Jahquel J. returns to the Rich family in the sequel to her traditional debut, the USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller Rich and Rotten.

Grittier, steamier, and more dangerous than the first book, this dynasty saga goes deeper into the streets beneath Greenwich Pointe’s wealth, where loyalty is tested at every turn and fighting for family may cost blood. Commercial urban crime fiction at its pinnacle.

Tatiana Rich is left with nothing.

With nowhere else to turn, she must depend on the one man who has let her down before. His help may be her only way forward, but she isn't sure it's worth the risk of being disappointed again.

Jonah has always put protecting Tatiana and his goddaughter first. Now, with a new romance building with Yaya, he must find a way to make room for her in his plans without stepping back from the people he has always considered family.

Nazir is working to blend his family, introducing his daughters to each other and the love of his past to his best friend, all while protecting the woman he loves from her own father.

Malcolm Rich kept Nazir from Tatiana once before. Nazir refuses to let him stand in the way of getting his family back, or let him take what isn't his.

This time, he will do whatever it takes, even if it leaves blood on his hands.

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.

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.

For the first time in print! A definitive compilation of Nikki Giovanni’s best and most beloved poems from her extraordinary 60-year career.

Nikki Giovanni’s poems are some of the most quoted, most memorable, and most talked about gems in American literature, with a huge pop culture following that continues even after her death in 2024. But there has never been a single “best of” volume of her work—until now.

The Essential Poems compiles Nikki’s most beloved and thought-provoking work, drawn from her extraordinary 60+ year career. Included here are classics like “Nikki-Rosa,” “Ego Trippin’,” “Housecleaning,” “Cotton Candy for a Rainy Day,” “Bicycles,” and “The Sterling Silver Mirror.” Edited by Dr. Virginia Fowler, Nikki’s widow, it also includes an Introduction and an Afterword by literary superstars Kwame Alexander and Renée Watson.

It is a book to be savored, and shared.

A hidden history of twentieth-century American modernity that re-examines a mere twelve-block area on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with Thelonious Monk as its guiding star. 

The Jungles reclaims the largely forgotten world of San Juan Hill, a predominantly Black neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side, was one of the most fertile centers of American cultural life in the twentieth century.

At once a biography, an urban history, and a cultural reckoning, Howard W. French’s The Jungles reveals how the neighborhood that would encompass Lincoln Center, previously known as the Jungles, fostered numerous pathbreaking Black artists, among them a young Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917–1982).

The story opens in Cuba in 1898, where we watch as Teddy Roosevelt’s forces triumph on San Juan Hill, with close to one-fifth of the overall invading force consisting of Black soldiers whose valor went largely unrecognized. After returning to the US, these veterans joined a broader wave of Black migrants moving northward, eventually settling in a Manhattan -neighborhood that would take the battle’s name. San Juan Hill became a lively, artistic Black community that preceded the Harlem Renaissance and inspired some of the highest twentieth- century creative triumphs―giving rise to the stride piano style and nurturing the genius of Monk, whose mold-breaking artistry struggled to gain traction in an industry then dominated by white producers.

As Robert Moses began tearing down the neighborhood under the guise of “urban renewal,” Monk became its most famous holdout, staying put in his cramped apartment in the Phipps Houses at 243 West 63rd Street, his upright piano protruding from his bedroom into the kitchen as he continued to make his iconic music.

By the late 1950s, Monk’s genius had finally been recognized, but the erasure already felt irreversible, extending even to the musical West Side Story, which reimagined the neighborhood’s streets as Latino gang territory, whitewashing the predominantly Black and Caribbean community that had actually lived there.

A compelling history from one of our finest American historians, The Jungles ultimately emerges as a new way of telling the history of music, of New York, and of America. The cradle of jazz was not only in New Orleans but also in San Juan Hill, and French’s magnificent recreation of that vanished world, and of the miraculous life of Thelonious Monk, restores to American cultural memory what erasure nearly stole for good.

12 illustrations

From Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich, a novel about the collisions of youth—with want, with art, with rage—as experienced by a young Chippewa writer in politically fraught 1970s America.

“Where do we find a definition? Where do we find what a poet is?”

Fargo, 1971. Erdrich’s narrator spends her days sneaking pocketsful of lasagna home from waitressing, missing the author friends who have floated out of town again, and wondering half-seriously if the poetry of local third graders is outdoing her own. In search of more life, more inspiration, and—always—enough food to get through the next day, she embarks on a series of jobs, affairs, and travels that illuminate the wild eccentricities of the American national character as much as they do the injustices—and resistances—boiling around her in North Dakota.

I’m Hungry explores shocking violence, unearthly beauty, and voracious appetites of all kinds, from sexual hunger to the need for a life transfigured by poetry. It answers the question of “what a poet is” with an indelible portrait of a young woman in a fractured community who finds her voice even as she encounters lovers, hustlers, and specters whose own hungers threaten to pull her under.

A bold, gorgeously textured, and unforgettable moral fable, this compelling novel will be revelatory to her legions of fans.

Celebrate the release of If This World We're Mine with Arriel Vinson!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, January 28 @ 7 PM CST

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

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.

• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy If This World We're Mine, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup at the event.

Please Note: Books purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must purchase a copy from Kindred Stories.If you already have a copy from Kindred Stories feel free to choose the RSVP only option. 

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If your book is not retrieved it will be returned to the publisher and will not be available for pick up in the future.

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Arriel Vinson is a Midwesterner who writes about being young, Black, and in search of freedom. Her debut YA novel-in-verse, Under the Neon Lights, is a 2026 Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award winner, a Reese’s Book Club LitUp selection, and a Junior Library Guild Gold Selection. Arriel earned her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and is a Tin House YA Scholar, Highlights Foundation scholarship recipient, and Walter Grant recipient. Her sophomore novel, If This World Were Mine, is forthcoming in spring 2027. You can connect with her on social media at @arriwrites and find her work at arriwrites.com

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

LIARA TAMANI grew up in Houston, Texas, where every spring meant one thing: rodeo season. She loved getting decked out in her best cowgirl gear and soaking up the music, food, and electric energy of the rodeo, a joy she now shares with her daughter and husband. Her deep Texas roots shine through her storytelling, capturing the spirit and rhythms of the state in all her acclaimed novels: Calling My Name, All the Things We Never Knew, and What She Missed. Before becoming a writer, she attended Harvard Law School and worked as a marketing coordinator for the Houston Rockets and Comets, television production assistant, home accessories designer, floral designer, and yoga and dance teacher. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a BA from Duke University.

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

Enter St. Paradise, a city pulsing with blood magic, where clan secrets and shifting allegiances rule the land. For the first time, bestselling novelist Akwaeke Emezi brings their powerful talents to epic fantasy!

Ten years ago, Eclipse Orinabe and her aunt, Silver, were the sole survivors of a massacre that nearly wiped out their clan.

Then the Orinabe unleash their revenge: the annihilation of the clans who betrayed them, and the release of rapture, a drug so potent that the clan—once peaceful pharmaceutical makers—soon have St. Paradise in a chokehold.

Disturbed by the Orinabe’s bloody rise, the surviving clan leaders nonetheless make nice with Silver, known as the Butcher, and accept Eclipse—a weapon disguised as a glamorous clan princess—into society.

With the foundations of St. Paradise trembling, one spark will set the city aflame. And embers are everywhere: Wolf, Heir to the Goldshot clan, is on the run from his own people, armed with holy golden bullets. He claims sanctuary with Clan Heron, spies so secretive that no one knows their true Heir.

Noah, Heir to the psychic Solarin clan, is pushed into a consuming relationship with Eclipse by his clan leaders. But neither Heir is what the other thinks—and the secret Noah is keeping is powerful enough to blink out St. Paradise’s entire existence in an instant.

An ancient magic ties these clans together and a brutal reckoning will come as the Heirs collide and claim their fraught inheritance.

Emotionally rich, explosively thrilling, and finely wrought as all of Emezi’s work, their new standalone novel is perfect for fans of the author or Fonda Lee, R.F. Kuang, and V.E. Schwab.

A wild, rollicking, firsthand account of the good ole days of funk from Bootsy Collins, the legendary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame bass guitarist for James Brown, George Clinton, and Parliament-Funkadelic. Funky foreword courtesy of Snoop Dogg.

He’s a bona fide funk legend, a rhinestone-clad style icon, and arguably one of the best bassists to ever live. (At least, according to Rolling Stone.) His career has spanned five decades: from rising to stardom playing alongside James Brown; to setting the bar, the groove, and the look of Parliament-Funkadelic; to collaborating with today’s most innovative and beloved musicians, like Anderson .Paak, Snoop Dogg, and Bruno Mars. Bootsy Collins has more than a few stories to tell.

He is no stranger to the spotlight, and tales of his escapades are whispered among music nerds and the general public. Yet Bootsy’s story has never been put on the page.

Now, in his own words — “the straight up, real deal, if I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’, and I ain’t ready to go yet”— Bootsy is ready to share with fans legendary stories about:

* the ins and outs of his three-decade relationship with mentor and sometimes tormentor James Brown—including dropping acid with the Godfather of Soul himself
* how a one-night stand almost resulted in him being killed by a member of Florida’s Black Mafia
* when he and the Parliament-Funkadelic crew were mistaken for a group of escaped convicts, and during a detailed cavity search, the LAPD found George Clinton’s a**-stash
* his collaborative and tumultuous relationship with funk legend George Clinton
* eventually getting clean and becoming the favorite OG for a new crop of musicians and artists

Bootsy’s story is full of heart, humor, joy, sorrow, and a whooooole lot of funk. True to its iconic creator, Funked Around, Found Out includes psychedelic photos, costumes, guitars, and other surprises that are as closely associated with Bootsy as his thumping grooves. Music fans, pop culture aficionados, and other acolytes will rejoice.

From the author of the acclaimed novel, House of Cotton, comes an electric, haunting new Southern noir following the residents of Better Tomorrow Trailer Park in the aftermath of a gruesome murder.

Summer ’97. Deadly sins. Misguided obsessions.

When Better Tomorrow Trailer Park’s owner, Joe Candle, is found nailed to a cross in the center of the lot, the police have one question for the park’s eccentric residents: Who killed Candle?

No one is safe from suspicion. Not the pretty, calf-eyed cashier with a shadowed past, or the barber and his strange, altered demeanor, or the young son of a cop who harbors a volcanic temper.

As the investigation begins and satanic panic grips this small town in the heart of Appalachia, the low-grade paranoia spreads beyond the borders of the park. With the arrival of a lone, mysterious detective, a darker plot is soon unearthed. The questions that arise threaten the very existence of Better Tomorrow, and the community is tested to its breaking point.

Thundering towards the dreaded summer solstice, Lonesome Holler is a beautifully written exploration of loneliness, a blue-tuned elegy for community, and a comedic, devastating ode to the South.

Award-winning author Kai Ashante Wilson returns with a bold new vision of fantasy. The Fall of Elvenesse transforms the genre of Tolkien in the image of N. K. Jemisin, Marlon James, and Simon Jimenez.

Elves have ruined the world.

From their high mountain, the cruel knights of Elvenesse range out to conquer. They pillage, they enslave, they wreak genocide. Always the Elves have taken, never considered when the bill for their crimes will come due.

That time has come. The fury of the world has awoken. The victims will have their vengeance.

A divine scourge of fire sweeps across the land toward Elvenesse, and the last free people of the Nations flee before it. As the mountains char, rivers boil, and savannas burn, the Free Nations rely on the muscle and magic of their strong and runt freaks. But as their one remaining Saint assumes his power, he receives a prophecy: the Nations' only path to survival runs through Elvenesse. Only by navigating the Elven labyrinth can he win his people's lives.