An award-winning young scholar explores how Black women have remade―and continue to remake―our understanding of the past.

Across centuries, Black women have invented means to preserve what official history could not: friendship albums, kitchen-table philosophy, blogs, playlists, oral histories, and archives held in the mind. In The Light Keepers, Jessica Marie Johnson traces this radical tradition through the centuries-long prism of American empire, from the holds of slave ships to contemporary digital worlds, showing that there is nothing finished or settled about how Black women understand time, trauma, and survival.

Blending personal narrative, archival fragments, and ancestral wisdom, Johnson reframes Black women not as subjects of history but as archivists and historians. Against erasure, against shame, against death itself, Black women have transformed the bitterest waters of history into tools for living, loving, and imagining freedom. The Light Keepers offers readers a daring new way to think about the past―and a powerful lesson in how knowledge is made when survival demands it.

88 illustrations

In this meticulously researched and vividly written account, a prominent historian reclaims a forgotten incident of racial violence in the Jim Crow South.

The Rifle and the Plough reconstructs a little-known episode from the summer of 1910, when the Black farming settlement of Sandy Beulah in East-Central Texas came under attack. White mobs waged war on prosperous Black landowners; rumors became weapons; celebration became provocation. Historian Steven A. Reich shows how the massacre unfolded and why it happened: the growing accumulation of land by Black residents, heightened racial tensions following boxer Jack Johnson’s heavyweight title victory, and white resistance to Black autonomy and public festivity, including Juneteenth. The Rifle and the Plough recovers the rise and destruction of a thriving Black community and asks why this history still matters. By linking racial violence to struggles over historical memory, land theft, and accountability, Reich speaks directly to contemporary debates about how the nation confronts its past, what justice demands of the present, and what reparative futures might yet be imagined.

59 illustrations

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.

We Made the World: Five Centuries of Queens, Warriors, and Other Foremothers traces five centuries of history through twelve extraordinary women of African descent—from queens and warriors to artists and activists—weaving together collective memory, oral tradition, and personal grief into a landmark work that places Black women at the center of world history.

In 1949, a seamstress from a small coastal town in the Gold Coast colony stood up in a room full of men and voted to split from the most powerful political party in the country. Her name was Hannah Kudjoe. She spent the next decade organizing the women who would win Ghana's first democratic election and help make it the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence from European colonial rule. When Nkrumah published his autobiography, she wasn't in it.

We Made the World does for twelve women what it does for Hannah Kudjoe. It finds the woman who was in the room, who was essential to the room, and whose name was removed from the record the moment her usefulness to powerful men was exhausted.

We're talking about Queen Njinga of Angola, who fought the Portuguese to a standstill for forty years and died at eighty still a sovereign. Wangarĩ Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who saved a Nairobi forest by walking upstream through a river at dawn to plant trees while the police watched. Brenda Fassie, the queer Black pop icon who sang South Africa through the end of apartheid and whose music still stops a room on any continent.

The author traveled to eleven countries to write this book. She gathered oral histories from descendants and community keepers across four continents. And she wrote it while experiencing great loss and grief which means this book knows in its bones what it costs to carry someone's memory, and what it costs not to.

We Made the World is five hundred years of history rewritten from the inside. It is the book that asks what we have lost by not knowing these women's names, and begins the important work of giving that back to us all.

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.

From the Washington Post’s first race and ethnicity reporter, a poignant investigation into the aftermath of the Great Migration, the promise of a Second Great Migration, and what future Black communities could look like across America in this eye-opening and thoughtful study, a mix of The Warmth of Other Suns and How the Word Is Passed.

Since the 1990s, demographers have been documenting a new Great Migration: millions of Black Americans leaving Northern and Western cities for the South their parents and grandparents fled during Jim Crow. Huge numbers of Black people have been moving to Memphis, Houston, Charlotte, and other booming metropolises in the hopes of recreating the vibrant communities their grandparents once left. Have they found what they were looking for? Is it possible for Black Americans to have community, economic prosperity, and safety all in one place? And if so, where?

In the Search for Black Mecca, Emmanuel Felton examines how these questions are playing out in real lives today, going into the homes of Black Americans who are weighing what they want and where they hope to find it. He identifies three archetypes—“Those Who Stay,” “Those Who Leave,” and “Those Who Build Something New”—and reveals the costs and benefits of each decision, while seeking answers to deeper questions regarding communal responsibility, what’s needed to make Black neighborhoods thrive, and how to manage the fact that white people are often threatened by Black success. He also unravels his own family’s migration story through the lives of his two grandfathers—a prominent New Orleans dentist and a troubled musician who migrated to Oakland, California.

Through these stories, Felton crystalizes our understanding of what it means to find—or to create —our own meccas: radical spaces for Black joy, freedom, and imagination, even when the external world tries to take those places away.

Winner of the Bancroft Prize
Winner of the David J. Langum Prize
Winner of the Merle Curti Social History Award
Finalist for the Cundill History Prize 2026

A revelatory history of the laws that conditioned the everyday lives of Chinese people in the American West―and of those who negotiated, circumvented, and resisted discrimination.

Legal discrimination against Chinese people in the United States began in 1852, with a California tax on foreign gold miners that was explicitly designed to exploit Chinese labor. In the ensuing decades, California, Oregon, Washington, and other western states instituted more than five thousand laws that marginalized and controlled Chinese residents. Long before the Chinese Exclusion Act banned Chinese immigration, these laws constrained the activities and opportunities of Chinese people already living in the United States.

In this eye-opening account, Beth Lew-Williams describes a legal architecture redolent of Jim Crow but tailored to the people whom official records often referred to only as “John Doe Chinaman” and “Mary Chinaman.” Enforced by police, tax collectors, schoolteachers, missionaries, and neighbors, these laws severely limited Chinese access to American society. Cementing stereotypes of Chinese as criminals, invaders, and predators, states regulated everything from healthcare and property ownership to business formation and kinship customs. Yet Chinese communities reacted resourcefully. Many fought, evaded, and manipulated racist laws, finding ways to maintain prohibited traditions, resist unfair treatment in court, and insist on their political rights.

Revealing the depth of anti-Chinese discrimination beyond federal exclusion, John Doe Chinaman tells the stories of those who refused to accept a conditional place in American life.

The story that captivated readers―now complete for the first time.

Passion for the Heist introduced readers to the love story of Passion Adams and Percy “Pain” Wells―a tale of survival, betrayal, and love. Now, experience The Wild Hearts Duology in one volume, including Passion for the Heist and the never-before-published sequel, Murder of Crows.

A crime brought them together. Grief bound them. Love made them infamous.

Percy “Pain” Wells returned from prison with two things: a ruined reputation and his grandmother’s medical bills. Debts don’t care if he’s trying to go straight, and the streets he once ruled now whisper his name like a warning.

Passion Adams has nothing left but the locket holding her parents’ ashes, a monster for an uncle, and habits that numb the pain. When the locket is stolen in a robbery, she thinks it’s gone forever. Then it turns up in the hands of a stranger with hardened eyes and a calm that screams danger.

Pain should walk away, but something about Passion―her fire, her pain―won’t let him go. Their lives collide, and what starts as a mission to make things right becomes a fight to stay alive. Their explosive love turns two broken souls into the most wanted names in the city, hunted by cops and the underworld alike.

For Passion and Pain, there are only two ways out: disappear into the shadows or become the story everyone tells.

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.

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.

Advice and wisdom from entrepreneur, bestselling author, and business icon Loida Lewis, with useful tips and best practices—from the physical to the mental—to achieve an ageless glow from the inside out, no matter your age

A heartfelt guide for those seeking to age gracefully by embracing self-care practices and positive lifestyle changes. The renowned CEO of the billon-dollar enterprise, TLC Beatrice, Loida Lewis shares her wisdom and actionable advice on maintaining beauty and vitality, detailing the daily practices and rituals that have served her well into her eighties. In this inspiring manual, she beautifully bridges memoir and prescriptive guidance, sharing her age-defying beauty “secrets” so we can also look and feel younger than their chronological age—without expensive cosmetic procedures. Readers will find encouragement to:

* Establish a daily skincare routine focused on hydration and sun protection
* Incorporate physical activities like stretching, walking, and yoga
* Embrace nutritious eating habits and mindful moderation
* Foster emotional and spiritual wellness through meditation, gratitude, and community bonds

Loida's narrative is filled with warmth and authenticity, offering a beacon of joy and resilience. Her personal reflections and practical tips create a valuable resource for anyone looking to enhance their well-being and celebrate life at any age. Rediscover the art of aging gracefully with this empowering and insightful guide, perfect for enhancing both inner and outer beauty.

CORETTA SCOTT KING HONOR ARTIST, SEAN QUALLS

From Coretta Scott King Honor artist and illustrator of Questlove's The Idea in You, Sean Qualls comes a captivating introduction on how Black people have influenced music throughout history and what music means to Black culture.

The people sing; the people dance. The people have the music, and the music is the people.

Music has been embedded into the fabric of Black life since the first notes rang out and found their way into the souls of the first African inhabitants. From the melancholic blues to the funkifyingly upbeat disco, from earth-shattering rock ’n’ roll to groundbreaking jazz and hip-hop, music has been the bedrock of Black hope and culture. From its earliest arrival in the Americas, Black music has shaped American music and the world has never been the same because of it.

Coretta Scott King Honor illustrator Sean Qualls brings us the electrifying history of Black music and moves from one ground-breaking era to another, giving his own vibrant and hip spin on the rhythm and blues that will always have the power to comfort, guide, inspire, and remind us all.

The Music, The People will make for the most fun Black music history guide as it’s:

* A Picture Book That Makes History Fun: The fun, funky, and lively voice present in The Music, The People is unlike any other and delivers the history of music genres created, influenced, and loved by Black individuals in a way that is sure to readily engage and enlighten readers as they move through music history.
* Filled with Important Messages About Music: The Music, The People infuses its pages with important messages regarding music’s ability to uplift, transcend, break barriers, and lead revolutions. Music feeds the soul, and Qualls gratifyingly depicts that.
* Features Art Like No Other: Each page of The Music, The People features Qualls’ signature breathtaking art as he moves through each musical era, making for a reading experience that’s as gratifying as it is captivating.