Ten years after her E! reality TV show Rob & Chyna aired, the entrepreneur and actress formerly known as Blac Chyna is subverting expectations and sharing where her faith walk leads her.

For years, Angela White’s public persona and private life was that of the Kardashian-adjacent Blac Chyna, former stripper and reality television star. Born Angela Renée White on May 11, 1988, in Washington, DC, she first burst onto the scene in 2010 as Nicki Minaj’s stunt double in Kanye West’s Monster video. That same year, Drake’s shout-out in Miss Me put her name in the game, sparking buzz that landed her in national magazines. Her exotic look and hustle at Miami’s King of Diamonds strip club turned heads, but it was her high-profile relationships with rapper Tyga (father of her son, King Cairo) and Rob Kardashian (father of her daughter, Dream) that cemented her fame, along wih her unapologetic persona.

What many didn’t realize was that privately her notoriety was additionally complicated by an alcohol addiction that drew her away from the person she’d been raised to be. But four years ago, Angela made the decision to reclaim herself, which meant stepping out of the toxic limelight, removing a number of physical enhancements, and sobering up. Both for herself and for her children.

But Sober Mine is about more than fighting addiction. It’s about redemption, finding balance, and rebuilding one’s self from the inside out. Angela returned to her faith, was baptized in 2022, and she’s been sober for nearly four years and counting. She’s also pursuing a degree in divinity training and education.

In Sober Mine, Angela pulls back the curtain and shares the personal journey that led her to the world stage, giving insight into what you thought you thought you knew about her from those reality television days, and she does it all in her signature voice, direct with a side order of humor.

This book is about grabbing onto faith, discovering one’s strength, and learning you don’t have be perfect to live the life you deserve—you just gotta keep it real.

Weaving ancestral wisdom with contemporary insight, Black Women Rising speaks directly to Black women’s lived realities of racial trauma, chronic stress, care fatigue, and resilience through a wholistic lens.

Filling a long-standing gap in the self-help and wellness market, Black Women Rising is a culturally grounded, deeply resonant guide created specifically for Black women seeking balance, purpose, and grounding in perilous times. This bold, African-centered book arrives at a moment of profound urgency. Informed by the authors’ expertise in African-centered social work and trauma-informed psychotherapy, each chapter brings to life one of the 18 Principles—rooted in Ma’at and the Nguzo Saba (Kwanzaa)—and closes with an action-oriented exercise readers can immediately apply.

Moving beyond reflection to action, this book offers clear pathways to healing and sustained liberation. Positioned at the intersection of race, gender, and mental health, the book meets a growing demand for self-care that is culturally intentional and affirming. With far-reaching impact in wellness, mental health, and social justice spaces, giving Black women a self-help book that sees and supports their capacity to rise and thrive individually and in community.

Black Women Rising positions healing as sacred and care as a powerful force for renewal and transformation, making it a timely, standout title in wellness, mental health, and cultural nonfiction.

An essential history of modern Black cinema, as led by avant-garde filmmaker, director, novelist, composer, and playwright Melvin Van Peebles.

Beg Borrow Steal, a title inspired by Black artists’ make-a-way-out-of-no-way ethos, is a stirring and remarkable deep dive into Black independent film and culture, as modeled by raconteur and iconoclast Melvin Van Peebles. Award-winning writer Santi Elijah Holley enriches the extraordinary history with interviews from today’s most innovative Black independent filmmakers and actors, such as Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as Van Peebles’s published and unpublished manuscripts, critical reviews, analyses, and reflections.

Independent Black artists across all disciplines—from music and theater to literature and poetry—continue to push boundaries, challenge stereotypes, and pursue their own vision, away from traditional gatekeepers. The success of artists like Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler can be traced directly to the pioneering work of Van Peebles, whose ambitious and innovative multidisciplinary artistry never yielded to anybody else’s vision but his own.

As a Black American who’d overcome poverty, discrimination, and other obstacles, Van Peebles refused to let White America take advantage of him and his talent. It’s made him a beacon for every Black auteur and independent filmmaker of the past 50 years. Sinners, Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, Get Out, She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, Shaft, Superfly, Daughters of the Dust, Selma, the list goes on. It is impossible to imagine any of these culturally defining films existing, if not for the groundwork laid by Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. It is canon in Black film.

Beg Borrow Steal is the story of the legendary man who provided the blueprint for independent Black cinema, and a tribute to the power of radical Black creativity in American art and culture.

From the final decades of US slavery to the present, a powerful and illuminating history of a profound inequity: the special burden of infant care and loss experienced by Black women.

In the United States, Black infants are far less likely than white infants to survive their first year of life. Underlying this predicament is a history of profound loss and persistent striving, which has durably shaped Black life in America. Following generations of mothers, caregivers, laborers, and activists from the final decades of slavery to the present, Perilous Passages chronicles the intimate practices and collective strategies Black communities created and relied upon to sustain early life threatened by disease, inadequate medical care, and racialized harm.

Perilous Passages examines nineteenth-century domestic care practices that carried families through the violence of slavery and war, and traces Black eugenic ideas, the efforts of various grassroots movements, and myths and realities surrounding the 1980s panic over “crack babies.” Health professionals, legal officials, and scientific experts exerted pressure, sometimes directly―as in antimidwifery campaigns―and sometimes more subtly, through life insurance practices that devalued Black life. Wangui Muigai shows that at every turn, authorities recast infant deaths as the fault of Black women, with ongoing impact on birthing experiences and outcomes. Still, Black women and their communities have always done more than bear loss. They have produced vital knowledge about its causes, trained in specialized care, developed networks of cradle-to-grave support, and organized to reform society in ways that safeguard children.

Centering Black women’s experiences, Perilous Passages insists on visceral confrontation with the deadliness of American racism while also offering a powerful account of what makes life possible.

DELUXE LIMITED EDITION first printing featuring stenciled edges

The LONG AWAITED adult debut novel by beloved NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING Dhonielle Clayton: a romantic contemporary fantasy novel set in New Orleans, about a woman pulled back into a forbidden love, kicking off a brand new series

Collette Marchand never wanted to return home to the immortal wards of New Orleans, let alone inherit her mother’s blood-soaked business. Collette left magic and a great love behind a decade ago, tucking herself away in Boston. But now, her mother, Lady Red, the living Conjure Saint and matriarch of the most notorious Conjure House, has died for the final time.

Back in New Orleans, Téo Baptiste is stuck. He’s working at the same hospital where, ten years ago, he lost everything – his sobriety and the love of his life, Collette. Nights at the busiest ER in the city help him bury his feelings and ignore his magical destiny to take over the undead immortal ward. But Lady Red’s death might be his chance to make things right with Collette again, and build a new future for himself.

When Collette is summoned back home to bury her mother, she uncovers Lady Red’s greatest secret: the true source of her power is a stolen card from the Deck of Life. A card that, along with the family business, passes to Collette. Determined to rewrite the past, Collette needs help from the last person she wants to see ever again: her former flame and the man who shattered her heart, Téo. Now, Collette must confront whether she’s destined to become the next Lady Red and rule over the immortal wards of New Orleans and beyond … or take a second chance at love.

A New York Times Notable Book

The Pulitzer Prize-winning critic investigates the roles of race and sex in his own life and in literary history.

Daring and fiercely original, The Women is at once a memoir, a psychological study, a sociopolitical manifesto, and an incisive adventure in literary criticism. It is conceived as a series of portraits analyzing the role that sexual and racial identity played in the lives and work of the writer's subjects: his mother, a self-described "Negress," who would not be defined by the limitations of race and gender; the mother of Malcolm X, whose mixed-race background and eventual descent into madness contributed to her son's misogyny and racism; brilliant, Harvard-educated Dorothy Dean, who rarely identified with other Black people or women, but deeply empathized with white gay men; and the late Owen Dodson, a poet and dramatist who was female-identified and who played an important role in the author's own social and intellectual formation.

Hilton Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to his inimitable scrutiny with relentless humor and sympathy. The results are exhilarating. Written in 1996, long before the rise of the genre-defying memoir, The Women was a prescient work of criticism and self-investigation whose clear-eyed insight still feels fresh and urgent to this day. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that created a form all its own.

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.

In a piercing blend of biography, criticism, and memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Salamishah Tillet explores Nina Simone’s life and the impact of her legacy.

In Nina Simone and the World She Made, Salamishah Tillet traces Nina Simone’s transformation from child prodigy to musical icon and fearless civil rights activist. When racism thwarted her dreams of becoming a classical pianist, Simone reinvented herself and created a sound wholly her own—one that would catapult her into stardom and the heart of the Black Power movement.

Decades later, Simone’s music inspired the hip-hop generation and Tillet’s own profound political awakening. From buying her first Nina Simone album to becoming a creative and activist, Tillet’s private encounters with Simone’s work grew into a broader exploration of her legacy. Exploring Simone’s unique impact on the American cultural landscape through the women who shaped her and those whom she shaped, Tillet reveals how art can be a powerful driver of social activism, and the struggles and sacrifices it involves.

With honest, lyrical prose, Tillet’s intimate portrait brings us close to Simone, while showing us how the singer’s voice captured the pain and promise of America and resonates in the fight for equality today. Nina Simone and the World She Made urges us to listen to Simone’s music—not just as a reflection of the past, but as a guide for the future.

In a brilliant departure from the novels that made Jesse Q. Sutanto a USA Today bestselling author—including Dial A for Aunties—comes the first book in a debut dark fantasy duology, following an assassin, a scholar, a con man, and a guard in a race to rediscover powerful lost magic and save their world...

Mara has no memory of life before her assassin training behind the fortress-like walls of Tchu-Morrokhai, which has been her world since she was five. Practicing discipline and strategy, sacrifice and solitude, she has dedicated herself to resisting the Divine Empress’s plans of eradicating the all-but-forgotten magic. She longs for a world once again filled with magic—and freedom and love. And she’ll do whatever it takes to find those things.

In the faraway city of Velingard, Livya is the privileged daughter of the revered scientist whose invention of an indestructible new metal was the catalyst for a great revolution. Yet Livya’s bored of suitors and balls, more interested in philosophical debates. But when an invite to a secret salon leads to a kidnapping attempt, Livya is suddenly on the run—with the unlikely aid of charming con man Kaian, a once dear childhood friend inexplicably turned frosty stranger.

Captain Fonde has served Velingard faithfully in the twenty years since the revolution, and all has been peaceful... until now, when he’s informed that their “indestructible” metal is inexplicably starting to crumble. Ships, bridges, buildings, statues—their entire post-revolution world is literally about to come apart. Could it be that the metal—and therefore the revolution—was flawed all along? Or is there something darker—evil, ancient, inhuman—at play?

With stunning world-building, Jesse Q. Sutanto weaves an epic tale of characters whose lives irrevocably intertwine—and unravel—as paths collide across continents, racing toward an explosive twist that will forever change all of their fates...

For the first time in print! A definitive compilation of Nikki Giovanni’s best and most beloved poems from her extraordinary 60-year career.

Nikki Giovanni’s poems are some of the most quoted, most memorable, and most talked about gems in American literature, with a huge pop culture following that continues even after her death in 2024. But there has never been a single “best of” volume of her work—until now.

The Essential Poems compiles Nikki’s most beloved and thought-provoking work, drawn from her extraordinary 60+ year career. Included here are classics like “Nikki-Rosa,” “Ego Trippin’,” “Housecleaning,” “Cotton Candy for a Rainy Day,” “Bicycles,” and “The Sterling Silver Mirror.” Edited by Dr. Virginia Fowler, Nikki’s widow, it also includes an Introduction and an Afterword by literary superstars Kwame Alexander and Renée Watson.

It is a book to be savored, and shared.

Originally published in 2005, former NBA star Etan Thomas’s first poetry collection defies the stereotype of the apolitical athlete; featuring brand-new poems by Thomas and his son―and University of Dayton basketball star―Malcolm Thomas

RETIRED NBA STAR, AUTHOR, AND OUTSPOKEN POLITICAL ACTIVIST, Etan Thomas is more than an athlete. In this, his first collection of poems―originally published in 2005 and reissued here with many new poems―the former center for the NBA’s Washington Wizards defies the stereotype of the apolitical athlete, and plants his roots in his budding literary career. With the conviction of a Bill Russell, and the poetic finesse of Muhammad Ali, Thomas takes on controversial topics such as the Death Penalty, the GOP, and racism. 

This fiery poet approaches his work fearlessly, writing in the strong, historical lineage of his literary elders Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, and in the tradition of more contemporary poets Ras Baraka, Tony Medina, and asha bandele. More Than an Athlete is not just a book of poetry; it’s a statement about new generations not being confined to a box, a definition, or a label. Some people play ball, and some people write poems. Etan Thomas has mastered the art of both.

The reimagined 2027 edition features brand-new poems by Thomas as well as his son Malcolm, who is following in his father’s footsteps on the court as a collegiate athlete, and on―and off―the page as a poet and activist.