35 results for “J.L. Seegars”

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  • Ashes at the Altar (Blood at the Root) cover image
    $20.99

    At a hidden magical HBCU a teen boy must confront evil spirits, family secrets and tested loyalties. In this haunting finale to the New York Times bestselling Blood at the Root trilogy, bloodlines, betrayal, and legacy collide in a battle that may cost everything.

    Malik Baron has learned a lot since he first came to Caiman University: History is power. Family is more than just blood. You can't escape your past. And magic always comes with a price.

    But nothing he's been taught could have prepared him for what this semester will bring. Even after he risked it all to trap the evil spirit Marinette that has been possessing his mother, her power continues to grow. And with her and the Bokors still at large, the cracks in the magical community have reached a breaking point. Just as Malik begins to get to know his father's family, the Bonclairs' power is challenged, leaving him to decide where his loyalties lie. And it's not just the future of Caiman at stake, but the very magic that runs in his veins.

    In the propulsive and emotional conclusion to this powerful trilogy, the future and the family Malik has fought so hard to build and protect is in greater danger than ever. But with the power of ancestors and the strength of his loved ones behind him, can he fight for what the world has always said is impossible for a Black boy like him—a happy ending?

  • The Heart Trials cover image
    Sold out

    In a world where love is forbidden, one girl must fight for her heart and freedom through deadly trials in the first book of a new dystopian romantasy duology from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J. Elle.

    Welcome to The Heart Trials.
    The prize is love.
    The cost is everything.

    In Ethyria the highborn may love; the lowborn may only feel what the Benevolent allows.

    Saltblood lowborn Axira Merreri survives the decaying districts by keeping her heart locked tight, couriering goods by day—and smuggling the ruler’s euphoric Heartfillers to the highborn by night. Until a drop goes wrong and her execution looms.

    When she strikes a dangerous bargain to steal something from the Tournament of Hearts, a ruthless dating competition to gain highborn citizenship, she enters. Not for love. For freedom. But as the twisted allure of the competition turns deadly, an unexpected connection cracks her defenses, forcing her to confront a truth she fears: In a regime built on engineered happiness, the most dangerous weapon she has is her heart.

    New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J. Elle delivers a breathless series opener that is bold, bone-chilling, and wholly original. For fans of the cutthroat competition of The Hunger Games, Love Island, and Powerless, this dystopian romantasy explores what happens when the heart becomes the empire’s sharpest blade.

  • Book cover image

    by Jas Hammonds

    $19.99

    *ships in 7 - 10 business days*

    From Jas Hammonds, award-winning author of We Deserve Monuments, comes an unflinching novel about addiction that Courtney Summers, New York Times bestselling author of Sadie and I’m the Girl, called “sensitively wrought and gorgeously written.”

    It’s the summer before college and eighteen-year-old Blake Brenner and her girlfriend, Ella, have one goal: join the mysterious and exclusive Serena Society. The sorority promises status and lifelong connections to a network of powerful, trailblazing women of color. Ella’s acceptance is a sure thing―she’s the daughter of a Serena alum. Blake, however, has a lot more to prove.

    As a former loner from a working-class background, Blake lacks Ella’s pedigree and confidence. Luckily, she finds courage at the bottom of a liquor bottle. When she drinks, she’s bold, funny, and unstoppable―and the Serenas love it. But as pledging intensifies, so does Blake’s drinking, until it’s seeping into every corner of her life. Ella assures Blake that she’s fine; partying hard is what it takes to make the cut . . .

    But success has never felt so much like drowning. With her future hanging in the balance and her past dragging her down, Blake must decide how far she’s willing to go to achieve her glittering dreams of success―and how much of herself she’s willing to lose in the process.

  • Kindred Stories - Lapel Enamel Pin
    $12.00

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

    Wear our little bookshop with Love and Pride.

  • IRL AUTHOR TALK: boy maybe with W. J. Lofton - April 30 @ 7PM
    from $0.00

    Celebrate W. J. Lofton's debut poetry collection, boy maybe! 

    EVENT DEETS

    When: Wednesday, April 20 @ 7 PM

    Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know to expect you or RSVP WITH BOOK to secure your copy of boy maybe: poems!

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    51 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W. J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America

    W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    W.J. Lofton has earned fellowships from Cave Canem and Emory University. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in TIME, wildness, Obsidian, Scalawag, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, American Poets Magazine, Prose to the People, No Justice, No Peace: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter, and film festivals nationwide. 

  • IRL AUTHOR TALK: Spilling the Tea with Brenda Jackson - May 15 @ 7PM
    from $5.00

    Celebrate Brenda Jackson's 150th book, Spilling the Tea! 

    EVENT DEETS

    When: Tuesday, May 15 @ 7PM

    Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

    How: RSVP WITH BOOK

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    Ninety-something Mama Laverne is determined to find all of her great-grandchildren their perfect match before going home to glory. So far, her success rate is 100 percent—and she intends to keep it that way.

    Ninety-something-year-old Felicia Laverne Madaris, known in the family as Mama Laverne, is determined to find all of her great-grandchildren the perfect match before she goes home to glory. So far, her success rate is 100 percent, and she intends to keep it that way.

    After sustaining injuries in Iraq, US Army Ranger Chancellor (Chance) Madaris was told he’d never walk again. Chance credits his great-grandmother, Mama Laverne, with giving him the will and fortitude to heal and prove the doctors wrong. He has a healthy respect for her meddling ways and knows he’ll eventually end up next on her matchmaker’s list.

    When Zoey Pritchard was eight, she survived a car accident that left both her parents dead. She was sent to live with her great-aunt who refused to speak about her parents. Zoey has no memory from before the crash, but she’s been having the same dream over and over…

    Guided by nothing but a hunch and images from her dream, Zoey travels to Houston. Searching for answers, Zoey uncovers a scandal involving her parents and the wealthy and powerful Madaris family. Her trail leads her straight to Chance’s door. The dislike and intense attraction are instant and simultaneous. Was it chance or Mama Laverne’s plan to throw this pair together?

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    BRENDA JACKSON is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than one hundred contemporary multicultural romance novels, including the Madaris Family series, the Westmorelands series, and The Playas series. She was the first African-American author to have a book published under the Harlequin/Silhouette Desire line and the first African-American romance author to hit both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists in the series romance genre. Many of her books have been adapted into movies. Brenda lives in Jacksonville, Florida, and divides her time between family, writing and traveling. brendajackson.net.

  • IN PERSON AUTHOR TALK: We are a Haunting with Tyriek White & Kiese Laymon-June 1 @7PM CST
    from $0.00
    Come swoon over We are a Haunting with us! 
    EVENT DEETS
    WHEN: June 1 at 7PM CST
    WHERE: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX 77004)
    HOW: RSVP to reserve your free ticket or RSVP with book to support our store and programming. 
    ABOUT THE BOOK
    A poignant debut for readers of Jesmyn Ward and Jamel Brinkley, We Are a Haunting follows three generations of a working class family and their inherited ghosts: a story of hope and transformation. 

    In 1980’s Brooklyn, Key is enchanted with her world, glowing with her dreams. A charming and tender doula serving the Black women of her East New York neighborhood, she lives, like her mother, among the departed and learns to speak to and for them. Her untimely death leaves behind her mother Audrey, who is on the verge of losing the public housing apartment they once shared. Colly, Key’s grieving son, soon learns that he too has inherited this sacred gift and begins to slip into the liminal space between the living and the dead on his journey to self-realization.

    In the present, an expulsion from school forces Colly across town where, feeling increasingly detached and disenchanted with the condition of his community, he begins to realize that he must, ultimately, be accountable to the place he is from. After college, having forged an understanding of friendship, kinship, community, and how to foster love in places where it seems impossible, Colly returns to East New York to work toward addressing structural neglect and the crumbling blocks of New York City public housing he was born to; discovering a collective path forward from the wreckages of the past. A supernatural family saga, a searing social critique, and a lyrical and potent account of displaced lives, We Are a Haunting unravels the threads connecting the past, present, and future, and depicts the palpable, breathing essence of the neglected corridors of a pulsing city with pathos and poise.
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR 
    Tyriek Rashawn White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn, where he served at-risk and marginalized youth, artists, and scholars in the classroom. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Lit, a literary foundation which seeks to provide mutual aid and various resources to Black writers across the diaspora. He has received fellowships from Callaloo Writing Workshop, New York State Writers Institute, and Key West Writers’ Workshop, among other honors. He holds a degree in Creative Writing and Africana Studies from Pitzer College, and most recently earned an MFA from the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the forthcoming novel, WE ARE A HAUNTING (Astra House, 2023).
    ABOUT THE MODERATOR

    Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libby Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. He is also the  author of Long Division, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and  Heavy: An American Memoir.  Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.

  • June 2023 Adult Bookclub: Belly of the Beast by Da'Shaun L. Harrison
    from $0.00

    Our meeting will be on Thursday, June 22, 2023, at 7:00 PM CST at KINDRED STORIES. Be sure to RSVP and show up with the book read (or mostly read).  If you haven't read the book at all, that's ok too.

    Please support the space and opportunities we create by purchasing your book from our store. 

    About the Book

    Exploring the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.

    To live in a body both fat and Black is to exist at the margins of a society that creates the conditions for anti-fatness as anti-Blackness. Hyper-policed by state and society, passed over for housing and jobs, and derided and misdiagnosed by medical professionals, fat Black people in the United States are subject to sociopolitically sanctioned discrimination, abuse, condescension, and trauma.
     
    Da’Shaun Harrison--a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer--offers an incisive, fresh, and precise exploration of anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, foregrounding the state-sanctioned murders of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people in historical analysis. Policing, disenfranchisement, and invisibilizing of fat Black men and trans and nonbinary masculine people are pervasive, insidious ways that anti-fat anti-Blackness shows up in everyday life. Fat people can be legally fired in 49 states for being fat; they’re more likely to be houseless. Fat people die at higher rates from misdiagnosis or nontreatment; fat women are more likely to be sexually assaulted. And at the intersections of fatness, Blackness, disability, and gender, these abuses are exacerbated.
     
    Taking on desirability politics, the limitations of gender, the connection between anti-fatness and carcerality, and the incongruity of “health” and “healthiness” for the Black fat, Harrison viscerally and vividly illustrates the myriad harms of anti-fat anti-Blackness. They offer strategies for dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us “fat is bad,” and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.

  • IRL AUTHOR TALK: The Grandest Garden with Gina L. Carroll - June 6 @ 7:30 PM CST
    from $5.00

    Celebrate the release of The Grandest Garden with Gina L. Carroll!

    EVENT DEETS

    When: Thursday, June 6, 2024

    Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

    How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support our programming and the author. 

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    In this coming-of-age story about the cycle of life in and out of the garden, Bella Fontaine comes to understand as a young woman trying to make her way in the world, that when it’s time to leave home, it’s time—whether you feel ready or not.

    Bella Fontaine is on her own. Fresh out of college and with the winnings from her first international photography competition, she decides to leave Los Angeles to forge a new life in New York City. But will she be able to overcome the trauma of her childhood and her break from home to make it as a successful artist and professional photographer in a new city? Or will her secrets catch up with her ,and keep her from developing the relationships she needs to make her dreams come true?

    We meet young Bella just after her tenth birthday, and her grandmothers, Olivette and Miriam, each with a beautiful, mature garden as different from each other as the two gardeners who tend them. As Bella’s homelife begins to unravel, she relies on her grandmother’s gardens as her refuge for stability and belonging. But when Miriam moves in with Olivette in search of healing, the grandmothers bond in a way that makes Bella feel excluded. What happens next sends Bella out into the world before she is ready.

    The Grandest Garden is a poignant coming-of-age story about the ties that bind us to our people and how to survive when they break.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Gina L. Carroll is the author of A Story That Matters: A Gratifying Way to Write About Your Life and editor of Stories Are Medicine: Writing to Heal, An Anthology. A self-pro-fessed story wrangler, Gina founded StoryHouse Texas, a creative space dedicated to cultivating and amplifying the diversity of vision and voice in story. The Grandest Garden is her debut novel. She currently lives in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Gina, visit www.ginacarroll.com.

    ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

    Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton is an award-winning writer, director, performer, critic, and the first Black Poet Laureate of Houston, TX. Praised by the NY Times as an artist who “defies categorization”, her genre-bending works span from stage to page, and everything in between. She is the author of Newsworthy (Bloomsday Literary, 2019) which was translated into German (Berichtenswert, Elif Verlag, 2020), Black Chameleon (Henry Holt, 2023), and an upcoming children's book, Hush Hush Hurricane (Kokila Books). Honored as part of Houston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 class, she has been a contributing writer for Glamour, Texas Monthly, Muzzle, and ESPN's Andscape, to name a few.

    Her most recent choreopoem, PLUMSHUGA: The rise of Lauren Anderson, debuted at Stages Theater and made the cover of the NY Times Culture Section. Her forthcoming opera, She Who Dared, composed by Jasmine Barnes, will  debut in Spring 2025. Her memoir, Black Chameleon (Henry Holt & Co, 2023), recently won the the Carr P. Collins award for Best Nonfiction through the Texas Institute of Letters (2024). Order your copy now.

  • A Taste of Sin: Passion and Politics #2 cover image
    Sold out

    A Taste of Sin is the stunningly emotional and dangerously sexy conclusion to the Passion and Politics duet.

    Months after suffering a devastating heartbreak, Selene Taylor finds herself navigating the complexities of her new role as First Lady while longing for the two men her husband is determined not to let her have—Secret Service agents Callan Drake and Lance Beckham.

    With their hearts on the line and threats pressing in from all sides, the forbidden trio is faced with the challenge of wading through the webs of lies and shadows of deceit to find their way back to each other. For good.

  • AUTHOR TALK: Revive Me with J.L. Seegars - April 18 @ 7PM
    Sold out

    Celebrate the release of Revive Me with J.L. Seegars!

    EVENT DEETS

    When: Saturday, April 18 @ 7PM

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

    How: Grab your ticket to support the author and our store programming. You can also grab a special book bundle for the first two books in the series, which includes Restore Me and Revive Me (Book 1).

    Please note outside copies of Revive Me will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories.

    ABOUT THE BOOK

    The next book in the New Haven series, interconnected standalones featuring second chances, fiery passion, and Black heroines who get their happily ever afters. This is part one of a trilogy.

    Mallory

    The first time I kissed Christopher Johnson, I knew he would be my biggest mistake. It didn't stop me from wanting him though, and when the ghosts from my past came barging into the present, it didn't stop me from agreeing to let him help.

    It was supposed to be a simple business arrangement, a few months of playing a role that came far too easily to the both of us, but it wasn't long before it became more.

    Love. Devotion. Heartbreak in its truest form.

    Some people say life is for the living, but I say life is for the prepared. For the planners who know that controlling every piece on the board is the only way to get the result you want.

    To avoid unfortunate complications like having your heart broken by a man past experiences taught you, you never should have trusted in the first place.

    Christopher

    There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do for Mallory Kent.

    I think I knew it the first time I laid eyes on her, and it's remained one of my unspoken truths for the two years that I've known her. But I never thought I'd get the opportunity to do anything about it because Mallory is one of those people who doesn't need anyone.

    She's strong, serious, and always in control of every situation around her, which is why the second I see her looking panicked and uncertain in the arms of a figure from her past, I don't think. I just act.

    I had no idea that one small decision would lead to this. A fake relationship―designed to solve her problems and mine―turned real. An earth shattering love torn apart by the very forces that led to its conception. Forces that turned me into the source of our destruction.

    There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do for Mallory Kent, including break her heart to save her soul.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    J.L. Seegars is a dedicated smut peddler and lifelong nerd who’s always had a love of words, storytelling and drama. When she isn’t writing messy and emotionally complex characters like the ones she grew up around, she’s watching reality TV, supporting her fellow authors by devouring their work or spending time with her husband and son.

     

  • MARCH 2026: Romance Book Club - March 10 @ 7PM - Reschedule
    Sold out

    We're meeting to discuss Restore Me by J. L. Seegars!

    BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

    When: Wednesday, March 25 @ 7PM CST (Rescheduled Date)

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

    How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Romance Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here! 

    * If you already RSVP'd for the original date, you do not need to RSVP again.

    ABOUT RESTORE ME

    Dominic Alexander is my late husband's best friend and the last man on Earth that I should want. He's arrogant, dismissive, and up until recently has only ever used those dark eyes of his to look right through me. For the last twelve years, he's taken a sick pleasure in making me feel paper thin, like my entire existence is of no consequence to him at all.

    But now, things are different.

    After one drunken night and a surprisingly sexy act of heroism, he's started to be...nice. Treating me like something other than the physical embodiment of his annoyance, which would be nice if it didn't make me feel all the things I swore to never feel for another man after my husband died.

    Dominic

    Sloane Kent is going to be my undoing.

    What's worse: I think I'm going to enjoy being unraveled by the gold flecks in her hazel eyes and the adorable little way she scrunches her nose up when we're arguing, which we've done a lot of over the past decade. She thinks it's because I hate her, and I've always let her think that because the alternative is...untenable.

    But something is changing between us, and I don't know how to stop myself from breaking every promise I've ever made to myself regarding my best friend's wife. Promises that include never telling her that there's a long list of things I feel about her, but hate isn't one of them.

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