Celebrate the release of The Gift of Us with Lula White!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, November 6 @ 7 PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St. Houston, tX 77004)

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.

• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy The Gift of Us, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup at the event.

Please Note: Books purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must purchase a copy from Kindred Stories. If you already purchased your book from Kindred Stories, you may select the RSVP Only ticket option and bring your Kindred Stories copy to the event.

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If your book is not retrieved it will be returned to the publisher and will not be available for pick up in the future.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Welcome to so-tiny-you'll-blink-and-miss-it town of Elaine for Christmas.

SUNDAY

Just days before Christmas, Sunday Conklin is on the brink of losing everything-her family's scenic farm-in the heart of her small Arkansas town. It's the legacy she's given up her life to protect. With the bank out of mercy and her options gone, her family's oldest enemy, the Adlers, will finally take the Conklin Fields for themselves. But a miracle arrives-one that could save Sunday, her neighbors, and the historic town of Elaine itself. There's just one problem: that miracle comes tangled up with the most infuriating man she's ever met... who belongs right back in Texas where he came from.

SEVEN

Seven Hardcastle can't believe his luck this Christmas, when he's assigned to a middle-of-nowhere Arkansas town. He's ready to return to his perfectly manicured life in Dallas with his wife and kids. All he needs is one signature-Sunday Conklin's. But when the town of Elaine strikes it big, Seven's fate is tied up with that of its most stubborn, maddening, and undeniably magnetic farm-owner. As the town's secrets unravel, and Sunday's fight becomes his own, Seven is handed a Christmas gift he never expected... one that forces him to question his past, his future, and where home truly is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lula White is the pen name for Shannon Humphrey. She grew up on Confederate Boulevard not far from Sweet Home, Arkansas, fishing with her grandfather, baking with her grandmother, and riding her bicycle to Granite Mountain in her bare feet.

Lula is the original creator of the fictional Black Hamptons with her first romance series, Sag Harbor Black Romances, using her fiction to open conversations on generational wealth and high society that were previously limited to history and sociology texts. In her follow-up, Explore Men of the Hamptons, Lula continued using her creativity to expand our collective self-perception. 

She has continued telling the truth in ways that reexamine our potential in The Young and Luxurious, Who’s Lovin’ You and now, The Gift of Us.

Her hunger for life and travel took her from college to Capitol Hill, law school, and now Los Angeles where she is a civil rights litigator and author of over thirty novels. Having traveled the turbulent road of success herself, she is uniquely positioned to fight for indigent families and create worlds where we can have our dreams. 

When she dons her lawyer cape, Shannon is the 40th President of Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, Inc., a former Deputy District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles, and a former appellate lawyer whose advocacy secured the reversal of several trial courts at the California Court of Appeals.

She was named one of the Top Forty Attorneys Under Forty for the National Bar Association, and is a graduate of the Los Angeles African American Women’s Public Policy Institute. 

A 2018 writer-in-residence at the prestigious Hedgebrook for women writers in Seattle, whether she writes as Lula or Shannon, or the genre be romance, historical fiction, or science fiction fantasy, she weaves every plot to entertain, inspire, and illuminate our highest selves.  

Her stories are for every soul ready to claim their heaven on Earth now. We don’t need permission.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Alexandrea LeChelle is a contemporary romance author whose stories explore love, grief, healing, and the complicated beauty of human connection.

Her novels unfold between Houston and Louisiana and center Black characters navigating family legacies, emotional vulnerability, and the quiet courage it takes to love deeply and unapologetically.

Through rich, emotional storytelling and cinematic detail, Alexandrea writes the kind of love stories she rarely saw growing up and entering adulthood. Stories where Black characters are allowed to be flawed, passionate, and deeply human.

What began as a way to process emotions and channel creativity through her own healing journey, slowly evolved into something much bigger: an urge to create and share stories about love, healing, and the complicated paths of life that bring people together.

Her stories often explore themes such as emotional healing, family dynamics, grief and growth, healthy Black love, the courage to begin again. Every story is planted in the belief that love, in all its forms, has the power to change us for the better.

When she’s not reading, Alexandrea can be found working her way through her own TBR, journaling or planning new creative projects, adding recipes to her personal cookbook, and listening to playlists that eventually inspire new stories.

At the heart of everything she creates is a simple hope: That readers will find pieces of themselves in her stories.