Take back your sleep during perimenopause, menopause, and beyond with this evidence-based guide from a co-founder of Canada’s premier clinic for women’s health—founded by women, for women.

Is it any wonder you can’t sleep? You’re juggling work, family, aging parents, endless responsibilities, and the invisible mental load so many women carry. Then midlife hits, and sleep—the very thing you need most—starts to unravel. You wake up overheated, anxious, aching, or restless, staring at the clock at 3 a.m., wondering what happened to the woman who used to sleep just fine. If this sounds familiar, you are not imagining it, and you are not alone.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. This groundbreaking guide from respirologist and sleep medicine physician Dr. Woganee Filate cuts through generic sleep advice to address what’s really happening in your body during perimenopause and menopause. You’ll discover why conventional sleep wisdom falls short for women in midlife, and learn practical, science-backed strategies designed specifically for your changing hormones and life stage. Inside, you’ll find:

* Evidence-based techniques to manage night sweats and hot flashes
* Valuable analysis of overlooked sleep disorders that commonly emerge in midlife
* Tools to quiet racing thoughts and ease the mental load keeping you awake
* Sleep routines that fit your demanding schedule
* Real solutions for the unique challenges facing midlife women

Written by an expert who understands the intersection of women’s health, hormones, and sleep science, this isn’t just another sleep book—it’s your personalized audit for reclaiming the restorative rest you deserve. Your best years are ahead of you. And they start with a good night’s sleep.

Storm is Earth’s protector in the War Above All!

The most dangerous conflict in existence thunders louder and closer. As the cosmos braces for annihilation, Ororo — for now unaware of the coming threat — turns her gaze inward…to her home. Earth’s Mightiest Mutant becomes the planet’s protector once more as a daring new chapter of her life begins. As it does so, Storm shares a Japanese tea ceremony with an enemy and visits France for a masquerade with monsters. However, things take a devastating turn in a gut-wrenching funeral. And with Death stalking the shadows and an interdimensional invasion drawing ever closer, Storm and the Scarlet Witch face impossible choices. Will their friendship stand the test of imminent destruction, murder and bloodshed? Plus: the long-awaited, first-ever comic-book appearance of the Marvel-616 version of Galacta!

COLLECTING: Storm: Earth's Mightiest Mutant (2026) #1-5

With those piercing eyes and flicks of the tail, house cats observe domesticity poetically, and with sass

“Have you ever given birth before?”
“Me..? No, not yet.”
“When it happened to me for the first time, it wasn't just kittens that I birthed, but also me as a mother. So now, as I'm raising them, I am also raising myself as a mother… And it ain’t no joke! So, no! I don't really have the luxury to think about things like whether my children are 'cute’ or not.”

These are the simple musings of a house cat, sprawled on a veranda in the sun, while birds flit and flutter by, as she nurses her most recent litter and chats with a curious yearling. But these are also the musings of Yamada Murasaki.

Sassy Cats was the pioneering manga artist’s bold return to comics after a yearslong hiatus, during which time she gave birth to two girls. Engaging sensitively and poetically with domesticity, motherhood, and gender relations, Sassy Cats is the work of a master cartoonist, evident in the silky lines of these felines and the textural play at work on the page.
Originally serialized in the legendary alternative magazine Garo between 1979 and 1980, Sassy Cats is translated by Ryan Holmberg and includes an essay by the cartoonist's daughter Yamada Yu about her mom, cats, and growing up with a cartoonist.

The essential menopause book every woman deserves—Oprah Daily’s science-backed, stigma-busting guide for navigating this full-body, full-brain, full-life transition.

From the editors of Oprah Daily and Oprah Winfrey comes the essential guide to menopause—combining real talk, real science, and real strategies for thriving through this transformative stage of life. Oprah invites women to see menopause not as an ending—but as a renaissance.

Drawing on insights from experts like Dr. Kelly Casperson, Tamsen Fadal, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, and Dr. Sharon Malone, this essential and beautifully designed guide demystifies perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause with honesty, humor, and empathy. Readers will come away with a better understanding of hormonal changes, how to prepare for doctor visits, and evaluate symptom-management options.

In these pages, you’ll discover:

* Practical strategies for navigating menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, brain fog, fatigue, sleep disruption, and mood changes

* A compassionate, clear-eyed look at perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause—what’s happening in your body, what’s normal, and what may deserve closer attention

* Advice from doctors and women’s health experts, including how to advocate for yourself while receiving health care
* Inspiration for thriving in midlife by deepening joy, intimacy, and purpose during the menopause years and beyond
* Insights from notable women including Drew Barrymore, Halle Berry, Naomi Watts, and Oprah herself

Through personal stories, expert interviews, and myth-busting insights, this book provides a supportive, easy-to-follow guide for women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, those stepping into perimenopause, and anyone looking for a trusted, expert-informed introduction to this midlife transition.

Daily healing practices for Black Americans combating systemic racism—transform exhaustion into renewal, resistance, and lasting joy!

Black Americans are exhausted. The relentless burden of navigating racism—at work, in healthcare, in daily life—takes a devastating toll. You're tired of being strong, tired of code-switching, tired of carrying emotional weight that isn't yours to bear. The question isn't whether Black fatigue is real. The question is: what do you do about it?

This book provides the answer. Mary-Frances Winters and Mareisha N. Winters Reese offer over fifty culturally grounded practices designed specifically for Black healing. It's a practical roadmap covering body, mind, and spirit renewal:

* Reclaim boundaries without guilt
* Build your healing village
* Navigate toxic workplaces while protecting your peace
* Transform pain into powerful action

This guide includes daily breathwork, somatic practices for release, boundary-setting frameworks, relationship mapping tools, workplace microaggression trackers, and thirty-day joy challenges. Each practice is rooted in Black cultural traditions and designed to fit into your real life. Whether you need immediate relief or long-term transformation, this book meets you where you are.

Your healing begins here.

The first major work of Yoruba mythology, retelling hundreds of traditional tales of the Orisa, Yoruba Heroes, and Ijapa from West Africa, Cuba, and Brazil.

Yoruba mythology is sacred to the religion and culture of the Yoruba people. A primarily oral tradition, its stories revolve around Olodumare, the Supreme Being, and a vast number of divinities or orisa, who govern all aspects of human life and nature.

Yoruba Mythology is, to date, the most comprehensive published collection of more than 300 myths of this ancient, profound, and beautiful storytelling tradition. Authors Ayodeji Ogunnaike and Oludamini Ogunnaike are uniquely qualified to impart these stories, having spent decades learning, collecting, and studying them. Many are remembered from their own childhood, while many more are the result of yearslong research and encounters with practitioners and elders in and from Nigeria, Cuba, and Brazil.

Alongside the myths of the orisa, the Ogunnaikes also include dozens of mythos of more cultural significant, such as the founding of Yoruba kingdoms, stories of heroes and other powerful beings, and classic fables. The final section is dedicated to the beloved Ijapa, the Yoruba trickster tortoise whose cunning and greed always land him trouble, but whose stories impart valuable lessons about honesty, perseverance, and character.

The book is made complete with stunning art by Data Oruwari, whose work brings the myths and characters to life in a manner that evokes traditional depictions of the orisa in West Africa and the diaspora.

A gift to both those familiar with Yoruba culture and religion and those who are encountering them for the first time, Yoruba Mythology is an important and long-awaited contribution to the mythological canon.

Percival Everett meets Sinners in this gripping, haunting novel of history, rebellion, and the unpredictable nature of truth

When antiquarian Malcolm Washington is sent to a decaying plantation home on Johns Island, South Carolina, his mission is simple: authenticate and acquire a shackle rumored to have been used on Denmark Vesey, the legendary leader of a thwarted slave rebellion. But the task proves far more complicated than Malcolm could have imagined. The shackle’s owner, the enigmatic Mrs. Manigault—the last white woman on the island—is having second thoughts about selling her inheritance.

What begins as a professional assessment quickly spirals into a tense battle of wits, as Mrs. Manigault insists on telling the “story” behind the shackle, one she was told as a child, which grows more fantastical at every turn. Each part of the tale is both a weapon and a test, crafted to manipulate, conceal, and ultimately reveal the buried truths of the past. Trapped between Mrs. Manigault’s manipulative storytelling and his own complicated motivations, Malcolm must come face-to-face with his own past.

Sweeping, suspenseful, and acidly funny, The Inheritance blends contemporary Southern Gothic and literary mystery to delve into the heart of America’s unresolved past, where the search for the truth uncovers secrets both liberating and terrifying.

Featuring art by some of the most important and well-collected Black artists whose work is a part of the vast and storied collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) 2027 Wall Calendar features twelve works from the museum’s collection. NMAAHC is part of the Smithsonian Institution, and the museum holds over 40,000 objects in its collection related to subjects such as community, family, the visual and performing arts, religion, civil rights, slavery, and segregation.
 

* The perfect gift for history buffs and African American culture mavens alike!
* Printed on high-quality FSC-certified paper
* Includes all major and significant holidays and moon phases
* Carefully curated images throughout
* Give as a gift for any occasion
* Perfect to hang in the home or office
* Generous grids for adding appointments and reminders
* Opens to 12 inches x 24 inches

A young Black man feels called irresistably to farmland he's never seen, where a fateful feud simmers between a pastor and his protégé. A thunderous instant classic, this novel reimagines David and Goliath as the story of one unforgettable family, living in the era of the Great Migration and in the heart of the American South.

"PLEASE READ THIS MASTERPIECE." —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

In 1910, at the tender age of fourteen, David Jeremiah Lightfoot inherits his father’s farm in Mississippi: a barren, cursed plot of land once known as Goliath. David has never lived outside Chicago, but he is determined to claim and farm the land more effectively than his father ever could. Once there, David confronts both literal and figurative giants. And soon a high-stakes struggle with the burden of his ancestors’ legacy will intertwine his fate with that of his family, the land, and the surrounding community.

Narrating this saga is David’s youngest son, Little Bit, a uniquely sensitive storyteller with immense love for his parents, his grandfather Big Man, his uncle Jonathan, his cousin, and his brothers and sister. Little Bit charts the dramatic twists and turns of his father's rise to a precarious pinnacle of wealth and power, studded as it was with quiet moments of sweetness, joy, and transcendent beauty.

At once a profound, heartfelt story about one tight-knit family and an elegant, propulsive tragedy, Goliath weaves together themes of destiny and redemption. It is a revelatory meditation on the deep, troubled ties between Black Americans and the very ground on which past generations toiled and lived.

A gutting and powerful new memoir from a master of the form, Good, God probes Laymon's relationships with three generations of women in his life—his grandmother, his former partner, and his unborn daughter.

When Kiese Laymon’s former partner invites him to help her create a child in the age of Trump, Laymon must reckon with how a romanticization of good, God, Mississippi, and most importantly, his grandmother, have telegraphed the kind of friend, father, and artist he can be. If Laymon's grandmother is right when she says, "God been gone," how does one actually make anything good in America? Laymon continues his courageous, wide-open approach to memoir with Good, God, a literary attempt at heeding his grandmother’s plea to revise the Ten Commandments, while making more intentional the paradoxical intimacy and brutality inherent between readers and writers of contemporary memoir.

Spanning from childhood to the present, set against the last fifty years of specific American hospitality, when "much of the nation said we were good for nothing, godless people who should be happy to be invited into white American rooms, and white American myths we actually made possible,” Laymon refuses to cede the shape or sound of those rooms to the worst of himself, and the worst of the nation. Good, God is a resonant plea for more good, more god, and most importantly, more holy creative space where we might ruggedly remake what we have collectively made so wrong.

Delivered through several powerful episodes—a memorable childhood meeting with a mysterious stranger who irritates his grandmother, a visit to his grandmother's house by a kind Northern white family who first meets his grandmother in his books, the process of trying to create a child with his good friend as he is treated for cancer—Good, God invites us into the intentionally forgotten rooms and spaces of experience where good, God, and American grandmothers are made holy.

A whirling exploration of how Megan Thee Stallion inspires Black women and femmes like the late Monica Roberts, framed by the storm-making work of both.

While rap megastar Megan Thee Stallion needs no introduction, fewer will be familiar with Monica Roberts, a Houston journalist, community historian, and trans activist with the popular blog TransGriot. Though the two women never met, their work has inspired Black LGBTQ+ activists to love, resist violence, speak truth to power, and dance like life depends on it. With a written energy that’s infectious, Omise’eke Tinsley highlights just how intertwined these artists are.

An incisive look at the impactful sisterhood between Black women and femmes, Bringing Wreck is a book of empowerment. From Megan’s first performance on Saturday Night Live calling to “Protect Black Women,” to Roberts’s use of Hurricane Hanna to poke fun at Donald Trump’s border wall, Tinsley digs into the world-changing power of disruption and joyful expression in the face of racial injustice, anti-trans and queer violence, mental health crises, and community disparities. Reveling in both women’s love of Houston, calling-out of gendered violence, penchant for political humor, and staunch mental health advocacy, Bringing Wreck is an ode to the Bayou City, Black music, and the difference that one woman’s voice can make when we listen carefully.

An illuminating portrait of five Black woman artists and the New York nightclub that helped inspire the civil rights movement.

Before they became household names, Maya Angelou, Lorraine Hansberry, Abbey Lincoln, Miriam Makeba, and Nina Simone needed a place to practice and perform. That place was the Village Gate, a New York City nightclub that became a downtown hotspot for Black art, culture, music, and politics. Freedom’s Gate depicts the deepening political convictions and groundbreaking artistry of women of the Gate as they developed as entertainers, activists, and intellectuals in the spotlight of art and revolution. From Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun to Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam” and Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, Soyica Diggs Colbert brings to life the culture and performances that were the soundtrack to Black freedom struggles in the 1950s and early 1960s. With supporting roles from stars and activists such as Harry Belafonte, Stokely Carmichael, and Sidney Poitier, Freedom’s Gate is a vibrant history of a little-known chapter of the civil rights movement that gave voice and soul to the call for liberation.

20 photographs

A passionate and illuminating account of soul, the hard-won wisdom shepherded by Black people throughout generations

How did enslaved Africans turn America’s infamous failure into the greatest moral occasion of modern Western life? In this book, Christopher Freeburg answers that question with one word: soul. It was soul, Freeburg believes, which drove Black individuals and communities, grappling with horrific strife, to reimagine American life and equality in earnest.

Black cultural life contains a central and significant theme―a soul, or form of life―expressed in a variety of musical, religious, and political forms. Through the work and words of figures ranging from the poet Phillis Wheatley to President Barack Obama and musician Nina Simone to disco owner Jewel Thais-Williams, Freeburg shows how Black communities leaned time and again on soul and its four pillars: resonance, revelation, resilience, and transcendence. It is soul, what Freeburg calls a beautiful transaction between individual and community across time and place, that has allowed Black people over generations to transform feelings of defeat and alienation into moral courage and shared belonging.

The first biography of a controversial, iconoclastic architect of Black Studies, from a leading scholar of the Black intellectual tradition

In the 1960s and 1970s, Harold Cruse (1916–2005) was one of the most prominent Black intellectuals in the world, mentioned in the same breath as James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, and Malcolm X. Today, Cruse is nearly forgotten. In this biography, Vincent W. Lloyd reclaims the story of an influential contrarian, a man who was beloved, feared, hated, reviled, praised.

Cruse grew up poor in Virginia and Harlem, worked as a critic and organizer, and then spent years making his living through manual labor while writing The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967). The book electrified Black America, and the activist who never finished high school became a tenured college professor, a founder of the field of Black Studies, and a mentor to countless student activists. By the 1980s, however, Cruse’s distaste for integration, liberal pluralism, and multiculturalism meant that his influential work was fading from view.

Drawing on Cruse’s letters and unpublished writings, along with scores of interviews, Lloyd offers a fast-paced narrative of an extraordinary life―and a new perspective on Black justice struggles. Ultimately, this is the story of a singular man: passionate, brilliant, strange, and visionary.

A call to courage and connection from prize-winning poet and champion for the arts and humanities Elizabeth Alexander.

“We send signals across vast distances, hoping to connect.” In luminous prose, Elizabeth Alexander embraces that hope, offering resources―life wisdom, historical perspective, poetry, and art―to embolden us to “reach beyond ourselves.” Her close readings of visionary poets, interwoven with extraordinary visual art, reveal how poetry and art can sustain us. Her stories of connection―as a daughter, wife, widow, and mother; as an aspiring dancer; on the dais at President Obama’s inauguration; in the hospital with her college-age son―deeply move us. She shines a light on our nation’s painful history of inequity, recounting in her Class Day speech to Yale students the thwarted dream destroyed in 1831 of a Black college in New Haven; she calls for a reckoning of centuries of injustice in historical memory and memorializing. She asks, What will we each do to make the dream of freedom, for everyone, real? Every page conveys her hope that we recognize the abundant resources we carry within: language, history, community, family, our bodies, our stories, love itself. Signals Across Vast Distances empowers us―in Alexander’s closing words―to lead with love.

12 color illustrations

An exploration of sisterhood, creativity, and community inspired by the artist Alma Thomas’s life and work, from the award-winning poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs
 
Alma Thomas (1891–1978) was an influential figure in twentieth-century modern art, best known for her bright, mosaiclike abstract paintings. Although some critics have seen Thomas’s emphasis on beauty, color, and abstract art as a way to divorce her work from her life as a Black woman, Alexis Pauline Gumbs reveals how Thomas’s art was, in fact, deeply rooted in the Black community in which she lived. Black, in other words, was one of Thomas’s primary colors.
 
Gumbs sheds light on Thomas’s experience as a junior high school teacher in the still-segregated schools of Washington, D.C., where Thomas—as educator, mentor, and advocate—established community art programs for Black schoolchildren and galleries to showcase Black artists’ work. In this volume of poems and prose, Gumbs becomes a student of Thomas, allowing the wonder in Thomas’s work to open her to wonder about her own creativity, sistering, daughtering, and practice of communal transformation.

A kaleidoscopic history of the Studio Museum in Harlem told through oral histories, essays, and a trove of archival imagery

Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, community activists, and philanthropists, the Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in promoting the work of artists of African descent. The Museum has a unique history but until now, there has not been a publication that positions its founding and tells its story.

Bringing together oral histories from the Museum’s founding figures; essays by leading scholars, curators, and artists; and a trove of archival material, this dynamic volume offers the first comprehensive history of the Studio Museum. In-depth essays anchor thematic sections examining the Museum’s founding, its collecting practices and exhibitions, and community engagement. Shorter texts and monologues drawn from interviews with foundational figures immerse the reader in specific events, exhibitions, and moments in the landmark institution’s history. At the book’s center is an expansive visual archive offering a timeline in ephemera and photographs, many of them published here for the first time. This richly illustrated volume will serve as the definitive resource on the history and legacy of the place “Where Black Art Lives.”

Distributed for the Studio Museum in Harlem

Mischievous brothers Link and Hud are back for a Halloween-themed entry in the hilarious series from real-life brothers Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey.

It’s October. Halloween is almost here, and brothers Lincoln and Hudson Dupré are excited about their first time trick-or-treating without their parents. But odd and spooky things start happening on their cul-de-sac―things they get blamed for. Link and Hud must face down zombies, a suspected werewolf, and a (definitely) haunted house to find the real culprit and save Halloween.

The latest entry in the hybrid graphic novel series Book Riot says is “full of Black boy joy, brother love, and silliness” brings more chaos, more laughs, and more adventures as Link and Hud use their imagination to get in (and out) of all kinds of trouble. Drawn from the imaginations and experiences of brothers and cocreators Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey, Link + Hud illuminates a world of adventure made possible with a partner in crime by your side.

illustrations throughout

Long before racial integration became the law of the land, Broadway showed Americans what it could look and sound like.

Shaped by Black musical traditions, European theatrical forms, and immigrant cultures, the Broadway musical emerged in the twentieth century as a visceral embodiment of the American melting pot. In Broadway in Black and White, conductor and historian John Mauceri―together with linguist and cultural commentator John H. McWhorter―presents a dazzling history of collaboration between Black and white artists in the American musical theater.

Moving from ragtime and operetta through Show Boat and Shuffle Along to The Lion King, Ragtime, and Hamilton, Mauceri reveals how Broadway’s social and political influence extends far beyond artistic achievements and commercial successes. Incisive, deeply personal interludes by McWhorter offer a parallel perspective on the American musical as a testament to cultural exchange.

Mauceri and McWhorter illustrate that the Broadway musical both reflected and accelerated the nation’s continued strides toward racial equality. Politically active works confronted prejudice and invited audiences to imagine a more just society. Equally potent was the visible fact of Black and white artists writing, creating, and performing together, when segregation still shaped much of American life.

Together, Mauceri and McWhorter celebrate the American musical as an art form belonging to all of us. Though this history contains prejudice, exclusion, compromise, and contradiction, it is also a history of extraordinary progress. Broadway in Black and White lovingly presents Broadway as a metaphor for America in all its complexity―fragmented and imperfect, yet eminently capable of becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

30 photos

A groundbreaking analysis of Frederick Douglass as constitutional theorist, showing how his vision, which prefigured today’s originalism, melded history and natural rights to address the evil of slavery.

In his celebrated address “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass denounced America’s hypocritical celebration of freedom. But he did not blame the nation’s founding document for enabling the evil of slavery. Rather, he proclaimed that “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document.”

This was no mere rhetorical flourish. Examining Douglass not just as an activist but as a legal and political theorist, Until the Last Yoke Is Broken reveals that his abolitionism was guided by rigorous constitutional interpretation. Reconstructing Douglass’s method from his speeches and writings, Bradley Rebeiro shows that his approach both anticipated and challenged aspects of contemporary originalism. Like today’s originalists, Douglass saw historical meaning as central to constitutional analysis. But unlike today’s originalism, Douglass’s goes beyond simply asking how the Constitution was understood at its ratification. Instead, Douglass insisted that whenever a constitutional provision is ambiguous, the interpreter must adopt whatever meaning best agrees with the natural rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence.

Rebeiro also shows how Douglass balanced this constitutional vision with pragmatism during Reconstruction. When political tensions pitted the fate of black suffrage against women’s suffrage, Douglass set aside the theoretically pure for the politically possible; as soon as black suffrage was secured, he returned to advocating for universal voting rights. “It was mine to stand for the freedom of people of all colors,” Douglass wrote near the end of his life, “until in our land the last yoke was broken and the last bondsman was set free.”

The definitive insiders' look at the Jacksons' lives and careers, celebrating 50 years of one of history's most remarkable acts of all time.

The official volume dedicated to the Royal Family of Pop, The Jacksons: Legacy offers unparalleled access to the legend that is the Jacksons. Four specially commissioned chapters deftly weave twelve days of exclusive interviews with the brothers and contributions from key players throughout their careers.

The story takes root at 2300 Jackson Street in Gary, Indiana, tracing the boys' journey from early childhood to their transformative tenure at Motown as the Jackson 5. This account maneuvers through their radical move to Epic as The Jacksons, the blossoming of their solo careers, the dizzying successes of the Victory tour, and their legacy as it stands today.

Through unprecedented access to the family archives and the personal collections of Jackie, Marlon, and Tito Jackson, the book offers an exhaustive array of never-before-seen imagery, rarities, and personal artifacts. Readers are invited to explore intensely personal family snapshots, shots of the first guitars the brothers ever held, and photographer Harrison Funk’s exclusive coverage of their professional lives. The collection also captures the singular energy of Michael Jackson on tour during the releases of Off the Wall (1979) and the 1982 phenomenon, Thriller―the bestselling album of all time. More than anything, it underscores the unprecedented cultural reach of the family through vintage magazine spreads and eclectic memorabilia, including official merchandise and even original Jacksons-branded cereal boxes complete with their 7" record premiums.

Originally published to commemorate their 50th anniversary, The Jacksons: Legacy remains the definitive behind-the-scenes record of one of the greatest acts of all time.

1,000 color illustrations

An innovative work that explores the relationship between the Black church, the Hammond organ, and the musicians that bring it to life.

The Hammond organ has long distinguished the Black church. Masters of the instrument, often Blackqueer men, invented and advanced gospel music, pioneered new modes of worship, and helped define Black life in the twentieth century. But when AIDS crisis struck, churches vociferously rejected all forms of queerness, even as musicians grew ill and hushed rumors spread. Drawing on years of experience as a preacher, choir director, and organist, award-winning visual artist and scholar Ashon Crawley combines personal history and cultural analysis to tell an urgent story about how AIDS fundamentally changed gospel music and the sound of the church. Profiling foundational figures in the church and Black life, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Rev. Clarence Cobbs of Chicago’s First Church of Deliverance, as well as the inventor of the organ, Laurens Hammond, Crawley’s lyrical work offers a captivating new portrait of the Black church as a site of refuge and rejection for Blackqueer genius.

69 illustrations

How black gospel music crossed over, reshaped American popular music, and transformed the culture at large.

Gospel music is the soundtrack of black Christian history, a soulful expression of faith, endurance, and hope. From the mid-twentieth-century Golden Age of gospel―when artists like Mahalia Jackson and Clara Ward helped make church music a national force―to today, gospel has evolved from images of energetic choirs belting and clapping in rhythm into a sound as innovative and pervasive as chart-topping pop.

Ethnomusicologist, minister, and gospel singer Charrise Barron calls 1993 to 2013 the Platinum Age of Gospel, when new artists and industry executives pushed gospel beyond the church and into a commercial, show-driven, crossover era. While traditional and early contemporary gospel arose from church life, Platinum Age gospel often emerged from outside it, stretching the boundaries of worship and religiosity and helping to reshape black churches―especially megachurches―and what it means to be a black Christian.

Crossover music and Christian entertainment transformed gospel and amplified shifts in black Pentecostalism. Gospel came to encompass far more sounds than most people imagine―from the diverse and collaborative worship of Israel Houghton to the “sexy for Jesus” flare of Mary Mary; from Fred Hammond and CeCe Winans’s soaring praise to Kirk Franklin’s hip hop and R&B fusions and Kim Burrell’s velvety rasp and runs. Bridging Christian and secular audiences, these pioneers and their producers redrew the boundaries of the genre. The Platinum Age of Gospel calls readers to reckon with what changed―and to examine and preserve gospel's soul.

A beautifully written and often speculative story collection infused with Caribbean and African myths and cultures, exploring love, betrayal, motherhood, death, and home.

GROUNDED IN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND INFUSED WITH TRADITIONS of Africa and the Caribbean, A Good Haunting: Stories spins myth, magic, and realism into heartrending tales of characters seeking love and connection. Death is the primary antagonist in each of these stories, sometimes appearing as death of self, other times as death of a loved one, and often as both.

In the title story, “A Good Haunting,” a widower in the midst of an unorthodox death ritual uses humor to deal with grief and guilt while coming to terms with unsavory details about his spouse’s sudden death. In “The Way of the Volt,” an eighteenth-century African queen is made immortal, sold into slavery, and left to face a series of impossible choices that force her to struggle with what it means to be human. In “The Sunset Toll,” members of the last community on earth disappear one by one until there are just three people left, trying to maintain hope even as they question the forces that keep them trapped on earth.

The characters wrestle with foes, agonize at crossroads, and face painful truths, all while grappling with grief, love, betrayal, motherhood, and ideas of home. Some triumph, some do not―but they all emerge irrevocably changed by their experiences.

A man’s quest to resolve an inherited family trauma leads him to an enigmatic priory in a war-ravaged region, from which he’s not sure he will be able to flee.

HOPING TO MAKE SENSE OF HIS GRANDFATHER’S UNSPOKEN TRAUMA, Malachi journeys to return a family heirloom to the land of its origin. He finds himself in a seaside town surrounded by rumors of war. He visits the priory, a place of welcome that quickly draws him in―and also a place of duty that refuses to let him go.

The priory, its people, and its resident Angel have their own purpose in a far larger history of trauma and conflict. Malachi learns of ancient and modern atrocities and his grandfather’s helplessness in the face of both. Past echoes become present concerns as a new battle approaches. Malachi repeatedly tries and fails to leave the escalating danger.

This is not his land, nor is it his war. He did not inherit his grandfather’s vocation, nor take his grandfather’s vows. None of this is his fault, nor even his responsibility. And yet the Angel will not let him go until Their last judgment is complete.

Amid the current firestorm of interest in women’s basketball, Natasha Howard reveals the tremendous obstacles she overcame to become a three-time WNBA champion who continues to excel on the hardwood.

THE PAST THREE YEARS HAVE SEEN A WORLDWIDE EXPLOSION of interest in women’s basketball and the rise of young superstars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers. As the audience grows exponentially, the public is hungry to know more about some of the women who have ushered the sport into this bright spotlight, including elite and still-active veterans like Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson, Natasha Howard, Napheesa Collier, and others.

Before Natasha Howard was a three-time WNBA champion, before she was named Defensive Player of the Year, she was a thoughtful girl growing up in very difficult circumstances. Her mother faced challenges of her own while shepherding her four children between cities, and sometimes in and out of homeless shelters. 

Young Natasha’s life changed when her uncle Greg introduced her to basketball―with a bribe that included candy. Tash was instantly hooked. But what does a basketball player do when her school doesn't have a girls' team? She joins together with a friend to demand that they be allowed to try out for the boys' team. Which is what Tash did―and then became a starter.

In 2025 Natasha Howard was named MVP of the 2025 WNBA Commissioner’s Cup. She currently plays with the Minnesota Lynx and shows no signs of slowing down at the age of thirty-four. The Vision Through My Lens is her powerful story of building a life for herself through basketball. As a gay, Black woman, she used all her strength to forge forth, to triumph over an astonishing array of obstacles. Coauthored by Deyscha Smith, this memoir tells an unusually empowering tale of a strong girl becoming a stronger woman.

The first book in a brand-new series, Hunt the Red Hood, from TikTok sensation B.B. Reid, a dark romantic retelling of Red Riding Hood.

"Guard your heart, foolish girl. The wolves will come to steal it."

In a quiet French town steeped in old folklore, Nyx has always believed in logic―not legends. So discovering she's descended from a line of Red Hood witches feels more like a mistake than destiny. But some stories refuse to stay buried.

The Volkovs have been cursed for generations, and time is running out. The only way to break it? A Red Hood witch must fall in love with one of them. Mikhail Volkov is desperate to save someone he loves―and ending the curse is his last hope. Getting close to Nyx was supposed to be a means to an end… until it becomes something far more dangerous.

Gray, the watchful hunter who seems to linger on the edges of every secret, is thrust into Nyx's life next. Protective, intense, and impossible to ignore, he draws Nyx deeper into a world she doesn't understand―and can't escape.

Caught between wolf and hunter, instinct and reason, Nyx must decide who to trust―and what she's willing to risk.

Sleeping with the staff wasn't part of the plan.

Sensible, capable, and ruthlessly efficient, Hannah Kabbah is the perfect nanny… until a colossal mistake destroys her career and shatters her reputation. These days, no-one in town will hire her―except Nathaniel Davis, a brooding widower with a smile like sin and two kids he can't handle.

Prim and proper Hannah is supposed to make Nate's life easier, but the more time he spends around his live-in nanny, the more she makes things… hard. He can't take advantage of her vulnerable position, but he can't deny the truth, either: with every look, every smile, every midnight meeting, Nate's untouchable employee is stealing his heart.

The trouble is, she doesn't want to keep it. Forbidden love isn't high on Hannah's to-do list, and trust isn't one of her strengths. When dark secrets threaten to destroy their bond, Nate's forced to start playing dirty. Because this reformed bad boy will break every rule to finally claim his woman.

Please be aware: this book contains depictions of depression and anxiety that could trigger certain audiences.

The first book in a brand-new series, Hunt the Red Hood, from TikTok sensation B.B. Reid, a dark romantic retelling of Red Riding Hood.

"Guard your heart, foolish girl. The wolves will come to steal it."

In a quiet French town steeped in old folklore, Nyx has always believed in logic―not legends. So discovering she's descended from a line of Red Hood witches feels more like a mistake than destiny. But some stories refuse to stay buried.

The Volkovs have been cursed for generations, and time is running out. The only way to break it? A Red Hood witch must fall in love with one of them. Mikhail Volkov is desperate to save someone he loves―and ending the curse is his last hope. Getting close to Nyx was supposed to be a means to an end… until it becomes something far more dangerous.

Gray, the watchful hunter who seems to linger on the edges of every secret, is thrust into Nyx's life next. Protective, intense, and impossible to ignore, he draws Nyx deeper into a world she doesn't understand―and can't escape.

Caught between wolf and hunter, instinct and reason, Nyx must decide who to trust―and what she's willing to risk.

LIMITED TIME DELUXE EDITION

Sleeping with the staff wasn't part of the plan.

Sensible, capable, and ruthlessly efficient, Hannah Kabbah is the perfect nanny… until a colossal mistake destroys her career and shatters her reputation. These days, no-one in town will hire her―except Nathaniel Davis, a brooding widower with a smile like sin and two kids he can't handle.

Prim and proper Hannah is supposed to make Nate's life easier, but the more time he spends around his live-in nanny, the more she makes things… hard. He can't take advantage of her vulnerable position, but he can't deny the truth, either: with every look, every smile, every midnight meeting, Nate's untouchable employee is stealing his heart.

The trouble is, she doesn't want to keep it. Forbidden love isn't high on Hannah's to-do list, and trust isn't one of her strengths. When dark secrets threaten to destroy their bond, Nate's forced to start playing dirty. Because this reformed bad boy will break every rule to finally claim his woman.

Please be aware: this book contains depictions of depression and anxiety that could trigger certain audiences.

Meet the girl who never backs down from a challenge!

Written by Terysa Ridgeway, a computer scientist and manager at Google, this delightful book sparks curiosity in every young reader.

Eight-year-old Terysa is a creative thinker with a knack for figuring things out. But for her birthday, she gets her trickiest puzzle yet: an old computer that doesn't respond like she hoped. Can Terysa crack the code and bring it to life?

Inspired by real childhood adventures, this engaging story weaves computer science concepts into a warm, relatable tale about determination and how problem solving is fun. Along the way, readers will cheer for Terysa as she makes mistakes, tries again, and celebrates her successes.

Perfect for families, teachers, and young inventors, this book includes helpful back matter for introducing kids to the exciting world of computers, coding, and creativity.

If your child loves mysteries, math, or computers, one click is all it takes to start the adventure!

It's 1927 and Elise Saint and the reaper she loves, Layla Quinn, are on the run, staying at the hideout of a gangster friend. New York isn't safe for either of them: Layla murdered a doctor with ties to the powerful Saint family, and Elise killed the matriarch of the Harlem reapers. Both of the dead were part of a dark conspiracy behind the so-called "cure" for reapers, but few in the city know the truth Layla and Elise discovered.

Reapers are going missing, rumored to have been abducted for secret experiments. And Elise's beloved little sister Josi, a pawn in the conflict between Saints and reapers, has been poisoned with the reaper affliction―bitten, but not quite turned vampire―and is being kept hostage by their father. Meanwhile, the new leader of the Harlem reapers has joined forces with a female gangster who has a score to settle with Layla. With shifting alliances and power changes in the city's underworld, Elise and Layla can't trust anyone, not even one another. But once they learn about the new mayor's plans to assemble a reaper army to clear out the city's undesirables, Lalya takes charge of her reaper clan, bringing them together with rogue reapers and gangsters to fight back. And when Josi Saint begins to show reaper-like abilities, Layla and Elise discover the power of shared blood between humans and reapers, making the two lovers stronger together. Yet ultimately one of them will have to choose between reaperhood and humanity―and sacrifice everything.