*ships in 7-10 business days* 

“A modern masterpiece.” —Jason Reynolds, best-selling author of Look Both Ways

It’s 2013, and Circus Palmer, a forty-year-old Boston-based trumpet player and old-school ladies’ man, lives for his music and refuses to be tied down. Before a gig in Miami, he learns that the woman who is secretly closest to his heart, the free-spirited drummer Maggie, is pregnant by him. Instead of facing the necessary conversation, Circus flees, setting off a chain of interlocking revelations from the various women in his life. Most notable among them is his teenage daughter, Koko, who idolizes him and is awakening to her own sexuality even as her mentally fragile mother struggles to overcome her long-failed marriage and rejection by Circus.

Delivering a lush orchestration of diverse female voices, Warrell spins a provocative, soulful, and gripping story of passion and risk, fathers and daughters, wives and single women, and, finally, hope and reconciliation, in answer to the age-old question: how do we find belonging when love is unrequited?

BLACK ROMANCE - SMALL-TOWN ROMANCE - SECOND CHANCE - SPORTS ROMANCE - REVERSE GRUMPY X SUNSHINE - HBCU ROMANCE - CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE

In the small, close-knit town of Greer, Georgia, Tiffany Weathers and Mason Boom are two souls bound by a destiny neither of them can explain. From the first shared glance, Mason feels an unshakable connection to Tiffany, a recognition so profound it feels like he’s finally found the missing piece of himself. Tiffany, equally captivated, finds herself drawn to the life that Mason seems to offer—a life filled with love, family, and security. But as they navigate the peaks and valleys of adolescence into adulthood, they face unforeseen trials that test the depths of their love and resilience.

As they mature, Mason’s journey to become an NFL star pulls him into a world of fame and glamour. Tiffany, meanwhile, builds a life for herself as a successful dancer and studio owner, establishing stability for her son, Drew, and creating the quiet, fulfilling life she’s always wanted. Yet, despite their separate paths, fate continues to pull them together, forging a connection that remains unbroken even by time and distance.

Mason returns to Greer with a renewed determination to finally claim the life he’s always envisioned—with Tiffany at its center. For both, it’s a return not just to each other but to the dreams they’ve held onto through years of separation and growth. Reunited, Tiffany and Mason decide they’re done with the years of waiting and misunderstanding. Instead, they commit to building a life together, ready to face whatever challenges come their way. This time, they refuse to let anything or anyone tear them apart.

In The World Around Us, Mason and Tiffany’s love story unfolds as a testament to destiny’s intricate design, where fate, secrets, and shared history bind them in ways even they cannot fully comprehend. Their journey is an exploration of resilience, hope, and the unshakable belief that fate never fails and love will always prevail.

This second-chance sports romance will keep you on the edge of your seat, on the brink of tears, overcome with laughter, and rooting for a love that refuses to fade.

She's an angel.

And she doesn't mind dancing with a demon.

That's why I'd move mountains, dry seas, and hydrate the desert if it made her happy. She brought goodness to the world. It was only right that I made it hers, along with the two tiny beauties that shared her hazel eyes and perfect smile. For them, I'd do whatever. For them, I'd become whoever.

He's a protector.

And, a far cry from the menace they've labeled him.

He's just misunderstood. That's why I'd climb the highest mountain, cross the widest seas, and conquer the desert if it brought us closer together. He brought so much wholesomeness to the world. It was only right that I made him a part of mine, along with my two minis who shared my story and sentiments. Because of him, we'd found happiness. Because of him, we'd found home.

She needed a second chance. He couldn’t survive another loss. What began as a pretend relationship became impossible to fake in a small town that remembers everything and forgives nothing.

Kerry Kind never expected to start over in her thirties. Reeling from a painful divorce and a very public fallout, she is desperate for a fresh start and a chance to reclaim her life. When she lands a homeschool teaching position in a tight-knit small town, it feels like the second chance she’s been fighting for. That relief quickly fades when she realizes her new boss is the same man she clashed with just days earlier.

Victor Grimes is a world-renowned chef, devoted single father, and widower who has rebuilt his life around structure, control, and emotional distance. Love is no longer part of the plan. But when his daughters need stability and Kerry proves to be exactly what they’ve been missing, Victor finds himself confronting feelings he’s spent years trying to suppress.

What begins as a reluctant partnership and a harmless fake dating arrangement meant to quiet gossip, soon blurs the line between professional and personal. Their chemistry is undeniable, and their connection deepens with every moment spent together.
As old wounds resurface and their worlds collide, Kerry and Victor must decide whether love is worth risking everything they have worked so hard to protect, or if some lessons are too painful to relearn.

“My life had its significance and its only deep significance because it was part of a Problem,” W. E. B. Du Bois once wrote. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood these words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans—the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother, the descendant of slaves and tenant farmers—Ailey carries the weight of this Problem on her shoulders.

The daughter of an accomplished doctor and a strict schoolteacher, Ailey is raised in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. Growing up, she struggles with this duality, a battle for belonging that shapes her identity. On one side are her exacting parents and her imperious, light-skinned grandmother Nana Claire, to whom skin color is paramount. On the other, Ailey feels the pull of the “deep country” of her mother’s land-tending family, whose forebears endured the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow.

But how can Ailey live up to everyone’s expectations when half of her family rejects the truth of a fraught racial history, while the rest can’t ever seem to break away from it?

Former CNN News anchor Poppy Harlow and Saturday TODAY's Laura Jarrett celebrate how love comes in many forms—now in board book!

If love were a color, what color would it be?

Everyone in Ms. Clementine's class has a different answer, but Grace doesn't know which color to choose. Love could be blue like her favorite pair of shoes or yellow like the daffodils that grow in her neighborhood. As Grace and her classmates share what love looks like to them, they learn that it comes in many forms.

Former CNN news anchor Poppy Harlow and Saturday TODAY's Laura Jarrett have created a warmhearted tale that encourages young readers to celebrate the many meanings of love.

Now available in trade paper!

Love isn't about finding the right person—it's about becoming the right person.

No matter your relationships status—single, dating, engaged, married, or divorced—Student of Love invites you back into the classroom to learn what it truly takes to build healthy, loving and long-lasting relationships. From Laterras R. Whitfield, the host of the Dear Future Wifey Podcast and widely regarded as "The Relationship Whisperer," comes an essential guide—offering a God-centered perspective on healthy relationships—packed with refreshing wisdom and heartfelt lessons designed to equip you to make the right decisions in all your relationships.

In a world fixated on finding love, Student of Love shifts the focus to becoming love—offering raw, relatable lessons and hopeful perspectives that resonate with healing, growth, and self-discovery.

What makes this book a must-read?

Laterras steps into the classroom not as a professor, but as a fellow student—creating a space where vulnerability meets wisdom. Here's what's in the curriculum:

* A fresh approach to relationships: Learn from your mistakes and use them as steppingstones to build a more intentional and fulfilling love life.
* Recognize and define the types of Love: Gain the clarity, knowledge, and courage to seek the right connections.
* Guidance for every stage of love: Whether you're navigating the early days of dating, strengthening a marriage, or healing from heartbreak, or focusing on yourself, this book meets you where you are.
* Courageous conversations: Laterras tackles the tough topics with compassion and candor, offering profound insights that challenge and heal.
* Find the roadmap to self-awareness: Discover how to show up in your relationships with confidence, clarity, and authenticity.
* Hope after heartbreak: Heartache isn't the end of your story—it's a chance to rewrite it. Learn how to reassess, rediscover, and rebuild from a place of strength and self-love.

With brutal honesty and heartfelt authenticity, Student of Love explores the complexities of love in all its forms. It's not just a book—it's a guide to uncovering the love you deserve, starting with the love you give yourself.

Your love story isn't over. It's just beginning. So, grab your backpack, open your heart, and let Student of Love help you write the next chapter—one lesson at a time.

Hollywood icon and Emmy Award-winning Abbott Elementary actress Sheryl Lee Ralph shares the personal stories that have shaped her and the advice that has guided her throughout her life—helping readers breathe deeper, love stronger, and rise higher.

Sheryl Lee Ralph understands a truth most of us learn the hard way: There are moments in life when you must let your light shine. Moments when the noise of the world tries to mute your mic and silence your voice, dull your glow, and convince you to forget who you are. She has known those moments intimately—under the bright lights of Broadway and in the quiet hum of hospital rooms, on red carpets and in church pews. Sheryl has worn crowns and carried a few crosses, but through it all remained her unshakable faith in one simple belief: better must come. No matter how many times life knocks you down, you can rise, you must rise, reclaim yourself, and begin again.

You Better Love What You See isn’t a list of commandments to make you feel guilty, a to-do list, or the play-by-play story of an actor’s life. Filled with boundless empathy and wisdom, it’s a moving guide for anyone who wonders if they’re enough, who wants to lead with love and heal themselves, or who still battles with self-doubt.

Sheryl’s reflections draw from her life as a performer, mother, daughter, wife, sister, and above all a wise, wild woman. She shares stories about remaining determined in the face of defeat, overcoming obstacles when systemic oppression tried to keep her down, and how to find strength in every storm, including:

* Experiences from her childhood as the only girl of color in her Catholic school, to being fired from a TV role for not being “Black enough”
* Enrolling in the very first coed class at Rutgers University
* Bringing down the house with her historic Emmy Award win and acceptance speech
* And many more inspiring moments touching on themes such as faith, resilience, choosing joy, and finding purpose

Sheryl’s warm and empowering message is that, bottom line, when you look in the mirror, you better love what you see, because feeling powerful and purposeful won’t come from external accolades or approval—it starts with YOU. Her strong, authentic voice and magnetic presence are evident on every page—and readers will return to it again and again whenever their light is feeling a little dim.

From high fashion to everyday clothes, this book looks at the personal and political importance of Black style from the 1880s to the present.

Both during and after slavery in North America, “Sunday best” referred to clothes reserved for church or special occasions. Dressing in one’s Sunday best conveyed a sense of dignity and self-worth. Sunday best styling evolved after emancipation into the twentieth century, reflecting subsequent periods of Black cultural liberation, empowerment, and upward mobility. It is emblematic of the ways that self-fashioning in African-diasporic communities affirms humanity and communicates identity.

With examples from Canada, the Caribbean, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Sunday Best features archival and contemporary fashion alongside photography, painting, sculpture, and time-based media, looking at the significance of Black style. Essays by an interdisciplinary group of curators, designers, and scholars consider how communities throughout the African diaspora have used style as a reminder of one’s value, visibility, and agency, and the enduring influence of Sunday best dressing on artistic expression.

This richly illustrated volume is organized around the following themes:

• Origins, featuring fashion design by Christopher John Rogers and photography by James Van Der Zee
• Black church, with art by Coreen Simpson, Gordon Parks, and Laura Wheeler Waring
• Migration, through designers such as Foday Dumbuya
• Liberation, with fashion design by Spencer Badu and photography by Chantal Regnault
• Call and response, including fashion design by Patrick Kelly and photography by Melodie McDaniel

Published in association with the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibition Schedule

Art Gallery of Ontario
(October 6, 2026–February 28, 2027)

Philadelphia Museum of Art
(May 1, 2027–August 8, 2027)

The true story of an anticolonial movement, a political hope dashed, and an ordinary woman who became a firebrand for Puerto Rican independence -- told in breathtaking woodcut.

The next book in the New Haven series, interconnected standalones featuring second chances, fiery passion, and Black heroines who get their happily ever afters.

Rae

Loving someone with demons is hard but leaving them is harder.

That's a lesson I learned roughly a decade ago when I left the love of my life behind. Choosing the child we made but weren't ready for over any hope for what could be. Trading in potential for reality, my dreams for motherhood and the warmth of his embrace for a cold, lonely world.

Despite how tragic it all sounds, everything turned out okay. I made peace with my decisions, soothed the ache in my heart with harsh truths that have remained firmly in tact until...well, until now.

Now, I'm back in New Haven and nothing is the way it should be. The man I left behind is not the one I keep running into around town. He's steady, dependable, stable, ready to be a father to our daughter and desperate to do more than co-parent with me.

Hunter

couldn't stop wanting Rachel Prince if I tried. Not that I ever have. Tried, that is. Why would I when she's the only good thing I've ever craved, the only addiction I've had that didn't try to destroy me?

When she left me, I wasn't mad. I didn't want her to go, but I think by the end we both knew she couldn't stay. There was too much darkness around us, and it was all emanating from me.

My addiction. My pain. My grief overshadowing hers.

I wasn't the man she needed or the partner she deserved. She did the right thing, getting out, taking our kid with her. But knowing that doesn't make it hurt any less.

It does, however, make me determined.

To keep my decade long sobriety streak going.

To make up for every day I missed of my daughter's life.

To win back the love of my life and never let her go again.

Discover how to overcome challenges, regain your footing, and rise stronger.

In The Art of Rising Again, join artist, writer, speaker LaNia Roberts (LaNia the Artist) for a bold and transformative journey that will guide you to live with greater self-worth, resilience, and unapologetic joy.

Life knocks us down. Over and over again. And getting back up can feel impossible. Whether you've been navigating illness, divorce, failure, or other life-altering events, it is time to break free from shame, embrace self-compassion, and rediscover your purpose.

LaNia has been there too, and in The Art of Rising Again she comes alongside you and shares her story of overcoming some of life’s biggest challenges so you can find the permission and strength to do it too. Combining her stunning artwork with practical tools that will empower you during the journey ahead, she offers you inspiration to regain your footing and rise stronger. Organized into 10 impactful sections, this book offers:

* Raw, personal stories from LaNia’s life, revealing how she overcame challenges and silenced her inner critic
* Devotions, affirmations, and actionable steps to empower you on your journey of healing and growth
* Stunning fine art paintings by LaNia, celebrating memory, identity, and liberation through vibrant colors and layered storytelling

The Art of Rising Again is an ideal gift for loved ones and friends who need encouragement, those who may not yet recognize their own worth, or anyone recovering from life’s toughest challenges.

If you are ready to walk the path of transformation, this no-nonsense, straight-to-the-heart guide will help you get started. This book will empower you to reclaim your confidence, pursue your dreams, and rise again.