The Subtle Art of Folding Space, is the exhilarating debut science fiction novel from Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author John Chu channels unhinged physics, generational trauma, and the comfort of really good dim sum. This isn't your usual jaunt through quantum physics.

Ellie’s universe, and this one, is falling apart. Her ailing mother is in a coma; her sister, Chris, accuses her of being insufficiently Chinese between assassination attempts; and a shadowy cabal of engineers is trying to hijack the skunkworks, the machinery that keeps the physics of each universe working the way it’s supposed to.

Daniel, Ellie's cousin, has found an illicit device in the skunkworks―one that keeps Ellie's comatose mother alive while also creating destabilizing bugs in the physics of this universe. It's not a good day.

If she can confront her mother’s legacy and overcome her family’s generational trauma, she just might find a way to preserve the skunkworks and reconcile with her sister…but digging into her family’s past is thornier than it seems, and the secrets she uncovers will force Ellie to choose between her family and the universe itself.

Celebrate Christmas with this unique retelling of the Nativity story featuring Jesus as a melanated baby in a story that’s rich with Scripture, historical accuracy, and a multicultural weaving of love—from the author of Crowned with Glory.

Like Moses, brown baby Jesus would be a deliverer. Like Rahab, brown baby Jesus would save His people from destruction. Like David, brown baby Jesus would rule as a great king. Like the colorful threads that make up a beautiful cloth, Brown Baby Jesus brings together the characters and stories leading to Jesus—showing how God included many races and nations in the story we celebrate each year.

With an unconventional Christmas setting of Egypt and written in sweet, lyrical prose, Brown Baby Jesus is sure to become a holiday classic embraced by families of all races and backgrounds.

If love is war, Cassia James is the mushroom cloud.

Three years ago, Cassia "Cass" James went nuclear on a Hollywood red carpet, exposing her cheating fiancé and backstabbing best friend in front of the world. The fallout? A career in shambles, a reputation in ruins, and a yearly resurgence of memes that make February feel like a cruel joke.

Now, with a podcast feature promising her one last shot at reclaiming her image, Cass is ready to stage the performance of a lifetime at her annual Love Me Not anti-Valentine's Day party. There's just one problem: she needs a date to sell the charade.

Enter Malik-the tattoo artist who's been quietly holding her together for three long years and the only person Cass trusts enough to ask for help.

But Malik isn't just another prop in Cass's chaotic narrative. He's the steady presence who's seen her at her lowest, the one who challenges her razor-sharp defenses without flinching. And as they continue to fool the world, Cass begins to realize something terrifying: Maybe it's not so fake after all.

Cass must face the truth she's been running from: you can't rewrite your story until you stop hiding from it.

Love is messy. Love is hard. But love might just be worth the risk.

"Love Me Not" is a sharp, witty, and emotionally raw contemporary romance about second chances, emotional vulnerability, and the love we find when we're not too scared to fight for it.

The autobiography of the godfather of urban streetwear, American fashion designer and hip-hop cultural icon, Karl Kani whose clothes were worn by everyone from Michael Jackson to Tupac, Aaliyah to Biggie, and Nas to Jay-Z.

Karl Kani tells the story of how Karl Kani created the first quintessential fashion brand of the hip-hop generation. Like the genre that became a soundtrack to the clothes Kani designed, Karl’s brand went from local mom and pop stores in Brooklyn to national recognition and international renown.

Following Kani’s ascension as a Costa Rican immigrant striving to make a name for himself, Karl Kani also tracks parallels between how the fashion, like the music of Black and Brown kids living in the inner cities, went from marginalized subculture to the mainstream. And while there is always a price for gaining mainstream recognition and the material success that invariably follows, there’s an even heftier expense for those who refuse to compromise one’s own brand and principles to gain that entry.

Once hip-hop became a billion-dollar industry and one of America’s most lauded and coveted cultural exports, many of the fashion brands that would’ve never approached rap artists before began granting access to the upper echelons of luxury fashion. As a result, many of hip-hop’s flagship brands cashed in big payouts—Rocawear, Sean John, FUBU, Mecca, Enyce, Phat Farm, G-Unit. Karl Kani was one of the few, if not only, designers who saw that his name, the culture it represented, and the business he built was worth keeping.

Karl Kani is both a cautionary tale and an inspirational one about the price to keep one’s name in an industry looking to cash out, and how Kani continues to find an international audience for his clothes as he’s being pushed out of the American market in favor of European brands that illustrate the shift in the fashion world. Karl Kani refused to sell out, paid a price for ownership, and weathered to storm to be one of the few legacy hip-hop clothing brands to have contemporary cultural relevance.

*Ships in 7-10 business days*

There’s nothing a dad won’t do for his favorite boy.

Told in upbeat rhyming verse, Boy Dad is a picture book that celebrates fathers who raise, love, and uplift little men. A companion to Girl Dad, this keepsake will make a fun read aloud and gift for the special dad in your life.

*ships in 7-10 business days*

Max and Jay depend on each other. Growing up in Minnesota with a physically abusive father, the two Bribri American brothers have learned to protect themselves and their mom by keeping their heads down.

But when they hear a classmate in trouble in the woods, instinct takes over and they break up a fight, harming their school's star soccer player in the process. This act of violence threatens the brothers' dreams for the future. As the true details of that fateful afternoon unfold, Max and Jay grapple with the weight of their actions. They'll have to reach back to their Bribri roots to find their way forward.

Told in alternating points of view, using vignettes and poems, debut author Ari Tison crafts an emotional, slow-burning drama that will take your breath away.

Celebrate the release of Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (or Just Me)?  with Jay Ellis!

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, August 6, 2024 @ 7PM (Doors Open at 6PM)

Where: STAGES (800 Rosine St, HTX, 77019)

How: Grab your ticket today! Each ticket come with a signed copy of Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend (Or Just Me)?: Adventures of Boyhood.  Books will be available for pick up at the event.

*NO REFUNDS*

ABOUT THE BOOK

What to do when you're the perpetual new kid, only child, military brat hustling school-to-school each year and everyone's looking to you for answers? Make some shit up, of course! And a young Jay Ellis does just that, with help from every child's favorite co-conspirator—their imaginary best friend. Born in the perfect storm of especially ferocious rain and a sugar-fueled imagination, Mikey, his imaginary best friend, steps in to figuratively hold Jay's hand through various youthful shenanigans. 

A testament to the importance of imagination, trusting oneself, and making space for your creativity, Did Everyone Have an Imaginary Friend or Just Me? is a story of a 90s kid who confided in his imaginary sidekick to navigate everything from parallel pop culture universes, like watching Fresh Prince alongside John Hughes movies or listening to Ja Rule and Dave Matthews, to a lifetime of birthday disappointment (being a Christmas season Capricorn will do that to you) and hoop dreams gone bad. Mikey also guides him through greater tragedies, like losing his teenage cousin in a mistaken-target driveby and the shame and fear of being pulled over by cops almost a dozen times the year he got his driver's license. 

As imaginary friend morphs into adult consciousness, Ellis charts an unforgettable story of looking within yourself for guidance to some of life’s biggest (and smallest) challenges, told in the roast-you-with-love voice of your closest homie.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Sumter, South Carolina, to a military family, Jay Ellis spent his childhood inventing new personas for every town he landed in. Too many to count. After college, he realized the NBA wasn’t good enough for him and he didn’t want to crush other players’ dreams as he dominated the league so he decided to take his one-man show to Hollywood, where he got his start on BET’s The Game. Now an accomplished actor, philanthropist, and entrepreneur, Ellis is best known for his role as Lawrence on HBO’s Insecure, for which he won an NAACP Image Award. He appeared alongside Tom Cruise, flying jets through the skies, in the Oscar-nominated film in Top Gun: Maverick. When he’s not on set filming he spends the majority of his days cleaning up the messes that his daughter’s imaginary friend “Jack” made. Karma.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Kendrick Sampson is an actor, producer and activist who leverages his platform and storytelling to shift culture for good. 

Growing up in Houston and Missouri aka “Mo City”, Texas, Kendrick Sampson was dropped into a unique and deeply rooted culture of music and art.

His most acclaimed and notable characters from "Nathan" on HBO's Emmy-nominated comedy series, Insecure, to "Ethan" in Prime’s popular romantic comedy Something from Tiffany’s and his personal favorite, the surrealist satire I am a Virgo from Boots Riley - Kendrick has been achieving his lifelong goal of shifting culture through storytelling and uplifting nuanced, diverse, and authentic portrayals of Black men.

He uses his platform to amplify transformational grassroots work in intersectional mental health justice, sexual health and liberation and fighting state violence. Kendrick co-founded BLD PWR which includes a production company and social impact (501c3) arm whose mission is to “Reimagine and Realize the liberated future we know our people deserve” by organizing Hollywood and shifting the culture toward nourishing and protecting nuanced Black, Indigenous, and marginalized leaders and everyday people, especially our storytellers and their stories.

Celebrate the release of They Built Me For Freedom: The Story of Juneteenth and Houston's Emancipation Park with Tonya Duncan Ellis!

EVENT DEETS

When: Sunday, June 9, 2024 @ 2 PM

Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to attend the event or RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your copy. 

Note: Outside copies of They Built Me For Freedom will not be allowed inside the event.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A vibrant, moving picture book about the history of Emancipation Park in Houston, Texas—and the origins of Juneteenth.

When people visit me, they are free—to run, play, gather, and rejoice.

They built me to remember.

On June 19, 1865, the 250,000 enslaved people of Texas learned they were free, ending slavery in the United States. This day was soon to be memorialized with the dedication of a park in Houston. The park was called Emancipation Park, and the day it honored would come to be known as Juneteenth.  

In the voice and memory of the park itself—its fields and pools, its protests and cookouts, and, most of all, its people—the 150-year story of Emancipation Park is brought to life. Through lyrical text and vibrant artwork, Tonya Duncan Ellis and Jenin Mohammed have crafted an ode to the struggle, triumph, courage, and joy of Black America—and the promise of a people to remember.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tonya Duncan Ellis is a former journalist and the author of the Sophie Washington series. She lives in Houston, Texas. You can visit her at tonyaduncanellis.com.  

A fast-paced, completely delightful new mystery about what happens when parents get a little too involved in their kids' schools, from NAACP Image Award nominee Elise Bryant.

Mavis Miller is not a PTA mom. She has enough on her plate with her feisty seven-year-old daughter, Pearl, an exhausting job at a nonprofit, and the complexities of a multigenerational household. So no one is more surprised than Mavis when she caves to Trisha Holbrook, the long-reigning, slightly terrifying PTA president, and finds herself in charge of the school’s brand-new DEI committee.

As one of the few Black parents at this California elementary school, Mavis tries to convince herself this is an opportunity for real change. But things go off the rails at the very first meeting, when the new principal's plans leave Trisha absolutely furious. Later that night, when Mavis spies Trisha in yellow rubber gloves and booties, lugging cleaning supplies and giant black trash bags to her waiting minivan, it’s only natural that her mind jumps to somewhere it surely wouldn’t in the light of day.

Except Principal Smith fails to show up for work the next morning, and has been MIA since the meeting. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Mavis, along with the school psychologist with the great forearms (look, it’s worth noting), launches an investigation that will challenge her views on parenting, friendship, and elementary school politics.

Brilliantly written, It's Elementary is a quick-witted, escapist romp that perfectly captures just how far parents will go to give their kids the very best, all wrapped in a mystery that will leave you guessing to the very end.

The Black Condition ft. Narcissus is preemptive memoir, documenting the beginning of the author’s gender transition and paralleling the inauguration of our latest Administration. These poems speak to and from fears holed up inside while contextualizing the cosmic impacts of our political landscape. Ranging from autobiographic melancholy to rigorously meditative, here is a necessary voice to process the world, predicated on unknowable desire and blossoming tragedy. Winner of the 2019 San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award!

Eighth grader Drew Ellis is no stranger to the saying, “You have to work twice as hard to be just as good.” His grandmother has told him that his entire life. But lately he’s been thinking: Even if he works ten times as hard, he may never get the same opportunities that his privileged classmates at the prestigious Riverdale Academy Day School take for granted. Then, after a visit to his friend Liam’s house, Drew realizes that Liam is one of those privileged kids. He wants to pretend like everything is okay, but even his best friend, Jordan, can tell that something is up.

As the pressures build, and he starts to feel more isolated than ever, will Drew find a way to bridge the divide so he and his friends can truly accept each other? And more importantly, will he finally be able to accept himself?

From the NAACP Image Award–nominated author of Happily Ever Afters comes a dual POV rom-com about Reggie and Delilah, who fall in love through missed connections and chance meetings on holidays over the course of a year. 

Delilah always keeps her messy, gooey insides hidden behind a wall of shrugs and yeah, whatevers. She goes with the flow—which is how she ends up singing in her friends’ punk band as a favor, even though she’d prefer to hide at the merch table.

Reggie is a D&D Dungeon Master and self-declared Blerd. He spends his free time leading quests and writing essays critiquing the game under a pseudonym, keeping it all under wraps from his disapproving family.

These two, who have practically nothing in common, meet for the first time on New Year’s Eve. And then again on Valentine’s Day. And then again on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s almost like the universe is pushing them together for a reason.

Delilah wishes she were more like Reggie—open about what she likes and who she is, even if it’s not cool. Except . . . it’s all a front. Reggie is just role-playing someone confident. The kind of guy who could be with a girl like Delilah.

As their holiday meetings continue, the two begin to fall for each other. But what happens once they realize they’ve each fallen for a version of the other that doesn’t really exist?