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.

In her first book for young readers, National Book Award winner Imani Perry chronicles the history of schools and education in Black America.

After emancipation, freed people of all ages wanted to go to school. From the story of John McCline, who learned to read as a boy serving in the Union Army, through the teachers who built one-room schoolhouses across the rural South during Reconstruction to the student-led movement to desegregate schools during the Civil Rights movement, Imani Perry’s intimate and sweeping social history narrates this powerful desire for education and literacy―and how African Americans built and maintained an education system even while segregated and unequal public education failed them. These schools taught Black children to believe in themselves and their future despite Jim Crow and the institutionally racist society they lived in.

Informed by a rich trove of letters, diaries, and other archival materials, Hope in a Classroom is a necessary, expansive new narrative of the Black American experience for young readers, delivered in a propulsive and soaring voice.

illustrations throughout

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.

The iconic NAACP magazine’s most dynamic and daring African American voices gathered together for the first time in a groundbreaking literary collection, from founding editor W. E. B. DuBois and Jessie Fauset to today's modern day cultural critics, including June Shagaloff and Michael A. Lawrence.

The Crisis magazine is the official publication of NAACP. It was created in 1910 by renowned historian, civil rights activist, and NAACP co-founder W. E. B. DuBois. The magazine appeared three years before Conde Nast launched an American version of Vanity Fair and fifteen years before Harold W. Ross introduced The New Yorker to readers.

Du Bois started The Crisis in one room of the New York Evening Post building in New York City and edited the publication until 1934. A group of NAACP leaders adapted the name from James Russell Lowell's poem The Present Crisis, written at the height of the Civil War.

In the premier issue Du Bois made clear of the publication’s goals: "The Crisis will record important happenings and movements in the world which bear on the great problem of inter-racial relations, and especially those which affect the Negro-American. Secondly, it will be a review of opinion and literature, recording briefly books, articles, and important expressions of opinion in the white and colored press on the race problem. Thirdly, it will publish a few short articles. Finally, its editorial page will stand for the rights of men, irrespective of color or race, for the highest ideals of American democracy."

At the time, Du Bois noted, "it was the rule of most white papers never to publish a picture of a colored person except as a criminal and the colored papers published mostly pictures of celebrities who sometimes paid for the honor. In general, the Negro race was just a little afraid to see itself in plain ink." Everything changed with the advent of The Crisis.

Now, for the first time ever The Best of the Crisis will bring together the magazine’s previously published most dynamic and daring voices and stories from its founding until today in one extraordinary collection, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Bayard Rustin, Francis Grimke, J.A. Rogers, Stetson Kennedy, E. Franklin Frazier, Oswald Garrison Villard, Jessie Fauset and Arna Bontemps.

This edition will spotlight the first section devoted to Negro children, the first presentation of Negro artwork, the first feature stories about successful Negroes, the first full-fledged drive for Pan-Africanism, the first special numbers devoted to Negro educational advancement, the first articles on consumers cooperation all tied together with contemporary voices on where we stand on these issues today.

An essential history of modern Black cinema, as led by avant-garde filmmaker, director, novelist, composer, and playwright Melvin Van Peebles.

Beg Borrow Steal, a title inspired by Black artists’ make-a-way-out-of-no-way ethos, is a stirring and remarkable deep dive into Black independent film and culture, as modeled by raconteur and iconoclast Melvin Van Peebles. Award-winning writer Santi Elijah Holley enriches the extraordinary history with interviews from today’s most innovative Black independent filmmakers and actors, such as Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as Van Peebles’s published and unpublished manuscripts, critical reviews, analyses, and reflections.

Independent Black artists across all disciplines—from music and theater to literature and poetry—continue to push boundaries, challenge stereotypes, and pursue their own vision, away from traditional gatekeepers. The success of artists like Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler can be traced directly to the pioneering work of Van Peebles, whose ambitious and innovative multidisciplinary artistry never yielded to anybody else’s vision but his own.

As a Black American who’d overcome poverty, discrimination, and other obstacles, Van Peebles refused to let White America take advantage of him and his talent. It’s made him a beacon for every Black auteur and independent filmmaker of the past 50 years. Sinners, Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, Get Out, She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, Shaft, Superfly, Daughters of the Dust, Selma, the list goes on. It is impossible to imagine any of these culturally defining films existing, if not for the groundwork laid by Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. It is canon in Black film.

Beg Borrow Steal is the story of the legendary man who provided the blueprint for independent Black cinema, and a tribute to the power of radical Black creativity in American art and culture.

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 riveting, darkly humorous, and deeply strange story of three roommates whose everyday struggle to survive in New York is complicated by the intestine-eating demon who haunts their apartment.

Leni was kidnapped and almost sacrificed to the devil as a child, but now she’s perfectly fine. Aside from the fact that she has four reflections in the mirror…and one of them wants her to poison people.

Emerson was a leading heart surgeon until The Incident that left his patient dead. Now he’s too sick to work, keeps finding severed fingers in his water bottles, and is followed around by a faceless Girl Scout with a creaky red wagon.

Jasper is a line cook with a criminal record, just trying to keep his chosen family together. Sure, he sees a man in the shadows who likes the taste of blood, but he’s very good at ignoring that. He would do anything for Leni and Emerson. Anything.

They’re fine. They’re normal. They’re roommates making it work in New York City.

That is, until a demon leaves his sigil on their wall.

Now, they have seven days to bring Sychar a sacrifice, or he’ll tear off their skin. Who knew demon-slaying wasn’t a valid excuse to miss work? Why are murder supplies so expensive? Just how is a low-income household supposed to afford a human sacrifice?

As their personal ghosts grow louder and Sychar’s deadline draws nearer, Leni, Emerson, and Jasper discover just how far they’ll go to protect each other.

For readers who love:
* Grady Hendrix and Stephen King
* Morally gray protector
* Haunted apartment
* Found family in danger
* Demon-slaying
* Darkly funny, deeply haunted stories

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 Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winner Viola Davis and New York Times-bestselling publisher, editor, and author Lavaille Lavette comes an action-packed series filled with humor, heart, and undercover hijinks!

Discovering your grandma is a spy is easy. The hard part is proving it…and staying alive in the process.

When Jazzlyn discovers that her estranged grandmother is moving in, she's beyond frustrated. Being 13-years old is hard enough with an annoying brother and an overbearing mother ― and now she must deal with a grandma who is taking over her bedroom?!

Jazz has better things to do like hanging out with her best friend, getting stellar grades, and of course, finding the perfect dress – and the perfect date – for the Sadie Hawkins dance. She has big goals and doesn’t need grandma cramping her style.

Before long, Jazz starts to notice peculiar things Grandma does like sneaking out at night and popping up as a substitute phys ed teacher at school. Her instincts tell her that Grandma Mae is up to something, and she decides to prove it. One night, Jazz follows her grandmother into the city and the adventure begins. Caught up in a world of high speed car chases, a ninja fight in an alley, a kidnapping at the school dance, and mysterious money transfers, can Jazz prove her grandma is a spy?

As for Mae, laying low isn’t exactly her strong suit, and, she discovers, neither is playing a grandma. Keeping her nosy granddaughter in the dark is child’s play. But an old nemesis has returned and is on the hunt for Mae’s whereabouts. Can she keep her family safe and separate from her secret life… before it’s too late?

Between ancient prophecies and breaking headlines, the end times can feel like a giant puzzle with missing pieces. In this book, the hosts of the Faith & Friction podcast dig into Scripture with curiosity, humor, and a healthy dose of real talk, unpacking what's unfolding now and what could be coming next.

When the Faith and Friction crew were invited to witness the red heifer selection process (animals tied to an ancient prophecy that could ignite world-changing events), little did they know they stepped straight into a mystery thousands of years in the making. What could this sacrifice mean for believers now? And how close are we to seeing it unfold?

This book invites you into a story where the lines between ancient prophecy and modern life blur. With clear, modern language and gripping questions, it's designed to spark curiosity for anyone hungry for answers about the unseen forces shaping our time. The deeper you go, the harder it is to look away.

As the authors pull back the curtain on ancient prophecy and today's headlines, you'll:

* uncover the ancient rituals that could unlock the mysteries of the End Times;
* connect Christian and Jewish perspectives to see prophecy come alive both in history and modern day;
* dive into scripture and controversy surrounding the Third Temple, the Antichrist, the Rapture, and Tribulation;
* get sharp, modern answers to the questions that many are too afraid, or too confused, to ask;
* and step into the investigation yourself: dig deeper, challenge what you thought you knew, and gain confidence in the end times conversation.

Jesus is coming back. Do you know what to expect? Are you ready to dig into the truth and find out what's next in the cosmic story? The countdown has already started.

A new reissue of the acclaimed collection of essays blurring cultural criticism, memoir, even nonfiction itself, from the beloved Pulitzer Prize winner.

White Girls is about, among other things, Blackness, queerness, movies, Brooklyn, love (and the loss of love), AIDS, fashion, Basquiat, Capote, philosophy, porn, Eminem, Louise Brooks, and Michael Jackson. Freewheeling and dazzling, tender and true, it is an invaluable guide to the culture of our time, rendered in Hilton Als’s daring and provocative prose.