PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: August 19, 2025

Celebrate a Black boy's first haircut in this joyful book from the creator of the popular Princess Hair and Don't Touch My Hair!

Jordan loves his hair: soft like a cloud, regal like a crown. He doesn't want a haircut to change all that.

Jordan’s friends are getting new haircuts for picture day at school. Shape-ups, low fades, frohawks, and more—there are way too many styles to choose from. But when Mama brings Jordan to the barbershop, he sees everyone’s haircuts are like magic.

Can Jordan find a style that’s just right for him?

With her trademark bright colors and expressive characters, Sharee Miller teaches confidence and self-love through the timeless tradition of school picture day.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 3, 2025

Venture into Nova's secret underground lab— and witness a gum monster come to life! A full-color, action-packed graphic novel about a young Black girl with a love for science and enough determination and confidence to fix the world.

Nova is horrified when she learns about the world's plastic problem and the trash islands floating in the ocean. Good thing she has a super-secret lab in her basement. No problem is too big for SUPA NOVA or for SCIENCE! But things go spectacularly awry when she creates a plastic-eating monster who won't stop eating and GROWING! Will Supa Nova be able to save the day--and the planet?

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 29, 2025

For those who have ever felt the call of magic, or unexplained ties to the Universe or ancestors, this guide to Brujería is an essential introduction to the practice for beginners stemming from the Latinx, Hispanic, and indigenous traditions. 

Being Bruja is a comprehensive and inclusive guide focused on introducing the practice of Brujería to curious young mystics. Learn about the brief history and origin of the practice and the word bruja, along with the tools needed for the practice, beginner rituals, how to connect with the earth and your ancestors, spiritual cleansings and protection, and how to incorporate Brujería into your daily life. While embracing Latine/Hispanic mystic traditions, this book makes it clear that anyone can identify as a bruja, brujo, or brujx. Readers will come away with a further knowledge and appreciation of our connection to the Universe, as well as practical rituals, like how to perform beginner baños and limpias.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 29, 2025

Para ellos que alguna vez han sentido que tengan magia por dentro, o vínculos inexplicables con el Universo o los ancestros, esta guía de Brujería en español, es una introducción esencial a la práctica derivada de las tradiciones latinas, hispanas e indígenas. Vivir Bruja (edición en español de Being Bruja) es una guía completa e inclusiva centrada en presentar la práctica de la Brujería a jóvenes místicos curiosos. Conozca la breve historia y el origen de la práctica y la palabra bruja, las herramientas necesarias para la práctica, los rituales para principiantes, cómo conectarse con la tierra y sus ancestros, limpiezas y protección espirituales y cómo incorporar la Brujería en su práctica diaria. Aunque es una aceptación de las tradiciones místicas latinas/hispanas, este libro deja claro que cualquiera puede identificarse como bruja, brujo o brujx. Los lectores obtendrán un mayor conocimiento y apreciación de nuestra conexión con el Universo, así como rituales prácticos, como realizar baños y limpias de principiantes. Edición en ingles, Being Bruja, también disponible.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: August 5, 2025

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.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 29, 2025

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.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 8, 2025

Meet the kids in Mrs. Z’s wacky and wonderful third-grade class! Synclaire Fields is proud to be the best in the class at math—until one mistake in a high-stakes situation means she's NOT the best after all. So who is she instead?

Synclaire Fields is the Math Kid in Mrs. Z's class, getting perfect marks on every quiz and helping her classmates master tricky concepts. She especially loves demonstrating her skills at her parents' store after school. Then she gets TWO ANSWERS WRONG on a math test, and ... How can she be the Math Kid if she isn't good at math anymore?

So Synclaire embarks on a quest to figure out what's next. Maybe she'll be a piano prodigy? A board-games whiz? A skating star? She likes some of these hobbies, but there's one constant with every role: She seems to come back to math. Maybe, with the help of her friends in Mrs. Z's class, she can still be the Math Kid after all? 

Both sweetly poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, with black-and-white illustrations by Pura Belpré Honor artist Kat Fajardo, Synclaire's story invites readers into Mrs. Z’s class where friendship and fun rule the school, from NAACP Image Award finalist Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich.
 
Perfect for!
★ My Weirdtastic School fans
★ Reluctant readers
★ Classroom read-alouds
★ Andrew Clements fans
★ Math whiz kids
★ Math haters
★ Kids who haven't found their hobby yet!
 
Read them all! The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class have plenty of stories to share!
Emma McKenna, Full out (#1)
Rohan Murthy Has a Plan (#2)
Poppy Song Bakes a Way (#3)
The Legend of Memo Castillo (#4) 
Wyatt Hill Brings a Lizard to School (#5) 
Ayana Ndoum Takes the Stage (#6) 
Olive Little Gets Crafty (#7) — available for preorder now!
Theo Chang is Not a Cat (#9) — available for preorder now!
Thunder Nelson Does the Impossumble (#10) — available for preorder now!
 
*The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class is an innovative series where every book is written by a different all-star author and features a different kid in the same third-grade class. They can be read in any order!

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 3, 2025

From “master of the genre” (Washington Post) Walter Mosley, Detective Easy Rawlins’ latest client sends him down a warren of memory and nostalgia—blinding him to reason and risk.

January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations.  He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency.  All is right with the world… and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips.  He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own on the streets of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas.

The missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead. Easy’s only real friend in the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, has gone into hiding rather than allow his femme fatale wife to go to the gas chamber.  And that’s only the beginning.

Easy finds himself pressed into a reckoning. All of his success cannot succor his heart. The 1970’s have ushered in new expectations of men and women, Black and White, and Easy has to make a choice that will almost certainly hasten a permanent descent, one that might sunder his soul.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 29, 2025

From the author of The Art of Scandal comes a small town romance about the visibility of Black women’s voices in country music, for readers of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev.

Every Thursday night, former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing “Another Love Song.” God, he hates that song. But performing his lone hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. Following another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol—90’s era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who’s being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small hometown he swore he’d never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo’s daughter, August Lane—the woman who wrote the lyrics he’s always claimed as his own. 
 
August also hates that song. But she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up ten years too late to apologize for his betrayal, she isn’t interested in making amends. Instead, she threatens to expose his lies unless he co-writes a new song with her and performs it at the concert, something she hopes will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career of her own. Desperate to keep his secret, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance, despite the risk of losing his shot at a new record deal.
 
When Luke’s guitar reunites with August’s soulful alto, neither can deny that the passionate bond they formed as teenagers is still there. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her, or trusting the man he’s become to write a different love song.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 29, 2025

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.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 15, 2025

From the New York Times bestselling author of Almost There, a second chance romance between two dog lovers, perfect for readers of Abby Jimenez and Jasmine Guillory.  

From the outside, veterinarian Evie Williams appears to have the perfect but boring life. She is desperate to figure out a way to shake it up, but gets more than she bargained for when she finds her fiancé in bed with another woman. Suddenly, Evie is without a fiancé or a job, and isn’t sure what her next steps should be. That is, until her college crush, Bryson Mitchell, returns to town.  

Now, a nationally recognized veterinary surgeon, Bryson is stunned when he encounters Evie Williams for the first time in half a decade. When they learn the animal shelter where they used to volunteer is in danger of closing, the two must work together to save it. It has Bryson wondering, can he and Evie also save the friendship they once shared and finally bring it to the next level?

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 17, 2025

In a fast-paced, sexy, ghostly adventure, a publicist at the top of her game must confront her secret mystical past.

To be a client of Gwendolyn Montgomery's, New York's most powerful publicist at Sublime Media, is to be infused with a certain oomph, a mysterious glamour. She seems to have created the ideal life with her handsome new boyfriend, the perfect match. But Gwendolyn has a secret: She's a mystical practitioner who can tap into the interdimensional, metaphysical realm of the dead known as El Intermedio. Gwendolyn has hidden her powers, buried her old life, and started anew.

After a grisly, bizarre incident at the Brooklyn Museum, Gwendolyn begins to realize that something nefarious is happening tied directly to her past right as Fonsi Harewood comes back into her world. Fonsi is a queer Latinx psychic from the South Bronx who's caught up in a love triangle with a ghost and his mortal ex. He's able to communicate with the dead, having established a robust business interpreting messages from departed loved ones. And he comes with a dire warning for Gwendolyn, that the barrier between humans and spirits is weakening.

Gwendolyn would prefer not to have anything to do with ghostly drama. Yet in order to get to the bottom of the spookiness derailing her life, she must face the demons she'd long left behind or the spirit world will be unleashed, threatening her very existence and all of New York. The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery is a sensuous, funny, mystical adventure that will leave you spellbound as you keep the pages turning.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 3, 2025

From the acclaimed author of the young adult graphic novel Flamer comes a heartwarming story following four gay Asians navigating love, identity, and friendship—a celebration of queer chosen family.

When AJ moves to Seattle in the early aughts, he’s ready to reinvent himself as a gay Asian man—but his dreams hit reality fast with no friends, no job, and an apartment so far out, “not even lesbians live there.” Then a spilled drink at a bar introduces him to K, a glamorous drag queen; John, a shy gamer; and Steven, a reckless flirt. AJ’s “Boy Luck Club” helps him find love, pride, and belonging—until a brutal attack tests everything they know about friendship and family. 

Meticulously observed and gorgeously illustrated, Gaysians is a fierce, funny, and tender story of queer resilience and self-discovery.

“I’ve been hunting for books like this my whole life; this story broke my heart and healed it.”—Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 27, 2025

Discover what it means to become a US citizen and how the process unfolds in this illuminating picture book about immigration and naturalization.

What does US citizenship look like? Some of us are citizens by birth. Some of us are born beyond the United States and gain citizenship through immigration and naturalization. With lyrical prose and luminous mixed-media artwork, this nonfiction book outlines the process by which some of us—spanning every age and background—travel to the United States to live, work, study, and contribute to the fabric of our new communities. After years, without relinquishing who we are or where we came from, if we are fortunate, we can choose to become naturalized citizens. We can become American.

This insightful story honors the many different paths to citizenship and celebrates all people who enrich our country by striving to participate in our democracy. This book belongs with classrooms and parents who love: Grace for President, Areli Is a Dreamer, and What Can A Citizen Do?

May/June Kids' Indie Next List 2025

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 27, 2025

The first novel from one of the most electrifying voices in contemporary crime fiction, Gabino Iglesias, follows Fernando, a drug dealer and enforcer living in Austin whose life takes a lethal turn when an unknown gang with seemingly supernatural abilities arrives on his turf.

Enforcer and drug dealer Fernando has seen better days. On his way home from work, some heavily-tattooed gangsters throw him in the back of a car and take him to an abandoned house, where they saw off his friend's head and feed the kid's fingers to…something. Their message is clear: this is their territory, now.

But Fernando isn't put down that easily. Using the assistance of a Santeria priestess, an insane Puerto Rican pop sensation, a very human dog, and a Russian hitman, he'll build the courage (and firepower) he'll need to fight a gangbanger who's a bit more than human.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 20, 2025

Written by Harriet Ann Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent," Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl  is an in-depth chronological account of Jacobs's life as a slave, and the decisions and choices she made to gain freedom for herself and her children. It addresses the struggles and sexual abuse that young women slaves faced on the plantations, and how these struggles were harsher than what men suffered as slaves.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 27, 2025

'ONE OF THE MOST MOVING ACCOUNTS OF NON-FICTION EVER WRITTEN' GUARDIAN 

'If you like Shuggie Bain, then Slum Boy is for you' LEMN SISSAY
'Beautifully told. I hope it finds a million readers' ANDREW O'HAGAN

John MacDonald is a four-year-old boy growing up in the slums of Glasgow.

John's mother is an addict, who leaves him starving in their flat for days at a time.

When a neighbour reports her, John is wrenched away from his family and placed into the care system. There, he has experiences he's too young to understand which his eventual adoptive parents silence as he grows into a gay man within a strict Romani community.

But John dreams of being reunited with his mother and will stop at nothing to find her.

'Compulsively readable' PATRICK GALE
'Remarkable and moving tale' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Juano Diaz was awarded the Pride Awards 2024 for LGBTQ+ Heroes Changing the World.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 13, 2025

A kaleidoscopic narrative history of 1963, the pivotal moment in America’s long civil rights movement—the year of the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and the assassinations of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy

In Freedom Season, acclaimed historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a stirring narrative history of 1963, marking it as the defining year of the Black freedom struggle—a year when America faced a deluge of political strife and violence and emerged transformed.

Nineteen sixty-three opened with the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation and ended with America in a state of mourning. The months in between brought waves of racial terror, mass protest, and police repression that shocked the world, inspired radicals and reformers, and forced the hands of moderate legislators. By year’s end the murders of John F. Kennedy, Medgar Evers, and four Black girls at a church in Alabama left the nation determined to imagine a new way forward. Alongside the stories of historical giants like James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr., Joseph uplifts the perspectives of less celebrated leaders like playwright Lorraine Hansberry and activist Gloria Richardson.

Over one heartbreakingly tumultuous year, America unraveled and remade itself as the world looked on. Freedom Season shows how the upheavals of 1963 planted the seeds for watershed civil rights legislation and renewed hope in the promise and possibility of freedom.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 13, 2025

From a NAACP award-winning historian and Fulbright scholar, a history of education in the United States from the end of the Civil War to the historic ruling of Brown v. Board of Education.

In The Battle for the Black Mind, Dr. Karida Brown explores the struggle to define and control the education of African Americans amid shifting societal attitudes and forms of systemic exclusion. From the perspective of freed slaves seeking empowerment and liberation through education, to the white elites aiming to shape the future of the workforce and consolidate power, The Battle for the Black Mind explores the formation of segregated education systems and the influence of philanthropic organizations, religious institutions, and Black educators themselves in shaping these structures. It also examines the global reach of these education models, particularly their impact on African societies under colonial rule. 

Ultimately, Dr. Brown presents a critical investigation of the foundational roots of racial inequality in American education, arguing that it wasn't just about the separation of institutions—but about controlling access to the ideals of American democracy.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 13, 2025

From the acclaimed novelist, a first-of-its-kind, deeply personal, and moving oral history of a generation of trans and gender nonconforming elders of color—from leading activists to artists to ordinary citizens—who tell their own stories of breathtaking courage, cultural innovations, and acts of resistance.

So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.

De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.

The anecdotes in these pages are riveting, joyful, heartbreaking, full of personality and wisdom, and artfully woven together into one immersive narrative. In De Robertis’s words, So Many Stars shares “behind-the-scenes tales of what it meant—and still means—to create an authentic life, against the odds.”

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 13, 2025

“A debut of enormous ambition” spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil (Nathan Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water)

Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
 
Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde's descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: can he save himself, too?
 
Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 1, 2025

A lift-the-flap book about the animals, plants, and fungi that live in trees, written by pioneering tree scientist Nalini Nadkarni.

A single tree can be home to hundreds of different species. This joyous book highlights some of the best tree habitats in the world, with plenty of fun things for young readers to spot in each stunning illustration by Kendra Binney. After spying a creature hidden in the foliage they can lift a flap to learn more about it.

The book includes famous trees like coast redwoods and ancient oaks, as well as some species kids might be less familiar with–like the dragon blood tree of Yemen! They will meet swinging orangutans in the dipterocarp trees of Asia, witness elephants drinking from wells inside the baobab trees of Africa, and spy some sleepy koalas in the eucalyptus trees of Australia. The Tree of Life also looks at the importance of these giants on human societies, such as the Hindu festivals that take place among the roots of the Indian banyan.

By the end of the book kids will have a new-found appreciation for the role trees play in ecosystems all over the world.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 8, 2025

A masterful and tender debut collection of stories from the acclaimed author of The Anthropologists, about distance and closeness in the age of connectivity.

"An exceptionally elegant, intelligent, and original writer.” -Sigrid Nunez
"She is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows." -Bryan Washington
"The rigor of Didion and the tenderness of Sebald." -Catherine Lacey
"One of my favorite writers." -Katie Kitamura

A researcher abroad in Rome eagerly awaits a visit from her long-distance lover, only to find he is not the same man she remembers. An expat meets a childhood friend on a layover and is dismayed by her unexpected contentment. A newly pregnant woman considers the American taboo of sharing the news too soon, but can't resist when an opportunity comes to patch up a damaged friendship.

Long Distance showcases Savas's devastating talent for the short story. Her shrewd encapsulations of contemporary life often center on characters displaced more by choice than circumstance, characters both determined to install themselves in new lives and preoccupied with the people they've left behind.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 8, 2025

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD LONGLIST * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORKER, TIME, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE * A DAKOTA JOHNSON x TEATIME BOOK CLUB PICK * VULTURE #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR * A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE SELECTION

"The Anthropologists is mesmerizing; I felt I read it in a single breath." -Garth Greenwell
"Savas is an author who simply, and astoundingly, knows." -Bryan Washington

Asya and Manu are looking at apartments, envisioning their future in a foreign city. What should their life here look like? What rituals will structure their days? Whom can they consider family?

As the young couple dreams about the possibilities of each new listing, Asya, a documentarian, gathers footage from the neighborhood like an anthropologist observing local customs. “Forget about daily life,” chides her grandmother on the phone. “We named you for a whole continent and you're filming a park.”

Back in their home countries parents age, grandparents get sick, nieces and nephews grow up-all just slightly out of reach. But Asya and Manu's new world is growing, too, they hope. As they open the horizons of their lives, what and whom will they hold onto, and what will they need to release?

Unfolding over a series of apartment viewings, late-night conversations, last rounds of drinks and lazy breakfasts, The Anthropologists is a soulful examination of homebuilding and modern love, written with Aysegül Savas' distinctive elegance, warmth, and humor.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 10, 2025

From a dazzling new voice, a bold, intoxicating novel that shows "the grit alongside the glamor" (Vogue) of high-paid sex work in the age of the internet.

Sugar, Baby follows Agnes, a mixed-race 21-year-old whose life seems to be heading nowhere. Still living at home, she works as a cleaner and spends all her money in clubs on the weekends searching for distractions from her mundane life. That is until she meets Emily, daughter of one of her cleaning clients, who lives in London and works as a model . . . and a sugar baby, dating rich older men for money.

Emily's life is the escape Agnes has been longing for-extravagant tasting menus, champagne on tap, glamorous hotels with unlimited room service, designer gifts from dates who call her beautiful. But this new lifestyle is the last straw for her religious mother Constance.

Kicked out of her family home, Agnes moves in with Emily and the other sugar babies in their fancy London flat and is drawn deeper and deeper into their world. But these women come from money: they possess a safety net Agnes does not. And as she is thrown from one precarious relationship to the next-a married man who wants to show off the glamourous, exotic girl on his arm; a Russian billionaire's wife who makes Agnes central to a sex party in Miami-she finds herself searching for fulfillment just as desperately as she was before.

A compelling journey of self-discovery that offers sharp commentary on race, beauty, and class, Sugar, Baby is an electric, original, spellbinding novel that will keep readers turning the pages until the very end.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: July 15, 2025

With Trouble in Queenstown, Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Vandy Myrick in a powerful mystery that blends grief, class, race, and family with thrilling results.

Evander “Vandy” Myrick became a cop to fulfill her father’s expectations. After her world cratered, she became a private eye to satisfy her own. Now she's back in Queenstown, New Jersey, her childhood home, in search of solace and recovery. It's a small community of nine thousand souls crammed into twelve square miles, fenced by cornfields, warehouses, pharma labs, and tract housing. As a Black woman, privacy is hard to come by in "Q-Town," and worth guarding.

For Vandy, that means working plenty of divorce cases. They’re nasty, lucrative, and fun in an unwholesome way. To keep the cash flowing and expand her local contacts, Vandy agrees to take on a new client, the mayor’s nephew, Leo Hannah. Leo wants Vandy to tail his wife to uncover evidence for a divorce suit.

At first the surveillance job seems routine, but Vandy soon realizes there’s trouble beneath the bland surface of the case when a racially charged murder with connections to the Hannah family rocks Q-Town. Fingers point. Clients appear. Opposition to the inquiry hardens. And Vandy’s sight lines begin to blur as her determination to uncover the truth deepens. She’s a minor league PI with few friends and no resources. Logic pegs her chances of solving the case between slim and hell no. But logic isn’t her strong suit. Vandy won’t back off.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: September 9, 2025

Legend says long ago werewolves had traveled to Mira’s small hometown to protect humans from vampires. But that’s a fairy tale Mira had stopped believing in years ago. She’d stopped believing in a lot of things, after her mom left when she was thirteen.

Now, starting her freshman year of college, Mira just wants everything to be normal. And everything is―except for Julian, a mysterious boy with golden eyes, and a coldness directed at Mira for reasons she can’t understand and he won’t explain.

But when a Blood Moon rises, Mira finds herself caught in the middle of a long-standing battle, with Julian on the other side of the line. She discovers there’s more truth to the old town legends than she could ever have anticipated―and her family’s historic role in it will change her world forever.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 3, 2025

A joyful ode to play and boyhood, perfect for readers who loved The King of Kindergarten.

I am a big boy,
Full of big boy joy!

Big boys can climb high and go, go, go! Big boys can smash and crash. They can share and play.

Playtime is the best time--a time of wonder, where big boys can run free, make new friends, and imagine worlds beyond their own. Their big feelings and big energy spread big boy joy for all to share!

Acclaimed author Connie Schofield-Morrison and New York Times bestselling illustrator Shamar Knight-Justice join forces in this exuberant celebration of imagination, play, and big boy joy!

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 20, 2025

The new book from the New York Times bestselling author of The Three Mothers.

In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.

Patriarchy has oppressed women and denied their contributions worldwide, but the United States of America has its own unique gendered hierarchy. Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs applies her signature blend of approachable yet rigorous analysis in this definitive and groundbreaking history of American patriarchy. She proves that humanity in the United States is determined by gender in a limited and flawed binary that is also always tied to whiteness. Tubbs shows how a fabricated hierarchy became so deeply ingrained over time that it now goes unnoticed, along with everything it intentionally conceals.

From the founding fathers to the current Supreme Court justices, from the treatment of enslaved women to the American maternal health crises, from the exclusion of women in the Constitution to the continued lack of an Equal Rights Amendment, Tubbs brings together academic research, the stories of freedom fighters both past and present, and her own experiences to reveal what is erased in the wake of American patriarchy. The system has survived by hiding the tools that are necessary to dismantle it. But Tubbs beautifully reminds us that those tools, including our intuition, courage, ancient wisdom, and power, are still well within our reach.

Erased is the story of the United States from a new perspective: one where the people who shaped this country–who have been oppressed and whose contributions have been denied–are at the center, reminding us that we can restore what has been strategically kept from us. Once again, Dr. Anna Malaika Tubbs has written a book that will be a touchstone for conversations on gender, race, and equity for years to come.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: August 12, 2025

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.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: May 20, 2025

In this Latinx YA fantasy inspired by El Zorro, Lola de La Peña becomes the masked heroine Salvación in order to save her family and town from a man who would destroy it for the magic it contains...if she doesn't fall in love with a boy in his company first.

Lola de La Peña yearns to be free from the societal expectations of a young Mexican lady of her station. She spends her days pretending to be delicate and proper while watching her mamá cure the sick and injured with sal negra (black salt), a recently discovered magic that heals even the most mortal of sicknesses and wounds. But by night, she is Salvación, the free-spirit lady vigilante protecting the town of Coloma from those who threaten its peace and safety among the rising tension in Alta California after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

But one night, a woman races into Coloma, barely alive, to tell the horrifying tale of how her town was obliterated by sal roja (red salt), a potent, deadly magic capable of obliterating anything it comes into contact with, and about the man who wields it: Damien Hernández. So when Hernández arrives the next day with a party of fifty strong and promises of returning Alta California to México, Lola knows it’s only a matter of time before he brings the region under his rule―all Hernández needs is the next full moon and the stolen, ancient amulet he carries to mine enough sal roja to conquer the land. Determined to protect everything she loves, Lola races against time as Salvación to stop his plans. What she didn’t count on was the distracting and infuriating Alejandro, who travels with Hernández but doesn't seem to share his ambitions. With the stakes higher than ever and Hernández getting closer to his goals, Lola will do anything to foil his plans, even teaming up with Alejandro―who she doesn’t fully trust but can’t help but fall in love with.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: June 17, 2025

Dawn is breaking over the Guilleries, a rugged mountain range in Catalonia frequented by wolf hunters, brigands, deserters, race-car drivers, ghosts, and demons. In a remote farmhouse called Mas Clavell, an impossibly old woman lies on her deathbed. Family and caretakers drift in and out. Meanwhile, all the women who have lived and died in that house are waiting for her to join them. They are preparing to throw her a party.

As day turns to night, four hundred years’ worth of stories unspool, and the house reverberates with raucous laughter, pungent feasts, and piercing cries of pleasure and pain. It all begins with Joana, Mas Clavell’s matriarch, who once longed for a husband―“a full man,” perhaps even “an heir with a patch of land and a roof over his head.” She summoned the devil to fulfill her wish and struck a deal: a man in exchange for her soul. But when, on her wedding day, Joana discovered that her husband was missing a toe (eaten by wolves), she exploited a loophole in her agreement, heedless of what consequences might follow.

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness is an audacious and entrancing novel in which the lines between the dead and the living, past and present, story and history are blurred. In it, Irene Solà draws on oral tradition as well as art, literature, and fairy tales to tell a completely new kind of story.