The next book in the New Haven series, interconnected standalones featuring second chances, fiery passion, and Black heroines who get their happily ever afters. This is part one of a trilogy.

Mallory

The first time I kissed Christopher Johnson, I knew he would be my biggest mistake. It didn't stop me from wanting him though, and when the ghosts from my past came barging into the present, it didn't stop me from agreeing to let him help.

It was supposed to be a simple business arrangement, a few months of playing a role that came far too easily to the both of us, but it wasn't long before it became more.

Love. Devotion. Heartbreak in its truest form.

Some people say life is for the living, but I say life is for the prepared. For the planners who know that controlling every piece on the board is the only way to get the result you want.

To avoid unfortunate complications like having your heart broken by a man past experiences taught you, you never should have trusted in the first place.

Christopher

There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do for Mallory Kent.

I think I knew it the first time I laid eyes on her, and it's remained one of my unspoken truths for the two years that I've known her. But I never thought I'd get the opportunity to do anything about it because Mallory is one of those people who doesn't need anyone.

She's strong, serious, and always in control of every situation around her, which is why the second I see her looking panicked and uncertain in the arms of a figure from her past, I don't think. I just act.

I had no idea that one small decision would lead to this. A fake relationship―designed to solve her problems and mine―turned real. An earth shattering love torn apart by the very forces that led to its conception. Forces that turned me into the source of our destruction.

There's nothing in this world I wouldn't do for Mallory Kent, including break her heart to save her soul.

A gutting and powerful new memoir from a master of the form, Good, God probes Laymon's relationships with three generations of women in his life—his grandmother, his former partner, and his unborn daughter.

When Kiese Laymon’s former partner invites him to help her create a child in the age of Trump, Laymon must reckon with how a romanticization of good, God, Mississippi, and most importantly, his grandmother, have telegraphed the kind of friend, father, and artist he can be. If Laymon's grandmother is right when she says, "God been gone," how does one actually make anything good in America? Laymon continues his courageous, wide-open approach to memoir with Good, God, a literary attempt at heeding his grandmother’s plea to revise the Ten Commandments, while making more intentional the paradoxical intimacy and brutality inherent between readers and writers of contemporary memoir.

Spanning from childhood to the present, set against the last fifty years of specific American hospitality, when "much of the nation said we were good for nothing, godless people who should be happy to be invited into white American rooms, and white American myths we actually made possible,” Laymon refuses to cede the shape or sound of those rooms to the worst of himself, and the worst of the nation. Good, God is a resonant plea for more good, more god, and most importantly, more holy creative space where we might ruggedly remake what we have collectively made so wrong.

Delivered through several powerful episodes—a memorable childhood meeting with a mysterious stranger who irritates his grandmother, a visit to his grandmother's house by a kind Northern white family who first meets his grandmother in his books, the process of trying to create a child with his good friend as he is treated for cancer—Good, God invites us into the intentionally forgotten rooms and spaces of experience where good, God, and American grandmothers are made holy.

A collective work of art whose time has come. Of lasting value for all lovers of literature and the erotic, this is a glorious, groundbreaking celebration of black sensuality, including works by Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and many more.

Reared in Houston (Freedmen’s Town), Texas, Emmett J. Scott was a journalist, newspaper editor, government official, author, and chief of staff, adviser, and ghostwriter to Booker T. Washington. Called “the power broker of the Tuskegee Machine,” Scott was a Renaissance man, scholar, and political fixer. However, his life has not received a full examination until now.

Built upon fifty years of research, Maceo C. Dailey’s Emmett J. Scott offers fascinating detail by describing Scott’s role in promoting the Tuskegee Institute. Before his 2015 death, Dailey had nearly singular access to the Scott papers at Morgan State University, which have been officially closed for decades. Readers will finally be exposed to Scott’s behind-the-scenes contributions to racial uplift and will see his influential role in advancing not only the Tuskegee Institute but also the Booker T. Washington agenda.

Editors Will Guzmán and David H. Jackson Jr. lend their own expertise in bringing Dailey’s lifetime project to fruition. Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, a close friend of Dailey’s, provides a timely foreword. Former Black Panther Party chairwoman Elaine Brown, Scott’s granddaughter, reflects on his impact and her relationship with the Scott family in the afterword.

Taken together, this work of biography is an impressive reference and an essential endeavor of recovery, one that restores to prominence the life and legacy of Emmett J. Scott.

From bestselling author Celeste Headlee, an urgent and eye-opening story of the women who risked everything to ensure a generation of Black Americans had the right to read.

In the waning days of the antebellum South, millions of African Americans were suddenly released from enslavement. But they soon realized that “freedom” was not free; they were subject to hundreds of laws aimed at preventing them from voting and, in many cases, learning. Were it not for the work of an exceptional group of women―activists, educators, mothers, organizers―the foundations for Black education might never have been laid.

With Freedom's Daughters, Headlee set out to write into the record book the untold stories of these remarkable women. As a journalist who spent her career in public media, Headlee has long championed unheard voices and sought to tell the stories of those whose contributions have gone unacknowledged. But this project was fueled by an even deeper connection: Carrie Still Shepperson―one of the most important figures in this fight―is Headlee's great grandmother and one of the biggest influences in her life.

Now, after a decade of research spanning personal diaries to public records, Freedom’s Daughters paints a vivid portrait of figures intentionally erased from history, recognizing the work of a generation of Black women who believed freedom was inextricably linked with learning and free expression, and who worked tirelessly to secure access to literacy and education for a generation of children born into freedom.

By turns shocking, inspiring, and deeply moving, Freedom’s Daughters is Headlee’s impeccably researched journey to better understand her family history and herself, and a timely examination of the influence and power of unfettered access to schools, libraries, and higher education.

Ghost Prison: Blood Pact

Jon Bowman's shocking conviction came with an unexpected twist when he learned the prison walls weren't just keeping him in. They're hiding something far more sinister. Wrongfully convicted and thrust into the ruthless world of a maximum-security prison. Jon must navigate more than just hostile inmates and corrupt guards. Redmond Prison harbors a brutal supernatural force: the vengeful spirit of an ax-wielding killer who continues his reign of terror from beyond the grave.

As Jon fights to prove his innocence, he discovers that surviving until his appeal might be impossible. Fellow inmates are found dismembered in their cells. Nightmarish apparitions stalk the corridors after lights out. The ghostly killer seems particularly drawn to Jon, forcing him to face two terrifying possibilities. Either he's losing his mind under the pressure of imprisonment, or he's the only person standing between the living and the dead.

In this heart-pounding supernatural thriller, Jon must solve both the mystery of his own false conviction and the dark history of the prison itself before he becomes the next victim of an entity that deals in a punishment far worse than justice.

Can Jon survive to see his release date? You'll have to get the book to find out.

The re-issue of a remarkable first novel by a young, gay, black author who fashioned a deeply moving and compelling coming of age story out of the highly controversial issues of bisexuality and AIDS.

Law school, girlfriends, and career choices were all part of Raymond Tyler's life, but there were other, more terrifying issues for him to confront. Being black was tough enough, but Raymond was becoming more and more conscious of sexual feelings that he knew weren't "right." He was completely committed to Sela, his longtime girlfriend, but his attraction to Kelvin, whom he had met during his last year in law school, had become more than just a friendship.

Fleeing to New York to escape both Sela and Kelvin, Raymond finds himself more confused than ever before. New relationships--both male and female--give him enormous pleasure but keep him from finding the inner peace and lasting love he so desperately desires. The horrible illness and death of a friend eventually force Raymond, at last, to face the truth.

Golden Kite Award Finalist
Washington State Book Award Winner
Junior Library Guild Gold Standard
Notable Social Studies Reading List
CCBC Choices

Melvin Robinson wants a strong, smooth, He-Man voice that lets him say what he wants, when he wants—especially to his crush Millie Takazawa, and Gary Ratliff, who constantly puts him down. But the thought of starting high school is only making his stutter worse.

And Melvin’s growing awareness that racism is everywhere—not just in the South where a boy his age has been brutally killed by two white men, but also in his own hometown of Spokane—is making him realize that he can’t mutely stand by.

His new friend Lenny, a fast-talking, sax-playing Jewish boy, who lives above the town’s infamous (and segregated) Harlem Club, encourages Melvin to take some risks—to invite Millie to Homecoming and even audition for a local TV variety show. When they play music together, Melvin almost feels like he’s talking, no words required. But there are times when one needs to speak up.

When his moment comes, can Melvin be as mighty on the outside as he actually is on the inside?

P R A I S E

★ “This powerful novel weaves strong characters into the tapestry of civil rights, treatment of people with disabilities, fallout fear from the war, and ever-changing cultural shifts that defined the 1950s.”
—School Library Journal (starred)

★ “A well-constructed and movingly told story of a thoughtful Black boy making his place in his family and in 1950s America.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“A gentle historical novel about finding your voice.”
—Kirkus

“Sundee Frazier once again flexes her masterful expertise in understanding the human heart, and the insurmountable will and capacity we have to press forward and persevere triumphantly.”
—Kirkus Prize-winner Derrick Barnes

“One of those rare books I found myself reading more slowly as I got to the final pages. I didn’t want it to end.”
—Newbery Award-winner Christopher Paul Curtis

The author of Sky Full of Elephants returns with an evocative, harrowing novel about the bonds of community and the power of redemption, as the disillusioned son of a preacher returns home and uncovers a supernatural force taking hold.

When a sweet, unassuming fifteen-year-old walks into the local police station attempting to kill everyone inside, Carmichael Franklin, a social justice advocate and legal investigator whose hope for a better world is masked by a deep layer of cynicism, is called home to Loblolly Grove to find out what happened.

Carm returns and finds his community crumbling. While the underfunded “Lo” has always had its problems, its residents were once as close as family. A towering apartment block, Carm learns its caretaker Ma Esther has been murdered, and a rising tension, coupled with strange outbursts of violence, has seemingly infected everyone. Carm’s brother, Everett, who has followed in their father’s footsteps and is now the Bishop, brings Carm to see a young girl he believes is possessed, unleashing an action-packed series of events that transport Carm across time.

Wells Without Water is an incendiary, poetic, horrifying, and, above all, deeply felt adventure through the lives and loves of the Lo. Cebo Campbell has written a literary horror novel with the heat and rhythm of a Black sermon and the surreal, myth-soaked atmosphere of Southern gothic at its most hallucinatory. As the Lo teeters between rot or revolution, Carmichael is forced to confront a spiritual evil that has plagued humanity from its very beginnings. Wells Without Water brings to light the magical roots of Nat Turner’s rebellion, the power of religion when put in the wrong hands, and the cosmic horror of slavery itself.

In this inspiring memoir, a Black woman pilot leading the way for other aviatrixes shares her journey of fulfilling a lifelong dream to fly—and how she rediscovered her passion in the face of tragedy and adversity.

Before being cleared for takeoff, Captain Nia Gilliam witnesses the World Trade Center attacks from the co-pilot’s seat on the runway of Newark Airport. Struggling with the harrowing sights unfolding before her, she finds the composure to take off as smoke billows from the Twin Towers. In a moment that changed everything, for her and the world, Gilliam's dedication to the skies is forever shaken and she resolves to never fly again.

Now, Gilliam traces her path to the pilot’s seat, from the moment her mother showed her an article of Black aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman to the day she ditched school to pay her respects at the funeral of Janet Harmon Bragg, the first Black woman to earn a commercial pilot’s license, where she ultimately met her future mentor. Alongside the grit and determination to work towards her dream, Gilliam captures the challenges, both personal and societal, and triumphs of earning her spot in the pilot’s seat. But just as Gilliam’s life begins to soar, the aftermath of 9/11 thrusts her into a moment of unforeseen decisions. As she finds the fortitude to stand strong after a national tragedy, she confronts bias as the first pregnant pilot at her airline, fights to overcome postpartum depression, and navigates a career transition that would take her away from the life she’d worked so hard for.

Cleared for Takeoff is a deeply affecting story, tracing Gilliam’s roots to navigating a male-dominated industry and illuminating one woman’s unwavering faith in herself.

In a brilliantly terrifying blend of supernatural horror and alternate history for fans of Ryan Coogler's Sinners and readers of Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Stephen Graham Jones, a vengeful vampire tribe formed of formerly enslaved Africans wages war across the Southern colonies in the ultimate battle of blood and betrayal.

Kwadzo Okoro never believed the bloody legend of Ramanga was real. Now, he stands as the leader of a new Ramanga Tribe, one that sieged the Barrow plantation in a storm of righteous carnage, liberating its formerly enslaved Africans. Reclaimed as the Crimson Plantation, it is now also home to the wronged Natives who fearlessly aligned with the Ramangans.

But Kwadzo knows that freedom is not secure. Bartholomew and Constance Crabtree, the most influential slaveholders in the region since the demise of Big Jim Barrow, are galvanizing the Lakeside community to strike back—violently. The threat they pose, however, pales in comparison to the insidious menace of Penelope Knudsen. Her white-hot hatred, now fueled by Ramangan blood, and an ability to survive the sunlight—a power Kwadzo doesn’t have—threatens to upend Kwadzo’s advancement of Ramangan might throughout the colonies to free his people.

But the gravest threat comes from within: Rafazi. His blood fathered the rebellion, but he will not take orders from his own creation. And when Rafazi makes a deadly deal with the Crabtrees, Kwadzo is forced into a battle with his maker that he may not survive, while the everlasting freedom of every enslaved person in the colonies hangs in the balance.

In Carolina and beyond, a reckoning is coming that will change the colonies forever.

A young Black man feels called irresistably to farmland he's never seen, where a fateful feud simmers between a pastor and his protégé. A thunderous instant classic, this novel reimagines David and Goliath as the story of one unforgettable family, living in the era of the Great Migration and in the heart of the American South.

"PLEASE READ THIS MASTERPIECE." —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

In 1910, at the tender age of fourteen, David Jeremiah Lightfoot inherits his father’s farm in Mississippi: a barren, cursed plot of land once known as Goliath. David has never lived outside Chicago, but he is determined to claim and farm the land more effectively than his father ever could. Once there, David confronts both literal and figurative giants. And soon a high-stakes struggle with the burden of his ancestors’ legacy will intertwine his fate with that of his family, the land, and the surrounding community.

Narrating this saga is David’s youngest son, Little Bit, a uniquely sensitive storyteller with immense love for his parents, his grandfather Big Man, his uncle Jonathan, his cousin, and his brothers and sister. Little Bit charts the dramatic twists and turns of his father's rise to a precarious pinnacle of wealth and power, studded as it was with quiet moments of sweetness, joy, and transcendent beauty.

At once a profound, heartfelt story about one tight-knit family and an elegant, propulsive tragedy, Goliath weaves together themes of destiny and redemption. It is a revelatory meditation on the deep, troubled ties between Black Americans and the very ground on which past generations toiled and lived.