile and evocative prose, Solitaria is a liberation novel of the most rousing order. Through the book's awareness of space and whose presence is permissible, the world of the Golden Plate unfurls, and an unflinching portrait emerges of modern-day Brazil, its legacies of colonial violence haunting rooms across the country, both big and small.

  • Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974–

    Jamaica Kincaid

    $30.00

    My ignorance was on my side. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t know what to be afraid of. I did one thing, I did another. I did what I now call crashing about. One day I started to write.

    This collection of Jamaica Kincaid’s nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., proves what her admirers have always known: from the start, she has been a consummate stylist, and she has always been herself.

    From “Jamaica Kincaid’s New York,” which narrates her move to the city from Antigua at the age of sixteen and a half, to the classic “Biography of a Dress,” her cultural criticism, and her original thinking about the meaning of the garden, Kincaid writes about the world as she finds it, imparting her own quizzical, rapier-sharp response to whatever crosses her path.

    Putting Myself Together is a brilliant, trenchant, hilarious self-portrait of the artist and a testament to how this inimitable, self-created mind and spirit, endowed with wit, humor, and fearlessness, has become one of our greatest, most original writers.

  • Cudi: The Memoir

    Scott "Kid Cudi" Mescudi

    $29.99

    A raw and inspiring memoir from Kid Cudi-Grammy Award-winning recording artist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, actor, and designer-telling the story of a kid from Cleveland who transformed his and millions of fans' lives while battling depression, addiction, and suicidal ideation.

  • Player VS Player (Game Quest #1)

    Ash Wu

    $6.99

    A new highly illustrated chapter book series set in both a Minecraft-style video game world and the real world of elementary school where friendships will be tested, courage will be discovered, and teamwork will always win!

    Kat, Tai, and Alex are obsessed with the video game Otherworld. They strategize and play together all the time but are famous for their arguments while playing. They can’t help being passionate about what they love!Fresh off their latest fight, the kids discover that their school fundraiser is going to be an Otherworld tournament! All three of them are ecstatic, but they’re too stubborn to form a team while tensions are still running high. They’ll have to set all of that aside, though, when Kat, Tai, and Alex are magically zapped into Otherworld. With zombies to outrun and defenses to build, can the trio get it together long enough to get themselves out or will it be game over for good?

  • Wish I Was a Baller

    Amar Shah

    Sold out

    Wish I Was a Baller is part New Kid, part The Tryout, and part Dragon Hoops!

    Amar Shah has some story to tell! In 1995, he was a fourteen-year-old aspiring sports journalist (and basketball superfan) angling to get into an Orlando Magic team practice. He did, and it took him on the ride of his life!

    Wish I Was a Baller is a graphic memoir chronicling Amar's real-life experiences as a fourteen-year-old sports journalist covering the golden era of the NBA, when he befriended Shaq and hung out with Michael Jordan and the Bulls―all while surviving the high school, dealing with crushes, and friendships being tainted by jealousy.

    "An inspiring story of friendship, family, and the swishes and misses of being a kid. Baller soars and scores!" ― Jerry Craft, author of the Newbery Award-winning New Kid

  • Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Veteran's Memoir

    Khadijah Queen

    $30.00

    We stay fighting, even if we don't call it war.

    Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is a poet’s memoir about family, survival, and one servicewoman’s search for autonomy. Yanked out of college and torn from her sunny hometown of Los Angeles in the early 1990s, Khadijah Queen finds herself sharing a basement apartment with her mother and sister and working two retail jobs in snowy, tiny Inkster, Michigan. Longing to escape the cycle of her family’s poverty, incarceration, and addiction, she joins the US Navy, determined to earn money to finish college and make it back to L.A. on her own terms.

    But soon after Queen completes her grueling training and boards a doomed destroyer, she finds herself faced with near-constant sexual harassment, demeaning labor assignments, and overt racism. Stuck on a ship with nowhere to hide, she looks to poetry, literature, and letters from home to get through the long days and maintain her dignity. She keeps her head down until the workplace hostility against women spills over into her dating life and threatens to derail everything she has worked for.

    In trying to break through the unspoken code of silence between sailors, Queen must decide where her loyalties lie: with the Navy or within herself. Unflinching and masterfully penned, this memoir questions the promises of service to reveal the true price of being a woman at sea.

  • Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama

    Alexis Okeowo

    $28.99

    From a New Yorker staff writer and PEN award winner, a blend of memoir, history, and reportage on one of the most complex and least understood states in America.

    “In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster….”

    Alexis Okeowo grew up in Montgomery―the former seat of the Confederacy―as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Here, she weaves her family’s story with Alabama’s, defying stereotypes about her endlessly complex, often-pigeonholed home state. She immerses us in a landscape dominated today not by cotton fields but by Amazon warehouses, encountering high-powered Christian business leaders lobbying for tribal sovereignty and small-town women coming out against conservative politics. Okeowo shows how people can love their home while still acknowledging its sins.

    In this perspective-shifting work that is both an intimate memoir and a journalistic triumph, Okeowo investigates her life, other Alabamians’ lives, and the state’s lesser-known histories to examine why Alabama has been the stage for the most extreme results of the American experiment.

  • Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems

    Carl Phillips

    $16.00

    An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips.

    Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one focuses on vulnerability: the usefulness of embracing it and of releasing ourselves from the need to understand our past. If we remember a thing, did it happen? If we believe it didn’t, does that make our belief true?

    In Scattered Snows, to the North, Phillips looks though the window of the past in order to understand the essential sameness of the human condition―“Tears / were tears,” mistakes were made and regretted or not regretted, and it mattered until it didn’t, the way people live until they don’t. And there was also joy. And beauty. “Yet the world’s still / so beautiful . . . Sometimes // it is . . .” And it was enough. And it still can be.

  • The Witches of El Paso: A Novel

    Luis Jaramillo

    Sold out

    A lawyer and her elderly great-aunt use their supernatural gifts to find a lost child in this “wild, wondrous novel about the magic that is singing all around us” (Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth)—in the vein of The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina and La Hacienda.

    If you call to the witches, they will come.

    1943, El Paso, Texas: teenager Nena spends her days caring for the small children of her older sisters and longing for a life of adventure. The premonitions and fainting spells she has endured since childhood are getting worse, and Nena worries she’ll end up like the scary old curandera down the street. Nena prays for help, and when the mysterious Sister Benedicta arrives late one night, Nena follows her across the borders of space and time. In colonial Mexico, Nena grows into her power, finding love and learning that magic always comes with a price.

    In the present day, Nena’s grandniece, Marta, balances a struggling legal aid practice with motherhood and the care of the now ninety-three-year-old Nena. When Marta agrees to help search for a daughter Nena left in the past, the two forge a fierce connection. Marta’s own supernatural powers emerge, awakening her to new possibilities that threaten the life she has constructed.

    “Sexy, smart, and soulful, Luis Jaramillo’s The Witches of El Paso pulls us across borders and time to get to the essence of what it means for families to survive this beautiful, fractured world” (Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk).

  • Sweet Saffron and Cardamom: Spiced Desserts from an Immigrant Kitchen

    Ashia Ismail-Singer

    $35.00

    We all need a little sweetness sprinkled with a touch of spice.

    Ashia Ismail-Singer, author of Ashia’s Table and Food for Sharing, is back with a collection of spice-infused desserts and baking from culinary traditions across the world, delivering 90 homemade delights to share. With her characteristic artistic flair, Ashia’s recipes are impossible to resist and guaranteed to impress, drawing inspiration from her Memon Indian heritage and immigrant upbringing that brought her family across continents.

    Dishing up sweet treats that zing with cardamon and perfume the air with orange blossom, this divine cookbook is guaranteed to take your baking to that next level with the greatest of ease. Western classics are reinvented with a spiced twist and sit alongside Ashia’s unique take on Eastern staples such as baklava, lassi and halva.

    There are quick and easy bakes for weeknight cravings, desserts to impress your dinner guests, and show-stopping cakes for the most memorable occasions. Try chai masala popsicles for a refreshing summer treat or pistachio and almond cake as a festive mid-winter indulgence.

  • People Like Us: A Novel

    Jason Mott

    $30.00

    The riveting new novel by the author of the 2021 National Book Award winner and bestseller Hell of a Book

    People Like Us is Jason Mott’s electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason’s life. And while rooted in reality, it explodes with dreamlike experiences that pull a reader in and don’t let go, from the ability to time travel to sightings of sea monsters and peacocks, and feelings of love and memory so real they hurt.

    In People Like Us, two Black writers are trying to find peace and belonging in a world that is riven with gun violence. One is on a global book tour after a big prize win; the other is set to give a speech at a school that has suffered a shooting. And as their two storylines merge, truths and antics abound in equal measure: characters drink booze out of an award trophy; menaces lurk in the shadows; tiny French cars putter around the countryside; handguns seem to hover in the air; and dreams endure against all odds.

    People Like Us is wickedly funny and achingly sad all at once. It is an utter triumph bursting with larger-than-life characters who deliver a very real take on our world. This book contains characters experiencing deep loss and longing; it also is buoyed by riotous humor and characters who share the deepest love. It is the newest creation of a writer whose work amazes, delivering something utterly new yet instantly recognizable as a Jason Mott novel. 

    Finishing the novel will leave you absolutely breathless and, at the same time, utterly filled with joy for life, changed forever by characters who are people like us.

  • Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Song in Poems

    m. mick powell

    $18.00

    A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving ripped-from-the-headlines pop culture herstories with the personal narratives of Whitney Houston, Aaliyah, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, and others, to interrogate celebrity, identity, sexuality, industry abuse, death, and the afterlives of stardom.

    “I made, of my bones, an earth for you: turned the oceans
    your favorite shade of light, that deepened, nearly bruised
    dusk. reflected in my palms, what I’ve made into water
    glows amethyst: when you drink from it, you are iridescent”
     
    In Dead Girl Cameo, m. mick powellclosely examines the experiences of Aaliyah Haughton, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Whitney Houston, and other notable superstars who died tragically too soon. How did these starlets challenge conventional representations of Black femininity and friendship, and forever transform the musical landscape? How were the artistries and addictions of these women of color impacted from surviving in the limelight and, often, in the very same industry as their abusers? How did the literal and metaphorical deaths of these Black women superstars establish legacies of Black queer femme existence and afterlife?
     
    In stunning imagery and sensual wordplay using ekphrasis, erasure, digital collage, archival research, and speculative nonfiction in verse, Dead Girl Cameo traverses the intimate realms of superstars to reconfigure Black girlhood, survivorhood, femme friendship, and queer fandom.

  • Summer of Our Discontent: The Age of Certainty and the Demise of Discourse

    Thomas Chatterton Williams

    $30.00

    An incisive, culturally observant analysis of the evolving mores, manners and taboos of social justice (“anti-racist”) orthodoxy, which has profoundly influenced how we think about diversity and freedom of expression, often with complex or paradoxical consequences.

    In this provocative book, Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the most revered and reviled social commentators of our time, paints a clear and detailed picture of the ideas and events that have paved the way for the dramatic paradigm shift in social justice that has taken place over the past few years. Taking aim at the ideology of critical race theory, the rise of an oppressive social media, the fall from Obama to Trump, and the twinned crises of COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd, Williams documents the extent to which this transition has altered media, artistic creativity, education, employment, policing, and, most profoundly, the ambient language and culture we use to make sense of our lives.

    Williams also decries how liberalism—the very foundation of an open and vibrant society—is in existential crisis, under assault from both the right and the left, especially in our predominantly networked, Internet-driven monoculture.

    Sure to be highly controversial, Summer of Our Discontent is a compelling look at our place in a radically changing world.

  • This Cursed House

    by Del Sandeen

    from $19.00

    In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They're under a curse, and they think she can break it.

    In the fall of 1962, twenty-seven-year-old Jemma Barker is desperate to escape her life in Chicago--and the spirits she has always been able to see. When she receives an unexpected job offer from the Duchon family in New Orleans, she accepts, thinking it is her chance to start over.

    But Jemma discovers that the Duchon family isn't what it seems. Light enough to pass as white, the Black family members look down on brown-skinned Jemma. Their tenuous hold on reality extends to all the members of their eccentric clan, from haughty grandmother Honorine to beautiful yet inscrutable cousin Fosette. And soon the shocking truth comes out: The Duchons are under a curse. And they think Jemma has the power to break it.

    As Jemma wrestles with the gift she's run from all her life, she unravels deeper and more disturbing secrets about the mysterious Duchons. Secrets that stretch back over a century. Secrets that bind her to their fate if she fails.

  • The Disturbing Profane: Hip Hop, Blackness, and the Sacred

    Joseph R Winters

    $25.95

    In The Disturbing Profane, Joseph R. Winters explores how hip hop's religiosity is found in qualities associated with the dark sacred. Rather than purity and wholeness, this expression of the sacred signifies death and pleasure, opacity and contamination, exorbitance and anguish. Winters brings religious studies, black studies, black feminist thought, and critical theory to bear on hip hop to trouble distinctions between the sacred and the profane. He shows how artists like Notorious B.I.G., Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar, Lupe Fiasco, and Nicki Manaj undermine stable meanings of the sacred to reveal listeners' investments in unpleasant realities. Hip hop opens its audience to a volatile notion of the sacred and the unruly qualities of blackness. Moreover, Winters demonstrates that hip hop's dark sacrality makes it inseparable from its expression of, participation in, and resistance to the antiblack and black gendered violence that organizes the social world.

  • Ship Shape (Cruise Life #3)

    Reese Eschmann

    Sold out

    With all the aspirational elements of Eloise and the heart and emotional intelligence of Ways to Make Sunshine, Cruise Life by Reese Eschmann is sure to set sail for success!

    All aboard!

    Caitlin always has the best time with her dad and big brother, Dylan, on The Wandering Princess, the fanciest, most fun, family-friendly cruise ship, where her dad has a job as the ship's doctor. And this cruise is going to be easy! The passengers are small groups of scrapbookers, family reunion-ers, and magic enthusiasts. Plus Caitlin is now a cruise expert!

    What she and Dylan aren’t counting on is a staffing shortage that suddenly finds Caitlin front and center as the substitute magician’s apprentice in the evening shows and Dylan racing around and attending to some increasingly demanding fellow passengers.

    Can Caitlin turn the tides and save this cruise?

  • Bones at the Crossroads (Blood at the Root)

    LaDarrion Williams

    $20.99

    Read the sequel to the explosive, instant New York Times bestseller fantasy debut that People Magazine calls “unforgettable.” A Black teenager with magical powers returns to Caiman University only to find new dangers and new secrets.

    It's Homecoming season at Caiman University, and all 17-year-old Malik Baron wants to do is be a regular college student…or as regular as he can get at a magical HBCU for young, Black Conjurers. He’s ready to go to parties, hang out with his new friends, choose a major, and talk to girls. Instead, he's reeling from a summer of revelations, heartbreak and betrayal, and still uncovering the truth about his powers and his legacy.

    The family he only just discovered is already fractured beyond repair, and a new relative who shows up on his doorstep brings even more questions. Then there’s the mother he risked everything to find, who might be the biggest threat to the life he's trying to build. To protect his new community, Malik joins an elite secret society with roots in ancient magic.

    His journey takes him even deeper into his own heritage and the history of the magical world, while bringing him closer to a classmate whose friendship might mean something more, if Malik is ready to let her in. But how can he use powers he can’t even control to defend a world he’s not sure will ever fully accept him? And as the pressure and danger builds, will he be able to confront the deepening cracks within the magical society, and those building within himself?

  • Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes: A Mystery

    Sandra Jackson-Opoku

    $28.00

    A sparkling debut mystery set on the south side of Chicago, featuring the quick-witted, unforgettable Savvy Summers, proprietor of a soul food café.

    When Savvy Summers first opened Essie's soul food café, she never expected her customer-favorite sweet potato pie to become the center of a murder investigation. But when Grandy Jaspers, the 75-year-old neighborhood womanizer, drops dead at table two, she suddenly has more to worry about than just maintaining Essie's reputation for the finest soul food in the Chicagoland area.

    Even as the police deem Grandy’s death an accident, Savvy quickly finds herself―and her beloved café―in the middle of an entire city’s worth of bad press. Desperate to clear her name and keep her business afloat, Savvy and her snooping assistant manager, Penny Lopés, take it upon themselves to find who really killed Grandy.

    But with a slimy investor harassing her to sell her name and business, customers avoiding her sweet potato pie like the plague, and her police sergeant ex-husband suddenly back in the picture, will Savvy be able to clear the café’s name and solve Grandy’s murder before it all falls apart?

    After all, while Savvy always said her sweet potato pie was to die for, she never meant literally.

  • Blood Slaves (The Blood Saga)

    Markus Redmond

    $28.00

    For readers of Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, this ingenious reimagining of the vampire origin story set during the early days of American slavery blends alternate history with supernatural horror, as the last surviving member of an ancient African vampire tribe meets a slave desperate for freedom, and together, they lead an army of enslaved people in a cinematically blood-soaked battle for freedom and revenge.

    What if nobody ever freed the slaves…because they freed themselves – 150 years before the Civil War?

    In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation.

    Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire tribe rendered nearly extinct by plague. Rafazi has roamed the world for centuries with an undying desire to replenish the power that once defined his heritage. In Willie, Rafazi has found his first biddable subject to be turned and to help in a hungry revolt. And Willie desires nothing more than to free his people from malicious bondage. Whatever it takes.

    One by one, as an army of blood slaves thirsting for revenge is gathered, the headstrong Gertie fears that no good can come from the vampiric legacy that courses through Rafazi’s veins. Willie knows that only evil can fight evil. And when the woman he loves stands between the reemergence of the Ramanga and the justified slaughter of the oppressors, Willie must make an irreversible decision. Only one thing is certain: on the Barrow plantation, and beyond, blood will spill.

    Part historical drama, part supernatural horror, and part alternate history, Blood Slaves is an ingenuous and defiant new creation myth of the vampire, one rooted in both justice and the sometimes-violent means necessary to achieve it.

  • Summer's Echo

    Robbi Renee

    $18.95

    One summer bound them. One secret divided them. One reunion could change everything.

    As teenagers, Summer Knight and Echo Abara spent one unforgettable summer as camp counselors. Beneath sun-soaked days and starry nights, their bond deepened from easy friendship into something more—an unspoken love neither dared confess. Life pulled them in different directions, yet their souls remained tethered by time, distance, and a shared secret.

    Neither has forgotten their connection—nor the secret they swore to keep. When a reunion brings them back together, their lives collide once more, stirring long-buried emotions and unanswered questions. Summer and Echo must confront not only their unvoiced feelings but also the burden of their shared secret—one that could shatter everything they believed about their friendship and the summer that shaped them.

    Will they find the courage to embrace what's always been between them? Or will the truth they've guarded destroy their second chance?

  • Birth of a Dynasty: An Epic Fantasy Novel of Vengeance, Power, and Prophecy in a Land of Giants and Dark Magic Based on West African Legends―Perfect for Summer Reading

    Chinaza Bado

    $30.00

    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.

  • Lonely Crowds : A Novel

    Stephanie Wambugu

    Sold out

    Luster meets The Idiot in this riveting debut novel about a volatile friendship between two outsiders who escape their bleak childhoods and enter the glamorous early '90s art world in New York City, where only one of them can make it.

    Ruth, an only child of recent immigrants to New England, lives in an emotionally cold home and attends the local Catholic girl’s school on a scholarship. Maria, a beautiful orphan whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide and is taken care of by an ill, unloving aunt, is one of the only other students attending the school on a scholarship. Ruth is drawn forcefully into Maria’s orbit, and they fall into an easy, yet intense, friendship. Her devotion to her charming and bright new friend opens up her previously sheltered world. 
     
    While Maria, charismatic and aware of her ability to influence others, eases into her full self, embracing her sexuality and her desire to be an artist, Ruth is mostly content to follow her around: to college and then into the early-nineties art world of New York City. There, ambition and competition threaten to rupture their friendship, while strong and unspoken forces pull them together over the years. Whereas Maria finds early success in New York City as an artist, Ruth stumbles along the fringes of the art world, pulled toward a quieter life of work and marriage. As their lives converge and diverge, they meet in one final and fateful confrontation.
     
    Ruth and Maria's decades-long friendship interrogates the nature of intimacy, desire, class and time. What does it mean to be an artist and to be true to oneself? What does it mean to give up on an obsession? Marking the arrival of a sensational new literary talent, Lonely Crowds challenges us to reckon honestly with our own ambitions and the lives we hope to lead.

  • The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic

    Lindsey Stewart

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    The Conjuring of America tells the epic story of conjure women, who, through a mix of spiritual beliefs, herbal rituals, and therapeutic remedies gave rise to the rich tapestry of American culture we see today. Feminist philosopher, Lindsey Stewart, tells the stories of Negro Mammies of slavery; the Voodoo Queens and Blues Women of Reconstruction; and the Granny Midwives and textile weavers of the Jim Crow era. These women, in secrecy and subterfuge, courageously and devotedly continued their practices and worship for centuries and passed down their traditions. 
     
    Emerging first in the American South during slavery, these women were thrust into the heart of national conflicts over generations of African American life. They combined ancestral magic and hyperlocal resources to respond to Black struggles in real time, forging a secret well of health and power hidden to their oppressors. As a result, conjure informs our lives in ways remarkable and ordinary—from traditional medicines that informed the creation of Vicks VapoRub and the rise of Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix, to the original magic of Disney’s The Little Mermaid (2023), and the true origins of the all-American classic blue jean.
     
    From the moment enslaved Africans first arrived on these shores, conjure was heavily regulated and even outlawed. Now, Stewart uncovers new contours of American history, sourcing letters from the enslaved, dispatches from the lore of Oshun and other African mystics. The Conjuring of America is a love letter to the real magic Black women used, their magic Black women, their herbs, food, textiles, song, and dance, used to sow rebellion, freedom, and hope.

  • A Mastery of Monsters

    Liselle Sambury

    $24.99

    Ninth House meets Legendborn in this thrilling first book in a dark academia fantasy series about a teen who’s willing to do anything to find her brother—even infiltrate a secret society full of monsters.

    When August’s brother disappears before his sophomore semester, everyone thinks the stress of college got to him. But August knows her brother would never have left her voluntarily, especially not after their mother so recently went missing.

    The only clue he left behind was a note telling her to stay safe and protect their remaining family. And after August is attacked by a ten-foot-tall creature with fur and claws, she realizes that her brother might be in more danger than she could have imagined.

    Unfortunately for her, the only person with a connection to the mysterious creature is the bookish Virgil Hawthorne…and he knows about them because he is one. If he doesn’t find a partner to help control his true nature, he’ll lose his humanity and become a mindless beast—exactly what the secret society he’s grown up in would love to put down.

    Virgil makes a proposition: August will join his society and partner with him, and in return, he’ll help her find her brother. And so August is plunged into a deadly competition to win one of the few coveted candidate spots, all while trying to accept a frightening reality: that monsters are real, and she has to learn to master them if she’s to have any hope of saving her brother.

  • I'll Follow You: A Novel

    Charlene Wang

    $16.99

    “Reading this made me want to text my best friend. And then block her. And then text her again. It was a wild ride!” ―Mindy Kaling

    For two best friends desperate to escape their dead-end town, a viral online persona becomes a dangerous game of control in a twisting psychological thriller about class, power, and identity.

    Faith and her charismatic best friend, Kayla, always vowed to escape their trailer park together. After their social media persona, Hannah Primrose, goes viral, their fates seem more entwined than ever. But when Faith is accepted into prestigious Harkness College, she must decide whether to keep her promise to Kayla or learn to tell her own story.

    By the time Faith arrives on campus, Kayla is no longer speaking with her. Struggling to fit in with her wealthy classmates, Faith reinvents herself, drawing the attention of her enigmatic art history professor. Then Kayla shows up outside her dormitory one night. I need to stay with you.

    Having Kayla on campus is thrilling―and dangerous. Posing as a student, Kayla charms everyone she encounters, and soon enough they’re posting together again. Hannah Primrose, after all, is perfect for a place like Harkness. But as Faith risks her future for the persona she helped create, she begins to realize that Kayla is playing a deadly game…and it may be too late to regain control of the narrative.

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