The Talented Mr. Ripley meets the Wu-Tang Clan: An American Saga in this dark psychological thriller.

Thomas “Maz” Kincaid lives a lavish life as a rising rap star: money, influence, and fame. But Maz’s success rests on a lie—his lyrics to his chart-topping album belong to someone else, his foster brother, Adonis.

Adonis, fresh out of prison is done watching his brother live off his talent and launches a calculated campaign of vengeance. But Maz won’t let all he’s worked for be taken away. He’s willing to lie, manipulate, and even kill to protect the fraudulent life he’s built.

As the rivalry escalates, the line between victim and villain blurs. With both men—damaged, cunning, and ruthless, locked in a psychological war where only one can survive the spotlight. Who will rule the stage, and who will end up in a grave?

Dark, complex, and suspenseful, All the Smoke is a cautionary tale, exploring identity, trauma, and the psychopathy behind stardom in the music industry.

From MacArthur Genius, award-winning expert on justice transformation, James Bell, Sorrow’s Kitchen presents a groundbreaking and unapologetically hopeful vision of what is possible if we center our communities and justice systems around care and wellbeing rather than punishment and control.

Weaving together powerful stories and solutions from his frontline work with justice practitioners, law enforcement officers, and community members throughout the states and around the globe, James Bell has written a book with a simple and powerful idea at its core: A justice system based on punishment makes all of us less safe. But we each have the power to reimagine and recreate justice in our communities in such a way that all of us are seen and cared for. And justice transformation begins with youth justice.

Sorrow’s Kitchen: The End of Punishment and the Beginning of True Safety delves into the deeply entrenched racial inequities within America’s justice system, tracing their roots to slavery, segregation, and systemic oppression. Through personal anecdotes, historical analysis, and a critique of current practices, James Bell exposes how structural racism has shaped the administration of justice, perpetuating cycles of harm and inequality. The metaphor of "Sorrow’s Kitchen," borrowed from Zora Neale Hurston, serves as a poignant symbol of the collective suffering endured by Black communities, while highlighting their resilience and determination to rise above systemic injustices.

A central focus of Sorrow’s Kitchen is the failure of punitive justice systems to ensure public safety or address the root causes of harm. Bell’s critiques of mass incarceration, racialized social control, and the over-policing of marginalized communities, make the argument that these approaches exacerbate inequality rather than resolve it. He advocates for a transformative vision of justice rooted in care, equity, and community-centered solutions. By centering the voices and expertise of those most impacted by systemic injustice, Sorrow’s Kitchen calls for dismantling harmful structures and replacing them with restorative practices that prioritize wellbeing and healing.

Ultimately, Sorrow’s Kitchen is a call to action, urging readers to reckon with America’s history of racial violence and to imagine a more equitable future. It emphasizes the importance of collective action, power-sharing, and authentic inclusion in reimagining justice systems that serve all people with dignity and humanity. Infused with hope and determination, Sorrow’s Kitchen challenges the status quo and inspires a vision of a society where care replaces control, and justice is truly transformative.

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

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.

Written by an engineer who has worked for the FBI and the White House, this STEMinist picture book biography tells the story of Bessie Blount, a groundbreaking Black inventor.

What do you do when people tell you no? This is a true story of what happens when you tell yourself yes!

When a teacher said she couldn’t write with her left hand, Bessie taught herself to be right-handed. At a time when many people were unfairly denied more education, Bessie studied hard and became a nurse and physical therapist. And when her patients—injured World War II soldiers—couldn’t feed themselves, Bessie invented a device to assist them. Bessie‘s determination allowed her to help others in so many ways.

From celebrated STEMinist (STEM-feminist) Afua Bruce and award-winning artist Laura Freeman comes the inspiring true story of the extraordinary Bessie Blount.

* A trailblazing inventor who overcame oppression to succeed
* Informational back matter, including a timeline, author’s note, and guide to inventing
* Inspiring true story for fans of Maya’s Song, Ketanji, and Because Claudette

A visionary new collection by former poet laureate of the United States and winner of the Pulitzer Prize Tracy K. Smith

The forest in Tracy K. Smith’s brilliant new work is and is not a metaphor. While these poems strive to hear and to heed the voices of the earth and its nations of trees, they also test a discomfiting view of humanity, not as divided and opposing factions but as a vast cacophonous family connected by a single deep root.

The Forest grapples with violence, cynicism, and injustice by tapping into the ecstatic for much-needed insight, humility, and conviction. Enlivened by slow time and spiritual desire, Smith’s poems are political and devotional conduits that bear witness to meditative visions and channeled conversations with ancestors and ascended guides. Several poems honor motherhood and the particular care bound up in mothering Black sons. Others come to terms with grief and a failed marriage now so distant as to be another life. Hovering always near, the divine feminine is a figure called forth to refute the God of War.

The Forest is a magnificent act of foresight beyond the granular realities of partisan depravity, polarization, and indifference. Smith reaches an exhilarating new height, in contact with the mythic and the rapturous.

An ambitious teen enrolls at an elite science institute in Morbid Curiosities, a young adult thriller from author S. Hati.

When the Institute’s invitation arrived at my doorstep, it felt like it had been inked in my blood, sweat, and tears.

Aarya’s life plan has been set for as long as she can remember: finish high school with a bang, attend the best college she can get into, then land a prestigious biology research job. Her ticket to this dream is a one-year program at the Elizabethan Institute, the preeminent organization for life sciences in the United States, currently on the cusp of revealing a major project that could transform the worlds of biology and medicine.

But as Aarya tries to settle in to a school with sky-high academic expectations and research cloaked in mystery, it becomes clear that someone doesn’t want her there. As the scholarship student surrounded by rich, cutthroat peers who seem all too willing to torment her, she never expected to make friends, but the notes warning her to run rattle her to her core. She finds an ally in Sofia, a mysterious girl who claims to be the subject of closed-door Institute experiments and begs for Aarya’s help in discovering the Institute's true goal.

As rumors of mutated flora and fauna in the nearby city circulate and a murder investigation rocks the Institute, Aarya must navigate Sofia’s growing paranoia and her own increasingly unreliable memory to determine which classmates she can trust―and which would rather see her dead.

"A sharply intelligent, darkly fascinating academic thriller about unraveling the hard truths of who you are and who you want to be - and the final twist made me gasp out loud." ―Andrew Joseph White, New York Times-bestselling and award-winning author of Compound Fracture

From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to understand how emerging technologies can reinforce White supremacy and deepen social inequity.

Benjamin argues that automation, far from being a sinister story of racist programmers scheming on the dark web, has the potential to hide, speed up, and deepen discrimination while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to the racism of a previous era. Presenting the concept of the “New Jim Code,” she shows how a range of discriminatory designs encode inequity by explicitly amplifying racial hierarchies; by ignoring but thereby replicating social divisions; or by aiming to fix racial bias but ultimately doing quite the opposite. Moreover, she makes a compelling case for race itself as a kind of technology, designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice in the architecture of everyday life.

This illuminating guide provides conceptual tools for decoding tech promises with sociologically informed skepticism. In doing so, it challenges us to question not only the technologies we are sold but also the ones we ourselves manufacture.

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.

Fathering yourself might be the most important work you do as a father.

Glen Henry never wanted to be a father. He grew up in a broken home and assumed that the role was worthless. Then he saw what a good father looked like and became passionate about not only being a good father himself but helping others see what fatherhood could be through his wildly popular YouTube channel, Beleaf in Fatherhood.

Maybe you weren’t given a handbook on fatherhood but that doesn’t mean you’re unprepared. In fact, you have what it takes to grow into the kind of father your children need. In Father Yourself First Glen offers hard-earned wisdom, honest storytelling, and six foundational principles that will help you

* father yourself to maintain a healthy inner voice,
* parent from a place of healing by addressing unresolved issues from your own past,
* connect with your children by embracing childishness and adventure,
* identify your children’s unique gifts early on and help fine-tune their skills into productive habits, and
* establish a community of fathers to exchange values and practices and regularly see examples of healthy fatherhood.

Whether you’re stepping into fatherhood for the first time or figuring it out as you go, this book will meet you right where you are—and walk with you as you become the father your family deserves.

Weaving back and forth between China in the 1990s and America in 2010s, three people’s lives are changed by a murder one of them may have committed in this magnificent novel from Yiyun Li, newly reissued.

When Moran, Ruyu, and Boyang were young, they were involved in a mysterious incident in which a friend of theirs was poisoned. Grown up, the three friends are separated by distance and personal estrangement. Moran and Ruyu live in the United States, Boyang in China; all of them are haunted by what happened in their youth and by doubt about themselves.

In Wisconsin, Moran visits her ex-husband, whose kindness once overcame her flight into solitude. In California, Ruyu helps a local woman care for her family and home, avoiding entanglements, as she has done all her life. In Beijing, Boyang struggles to deal with an inability to love―and with the outcome of what happened among the friends twenty years before.

Brilliantly written and a breathtaking page-turner, Kinder Than Solitude resonates with provocative observations about human nature and life. In mesmerizing prose, and with profound insight, Yiyun Li weaves a remarkable story that explores the impact of personality and the past on the shape of a person’s present and future.

From the 2025 Children’s Literature Legacy Award winner, New York Times bestselling, and multiple award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford comes a powerful nonfiction picture book that follows the individual acts of courage behind the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.

In Montgomery, everyone relied on the city’s buses, but only white riders could sit in the front. If white riders needed more seats, Black riders had to give theirs up. And the white bus drivers would call the police whenever they wanted to. How could the Black community fight for their rights?

With incredible coordination and planning, Black people across the city carefully planned a boycott. When Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to give her seat up to a white rider, they were ready to act. But, as the months drew on, everyone found themselves wondering: What would it take to end the boycott?

Award-winning team Carole Boston Weatherford and Noa Denmon unite to tell the remarkable story of the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and the people who achieved justice by working together.

* Important American History: This book spotlights the collective action of the Civil Rights Movement.
* Unsung Heroes: Strength in Numbers celebrates the many people who made the long bus boycott a success.
* Impressive Back Matter: This book features an extensive timeline, along with additional information about the Montgomery Bus Boycott.