This lyrical celebration of Juneteenth, deeply rooted in Black American history, spans centuries and reverberates loudly and proudly today.

After 300 years of forced bondage;
hands bound, descendants of Africa
picked up their souls—all that they owned—
leaving shackles where they fell on the ground,
headed for the nearest resting place to be found.

Deeply emotional, evocative free verse by poet and activist Sojourner Kincaid Rolle traces the solemnity and celebration of Juneteenth from its 1865 origins in Galveston, Texas to contemporary observances all over the United States. This is an ode to the strength of Black Americans and a call to remember and honor a holiday whose importance reverberates far beyond the borders of Texas.

A dramatic and thought-provoking novel of one family's triumph in the face of the hardships and challenges of the post-Civil War South, from the award-winning author of Family

"Rendered with compassion and beautiful simplicity."--The Washington Post Book World

"[A] provocative and at times painful family portrait . . . It should be required reading."--Detroit Free Press

Opening in Texas during the waning years of the Civil War, The Wake of the Wind tells the epic story of a remarkable heroine, Lifee, and her husband, Mor. When news of Emancipation finally comes to Texas, Mor, Lifee, and their family set out in search of hope and a piece of land they can work and call their own. Miraculously, they manage not only to survive but to succeed--their crops grow, their children thrive, they educate themselves and others. But the South during Reconstruction is not a place that takes kindly to the achievements of former slaves, and as lynchings and injustices become a plague across the region, time and time again they must make the anguished decision to leave their land in search of a safer place.

Land, however, is the least of their worldly possessions. Lifee and Mor are the descendants of a long and vital line. Having used their intelligence, strength, and ingenuity to make their place in the new post-Civil War world, they in turn pass those talents along to their children--the next generation to surge forward, accomplishing more than their parents could ever dream.

At once tragic and triumphant, The Wake of the Wind is a penetrating look at the challenges that generations of African Americans have had to overcome in order to carve out a home and a future for themselves and their families.

Leading Binnizá and Maya Ch'orti' scientist Jessica Hernandez, PhD, weaves together Indigenous knowledge, environmental science, and personal family stories in her highly anticipated follow-up to the LA Times best-seller Fresh Banana Leaves.

Not every environmental problem is a result of climate change, but every environmental and climate change problem is a result of colonialism.

Dr. Jessica Hernandez offers readers an Indigenous, Global-South lens on the climate crisis, delivering a compelling and urgent exploration of its causes—and its costs. She shares how the impacts of colonial climate catastrophe—from warming oceans to forced displacement of settler ontologies—can only be addressed at the root if we reorient toward Indigenous science and follow the lead of Indigenous peoples and communities.

Growing Papaya Trees explores:

* Energy as a sociopolitical issue
* The interconnectedness of natural disasters, sociopolitical turmoil, and forced migration
* Our oceans, our forests, and our Indigenous futures
* Moving Indigenous science from mere acknowledgement into real action
* How to nourish Indigenous roots when displaced beyond borders

Dr. Hernandez asks: what does it mean to be Indigenous when we’re separated from our lands? How do we nurture future generations knowing they, too, will have to live away from their ancestral places? She illuminates that cultures are not lost, even amid genocide, turmoil, war, and climate displacement—and shows us how to be better kin to each other against the ecological violence, colonial oppression, and distorted status quo of the Global North.

Two homicide detectives track a brazen killer who's dropping bodies at historical Philadelphia landmarks in this action-packed crime thriller.

Two homicide detectives track a brazen killer who's dropping bodies at historical Philadelphia landmarks in this action-packed crime thriller.

"Marc did a great job setting the table. Looking forward to the next course." -K'WAN, national bestselling author of Animal

"Avery delivers a heart-stopping thriller. Giuseppe "Discipline" Cain is a one-man crime wave." -Dennis Tafoya, author of Dope Thief, an Apple+ TV series

"Discipline is everything you want in a buddy cop story. Gritty, action-packed, clever, and funny." -Delaware Today Magazine

"Has Netflix series written all over it." -Philadelphia Magazine

Giuseppe "Discipline" Cain is a cold-hearted, calculated, and resentful murderer who turns Philadelphia into his own personal killing ground. As the death toll rises, city officials and the police department clamor to calm the fears of the citizens about this brazen serial killer. When an elected official's family member is found dead, no one in the city is safe.

Detective Aaden Bravo is a highly decorated officer with a legendary clearance rate. Detective Christian Bennett is flashy, reckless, and a serial womanizer. After Christian's transfer to the Philadelphia Police Department's homicide division, these two starkly contrasting officers are forced to work together. Despite their disdain for each other, Aaden and Christian's skill sets complement each other. While Aaden is all about the job and Christian is all about the women, their next case is all about survival.

Will they succumb to the pressure of maintaining their partnership, or can they cast aside their differences and stay alive long enough to bring Discipline to justice?

I can read a man before he even opens his mouth. I know which ones are starving to be understood, which ones hide their scars in designer suits, and which ones will hand me exactly what I need just for the privilege of feeling seen. I’ve been running this game long enough to turn conversations into currency and eye contact into opportunities.

Every move I make is calculated. When I dance, my movements speak to their thoughts before I ever open my mouth. I tell their secrets with the arch of my back, answer their questions with the roll of my hips while I strip them bare mentally.

But then there’s Kendrix Givelle. A man who doesn’t ask questions, just studies the way my shoulders drop when I’m tired, the way my smile fades when the weight gets heavy.

I’ve built my world on control. On never needing anyone to hold it up for me. And yet… one look from him, and I start to wonder.. What if I’ve finally met the man who speaks my body language as fluently as I do?

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.

One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution.

In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.

Celebrate the release of No Sense in Wishing with Lawrence Burney!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday July 10 @ 6 PM CST

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

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to grab your copy of No Sense In Wishing, support the author and our store programming.

Please note outside copies of the book 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

A personal and analytical essay collection from culture critic Lawrence Burney that is a personal and analytical look at his home city of Baltimore, music from throughout the global Black diaspora, and the traditions that raised him.

There are moments in our lives when we discover an artist, an album, a film, or a cultural artifact that leaves a lasting impression. These moments inform how we understand the world, and ourselves, moving forward.

In a time when music is spurring Black Americans’ connection with Africans on the Continent, culture critic Lawrence Burney takes us on a journey from the streets of Baltimore to the concert halls of Lagos, reminisces on seeing his mother perform as the opening act of a Gil Scott-Heron show when he was a child, and sits at a Maryland crab feast with family, assessing how the Black people in his home state have historically improvised paths for their liberation. Burney explores these profound interactions with incisive and energizing prose, offering us a personal and critical perspective on the people, places, music, and art that transformed him.

No Sense in Wishing is a kaleidoscopic exploration of Burney’s search for self. With its gutsy and uncompromising criticism alongside intimate personal storytelling, this “powerful collection of essays” (Rolling Stone) is like an album that hits all the right notes, from a promising writer on the rise.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence Burney is a writer, editor, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore’s music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York Magazine, GQ, Washington Post and Pitchfork. He has also worked as an editor at The Fader, a staff writer at VICE, and an editor/reporter at The Baltimore Banner. His first book, No Sense in Wishing, a collection of essays, was published in July 2025 via Atria Books. His second book, Sing Back To Me, will also be published by Atria Books. Follow him on Instagram and X @TrueLaurels.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard.

Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. He is the founder of The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative, a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their on their own terms, in their own communities. He is the co-host of Reckon True Stories with Deesha Philyaw. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.

The beloved novel about a New York City girlhood that heralded a renaissance in Black women’s literature, with a new foreword by Nicole Dennis-Benn, the bestselling author of Patsy and Here Comes the Sun

One of The New York Times Magazine’s 25 Most Significant New York City Novels from the Last 100 Years

A Penguin Classic

Selina Boyce comes of age in 1940s New York as the daughter of two immigrants from Barbados: a free-spirited father she adores and who dreams of returning to his Caribbean island home, and a disciplined, hardworking mother she admires and who is determined to purchase their Brooklyn brownstone. When her father comes into an unexpected inheritance, Selina is torn between his nostalgia for the past and her mother’s ambition for the future, all while negotiating racism, sexuality, Depression-era poverty, and the competing values of African Americans and her West Indian immigrant community.

First published in 1959, Brown Girl, Brownstones opened a window into the rich inner life of Black women and today ranks with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn as one of the great New York City novels. With her autobiographical debut, Paule Marshall paved the way for Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Maya Angelou—and took her place in the American literary canon.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

From one of our most distinguished historians comes a groundbreaking new examination of the myths and realities of the period after the Civil War.

Drawing on a wide range of long-neglected documents, Eric Foner places a new emphasis on black experiences and roles during the era. We see African Americans as active agents in overthrowing slavery, in shaping Reconstruction, and creating a legacy long obscured and misunderstood. He compellingly refutes long-standing misconceptions of Reconstruction, and shows how the failures of the time sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s. Richly illustrated and movingly written, this is an illuminating and essential addition to our understanding of this momentous era.

The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the most important documents in American history. As we commemorate its 150th anniversary, what do we really know about those who experienced slavery?

In their pioneering book, Envisioning Emancipation, renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer have amassed 150 photographs—some never before published—from the antebellum days of the 1850s through the New Deal era of the 1930s. The authors vividly display the seismic impact of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation, providing a perspective on freedom and slavery and a way to understand the photos as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.

Envisioning Emancipation illustrates what freedom looked like for black Americans in the Civil War era. From photos of the enslaved on plantations and African American soldiers and camp workers in the Union Army to Juneteenth celebrations, slave reunions, and portraits of black families and workers in the American South, the images in this book challenge perceptions of slavery. They show not only what the subjects emphasized about themselves but also the ways Americans of all colors and genders opposed slavery and marked its end.

Filled with powerful images of lives too often ignored or erased from historical records, Envisioning Emancipation provides a new perspective on American culture.

This inspiring photographic board book celebrating Juneteenth is from the ALA Stonewall Award–winning team Little Feminist team

Freedom feels like hugs and kisses, unity, strength and pride.
Freedom feels like a million steps forward―together with every stride.

From award-winning indie publisher Little Feminist Press comes an engaging board book celebrating Juneteenth and its powerful history. Bursting with beautiful, community-sourced photographs, this board book features powerful images of Black joy, allyship from all demographics, and the many ways people can celebrate this important American holiday.

Showcasing real families and communities, young readers will see festivities and merriment in action as kids, their adoring adult caretakers, and their neighbors share stories, prepare meals, listen, hug, dance, show kindness, demonstrate bravery, and step in to help their families and communities.

The book also includes family discussion questions and a note for grown-ups on how to use this book with young children.

We're meeting to discuss Kin by Tayari Jones!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Thursday, July 30 @ 7PM CST

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

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

ABOUT KIN

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.

A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in