In the final novel in the "timely and evocative" (NPR) Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Attica Locke, Darren Matthews is pulled out of an early retirement to investigate the disappearance of a Black college student from an all-white sorority and soon finds nothing is as it seems.

Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate.

Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother.

In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life’s purpose as he’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.

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Healing requires separation. When Ethic discovers malice in a woman he thought was perfect, he walks away from their love. Keeping his family safe is his main priority and falling for Alani Lenika Hill is dangerous. The history of their love haunts him however, and getting over her isn't easy. 

Alani has beguiled his two youngest children and they crave her presence as much as Ethic. They want a mother. He wants a woman, but with ghosts and lies between them the couple is forced apart yet again. 

With love comes pain and Ethic feels all of it. He can't focus on anything and while he is distracted by heartbreak, his eldest daughter, Morgan is caught up in a deceptive affair. With bad boy Messiah, pledging his allegiance to Morgan she is willing to defy everything and anyone to keep his love forever. 
The story is a soul-stirring journey of love, loss, and forgiveness. Will Ethic finally receive everything he deserves? Or will karma circle back for him and destroy him for good? 

Ashly Antoinette has penned a new classic with the Ethic series. Ride with her as she paints a poignant picture of Ezra "Ethic" Okafor, the imperfect man who gives perfect love. 

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Ethic has power, but love is evasive. After ordering the hit that mistakenly killed the love of his life, Ethic is haunted. Focused on being a better man, he is raising three children, one of which is a defiant teenaged girl, Morgan. When Morgan finds herself in a vulnerable position, Ethic is pulled back into the game where he was once king.

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Life has never been easy for Ethic. Since he was a young boy he has battled loss after loss while struggling to navigate through a treacherous world. When he met Alani Lenika Hill he knew that he had met the woman who would love him back to life. They have weathered a storm together and their love is so fated that neither want to let it go, but it seems their bubble of happiness is an illusion because life around them is falling apart. 

When Morgan Atkins attempts suicide, their bliss is shattered. So much is on the line. So many things hang in the balance as Morgan fights for her life. Her broken heart has led her to this, but if she dies, the soul of Ethic's family will be buried with her. 

In this heart pounding series fans have been written into a world of love, lust, anger, sadness, joy, gate and most of all growth. Hold on tight for another installment of this epic love story told in such a poignant way that it's hard to distinguish the real world from the one in your head. Welcome back to the Ethic Effect

The New Negro (1925) is an anthology by Alain Locke. Expanded from a March issue of Survey Graphic magazine, The New Negro compiles writing from such figures as Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Toomer, and Locke himself. Recognized as a foundational text of the Harlem Renaissance, the collection is organized around Locke’s writing on the function of art in reorganizing the conception of African American life and culture. Through self-understanding, creation, and independence, Locke’s New Negro came to represent a break from an inhumane past, a means toward meaningful change for a people held down for far too long.

“[F]or generations in the mind of America, the Negro has been more of a formula than a human being—a something to be argued about, condemned or defended, to be ‘kept down,’ or ‘in his place,’ or ‘helped up,’ to be worried with or worried over, harassed or patronized, a social bogey or a social burden.” Identifying the representation of black Americans in the national imaginary as oppressive in nature, Locke suggests a way forward through his theory of the New Negro, who “wishes to be known for what he is, even in his faults and shortcomings, and scorns a craven and precarious survival at the price of seeming to be what he is not.” Throughout The New Negro, leading artists and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance offer their unique visions of who and what they are; voicing their concerns, portraying injustice, and illuminating the black experience, they provide a holistic vision of self-expression in all of its colors and forms.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Alain Locke’s The New Negro is a classic of African American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Baltimore, 2006.

A deputy mayor is dead. An eighteen-year-old sits in county lockup with the wrong prints on the wrong gun. And the only lawyer willing to take the case just inherited it from the father who died on the courthouse steps.

Shawn Davidson walked away from his father's firm two years ago. He swore he was done with the city, done with the name, done with the kind of law that buries the truth instead of arguing it. Then Leo Davidson collapsed on the marble of Mitchell Courthouse and left his son one final file - a murder trial, a defendant nobody else will touch, and a paper trail that points everywhere except where it should.

Detective Phil Han runs a parallel case the brass don't want closed. Investigative reporter Jordan Grey chases a byline that could cost him his career - or his life. And in a high-rise above the harbor, Mayor Charles Dawson watches a model of a development that hasn't been built yet, deciding how to handle a problem named Davidson.

CONTEMPT is the first novel in the Civic Noir Universe - a seven-book saga of inheritance, justice, and the cost of carrying a name in a city that remembers everything.

For readers of S.A. Cosby, Attica Locke, and the world of The Wire.

Now you can support your favorite independent bookstore everywhere you go!

Wear our little bookshop with Love and Pride.

Houston, Texas, 1981. Jay Porter is hardly the lawyer he set out to be. His most promising client is a low-rent call girl and he runs his fledgling law practice out of a dingy strip mall. But he’s long since made peace with not living the American Dream and carefully tucked away his darkest sins: the guns, the FBI file, the trial that nearly destroyed him.

That is, until the night in a boat out on the bayou when he impulsively saves a woman from drowning—and opens a Pandora’s box. Her secrets put Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him his practice, his family, and even his life. But before he can get to the bottom of a tangled mystery that reaches into the upper echelons of Houston’s corporate power brokers, Jay must confront the demons of his past.

With pacing that captures the reader from the first scene through an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising is a compelling legal thriller that marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.

Celebrate the final installment of Attica Locke's Highway 59 Series, Guide Me Home! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, September 11, 2024 @ 7 PM

Where: Holy Family HTX (3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX, 77004) 

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support Attica Locke and the bookstore! 

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Attica Locke is a NY Times best-selling author of six novels, including Guide Me Home.  She is also a winner of an Edgar Award and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and she has been short listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and nominated for an LA Times Book Prize and an NAACP Image award for her work as a novelist. Locke is also a screenwriter and TV producer, with credits that include Empire, When They See Us and the Emmy-nominated Little Fires Everywhere, for which she won an NAACP Image award for television writing. She co-created and executive produced an adaptation of her sister Tembi Locke’s memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home for Netflix. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California

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