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.

New York Times bestselling author Alyssa Cole is back with another chilling thriller, set in the world of her megahit When No One Is Watching.

It was too good to be true.

Eboni Goodman has earned her Master’s in Social Work… only to be stuck delivering groceries. So when she lands a position as Administrator for an experimental village designed to reduce homelessness, she’s thrilled. Her stubborn optimism has finally borne fruit, and she is ready to change lives―starting with her own.

Except the South Jersey town isn’t exactly welcoming of their new neighbors. Eboni is determined to prove the program works, even when the hostility outside the gates is nothing compared to the glitches happening inside the village. And the only person she can rely on is Michael, a broody security guard and former local who's only recently returned to town.

As the town's buried history comes to light and strange occurrences stack up, cracks begin to show in the organization’s philanthropic facade. Eboni and Michael are pulled into a web of intrigue that threatens not just the program but everyone living there.

After all, it takes a village…

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.

A heartfelt, interracial, contemporary romance debut--and a love letter to K dramas--featuring a single mom whose chance to turn her neighborhood restaurant into a household name is upended by an unexpected spark with a swoon-worthy Korean business magnate, for fans of Kennedy Ryan, Tia Williams, and Susan Lee.

Keisha Thomson loves K-Dramas, but she never thought her life would turn into one. Keisha is a 37-year-old, divorced mom of her beloved autistic son, Kai, and the ambitious owner of True Soul, a Harlem soul-food restaurant. Set between Harlem and Seoul, the novel follows bold and pragmatic Keisha, charming yet duty-bound Han Seojun, and the viral red velvet cake that brings them together. What begins as a cultural and culinary clash becomes a whirlwind romance that upends everything they thought they knew about love, ambition, and what it means to put yourself first.

Life is a K Drama brings together Sherri Shepherd and Jayci Lee's complementary voices to create something truly fresh. Part escapism and part self-discovery, it’s for anyone who’s ever rebuilt themselves from scratch and for readers who crave joy that feels earned and real. With shades of Tia William’s Seven Days in June and Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game, it’s a sweeping, cinematic love story that glows with humor, heart, and hard-won hope. Importantly, it’s not just a romance between Keisha and Seojun, it’s also a love story about family, food, and culture.

From computer scientist, astrophysicist, and dreamer, Terysa Ridgeway, comes a story of two starry-eyed sisters who shine in STEM together!

Eight-year-old Terysa is a born problem-solver with a galaxy of ideas―and she's determined to win the school science fair. There's just one tiny problem… she has too many brilliant ideas to choose from!

Luckily, her big sister, Shana, is an astronomy whiz. When Shana shares the inspiring story of Dorothy Vaughan―NASA's first Black supervisor and a trailblazing computer programming pioneer―Terysa is inspired. Together, the sisters dive into coding, teamwork, and a little trial-and-error to design a project that moves all on its own. It's creative. It's unique. It's out of this world. But will it be enough to win first place?

Perfect for readers who love:

* STEM-inspired stories for kids.
* Strong, curious girls in science.
* Coding and beginner programming concepts.
* Inspiring real-life role models like Dorothy Vaughan.
* Sister relationships and teamwork.

"The power of George Jackson's personal story remains painfully relevant to our nation today, with its persistent racism, its hellish prisons, its unjust judicial system, and the poles of wealth and poverty that are at the root of all that. I hope the younger generation, black and white, will read Soledad Brother."  —Howard Zinn, author, A People's History of the United States

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life.
Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

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.

From the award-winning author Jared Lemus comes a novel where myth and danger collide in an isolated Guatemalan town

Huecotenango is a small town in a remote corner of Guatemala, where residents—outcasts, wanderers, and people running from the past—have gathered as if drawn by some unspoken calling. Behind Huecotenango’s daily rhythms, something has been silently approaching for fifteen years, and its inhabitants sense that their lives are about to change forever.

A crash on the outskirts brings two brothers into Huecotenango. The townspeople offer to help without knowing who the brothers are or what danger they might bring. Leo and Santiago see Huecotenango as a place to disappear and continue their illicit work, but their presence soon unsettles the community. Rumors spread and loyalties are tested as the town’s humble existence comes under threat. Extraordinary residents come into focus—a woman who can shapeshift into a jaguar, a healer who absorbs the ailments of others, a young woman with a debt to the god of the underworld—and their pasts, powers, and choices gradually converge with the brothers’ story in ways both dangerous and profound.

Jared Lemus has written a suspenseful, morally complex debut novel about survival, devotion, greed, and the inexorable pull of the past. In Magic in the Land of Eternal Spring, ordinary lives are tested by extraordinary forces, and the consequences of small decisions ripple fatally outward.

From the award-winning novelist and poet Dionne Brand, a smart, sensual, and witty novel about what happens when love and intellect are set on a collision course.

Theory begins as its narrator sets out, like many a graduate student, to write a wildly ambitious thesis on the past, present, and future of art, culture, race, gender, class, and politics―a revolutionary work that its author believes will synthesize and thereby transform the world.

While our narrator tries to complete this magnum opus, three lovers enter the story, one after the other, each transforming the endeavor: first there is beautiful and sensual Selah, who scoffs at the narrator’s constant tinkering with academic abstractions; then altruistic and passionate Yara, who rescues every lost soul who crosses her path; and finally spiritual occultist Odalys, who values magic and superstition over the heady intellectual and cultural circles the narrator aspires to inhabit. Each galvanizing love affair (representing, in turn, the heart, the head, and the spirit) upends and reorients the narrator’s life and, inevitably, requires an overhaul of the ever larger and more unwieldy dissertation, with results both humorous and poignant.

By effortlessly telling this short, intense tale in the voice of an unnamed, ungendered (and brilliantly unreliable) narrator, Dionne Brand makes a bold statement not only about love and personhood, but about race and gender―and what can and cannot be articulated in prose when the forces that inhabit the space between words are greater than words themselves.

Theory is a gorgeous, profoundly moving, word- and note-perfect novel of ideas that only a great artist at the height of her powers could write.

Celebrate the release of If This World We're Mine with Arriel Vinson!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, January 28 @ 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 If This World We're Mine, 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 have a copy from Kindred Stories feel free to choose the RSVP only option. 

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arriel Vinson is a Midwesterner who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. Her debut YA novel-in-verse, Under the Neon Lights, is a 2026 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, a Reese’s Book Club LitUp selection, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection. Arriel earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and is a Tin House YA Scholar, Highlights Foundation scholarship recipient, and Walter Grant recipient. Her sophomore novel, If This World Were Mine, is forthcoming in spring 2027. You can connect with her on social media at @arriwrites and find her work at arriwrites.com

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

LIARA TAMANI grew up in Houston, Texas, where every spring meant one thing: rodeo season. She loved getting decked out in her best cowgirl gear and soaking up the music, food, and electric energy of the rodeo, a joy she now shares with her daughter and husband. Her deep Texas roots shine through her storytelling, capturing the spirit and rhythms of the state in all her acclaimed novels: Calling My Name, All the Things We Never Knew, and What She Missed. Before becoming a writer, she attended Harvard Law School and worked as a marketing coordinator for the Houston Rockets and Comets, television production assistant, home accessories designer, floral designer, and yoga and dance teacher. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Duke University.

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.

Sometimes, the perfect match isn't the one you planned for. Fans of The Boyfriend Project by Farrah Rochon and One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London will love Weight for Me.

Julissa Sanders has it all--a thriving PR agency, a superstar NFL quarterback fiancé, and a picture-perfect life. But when a careless comment about her weight gain goes viral, Julissa's world crumbles. Determined to regain control, she hits the gym, only to find an unexpected ally in her fiancé's best friend, Malachi.

As Julissa navigates the pressures of planning a high-profile wedding and managing her image, she finds herself drawn to the man who's supposed to be just her trainer. With her carefully crafted life unraveling, Julissa must choose between the love she thought she wanted and the love that could change everything.