She thought she left Houston behind.

Spring Greene built a successful life far from the city that once held her heart. Far from the memories. Far from the mistakes.

And far from Preston Cole.

But when a family tragedy pulls her back home, Spring finds herself face-to-face with the one man she never truly forgot.

Preston is no longer the ambitious young musician she once knew. He's a superstar with a complicated past, a loyal fanbase, and wounds of his own.

The years may have changed everything around them.

But not the way they look at each other.

As old feelings reignite, Spring must confront the questions she's spent years avoiding:

What happens when your first love returns?

Can two people find their way back to each other after years apart?

And can love survive the secrets, grief, and unfinished business waiting in Houston?

Filled with music, friendship, heartbreak, healing, and unforgettable chemistry, Spring: A Love Story is an emotional second-chance romance about the people who leave fingerprints on your soul—and the courage it takes to love them again.

Perfect for readers who enjoy:

• Second Chance Romance
• Black Romance
• Friends-to-Lovers Romance
• Emotional Contemporary Romance
• Music Industry Romance
• Strong Family Relationships
• Stories of Healing and Hope

Because some love stories don't end.

They wait.

A Norian Love Experience

When the final page ends, the story continues.

Spring: A Love Story includes an original companion soundtrack inspired by the novel's characters, emotions, and unforgettable moments.

Step into Spring Greene's world. Experience the music that shaped Preston Cole's journey. Discover the songs behind the story.

Because some stories deserve to be read.

And heard.

Experience the novel. Hear the soundtrack. Enter the season.

Ready, set, go! Layla and the Bots are heading to the races!

Pick a book. Grow a Reader!This series is part of Scholastic's early chapter book line Branches, aimed at newly independent readers. With easy-to-read text, high-interest content, fast-paced plots, and illustrations on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and stamina. Branches books help readers grow!Blossom Valley is hosting a go-kart race! The go-karts are provided for all the kids in town. Layla and the Bots can't wait for race day! But one racer, Tina, needs their help. She needs a new cart that uses hand-controls and other cool features. Layla and the Bots know just what to do... they will build her a brand-new cart that's even faster than her wheelchair! But will Tina's go-kart have enough speed to win the race? With full-color artwork on every page and speech bubbles throughout, this early chapter book series brings kid-friendly STEAM topics to young readers!

Death at a beauty pageant turns Tita Rosie's Kitchen upside down in the latest entry of this witty and humorous cozy mystery series by Mia P. Manansala.

Things are heating up for Lila Macapagal. Not in her love life, which she insists on keeping nonexistent despite the attention of two very eligible bachelors. Or her professional life, since she can't bring herself to open her new café after the unpleasantness that occurred a few months ago at her aunt's Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie's Kitchen. No, things are heating up quite literally, since summer, her least favorite season, has just started.

To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila's little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago—a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case—because it looks like one of them might be next.

A classic novel of identity, sexuality, religion, and race by the author of Passing, hailed as “an original and hugely insightful writer” by The New York Times—with an introduction by Asali Solomon, author of The Days of Afrekete “Quicksand . . . open[s] up a whole world of experience and struggle that seemed to me, when I first read [it] years ago, absolutely absorbing, fascinating, and indispensable.”—Alice Walker Born to a white Danish mother and a Black American father, Helga Crane has long struggled to carve a path for herself amid the racial segregation of the early twentieth century. As a teacher at an all-Black boarding school in the South, Helga quickly becomes unsettled by the way the school measures excellence based on proximity to whiteness. Journeying to Chicago, Harlem, and Copenhagen, she attempts to thrive free from the constraints of category—mother or wife, promiscuous or chaste, white or Black, American or Danish. But these categories, though slippery and unstable, are constantly reinforced. Helga finally settles into a life that feels secure yet completely at odds with her previous ambitions—married to a preacher in the Deep South, hoping to find peace under the wings of the Church. Landing back where she started, in social and existential oblivion, Helga forces us to consider: In a society marred by injustice, is it even possible to find a true, authentic self? With intriguing parallels to Larsen’s own life, Quicksand is an engrossing page-turner that is as relevant now as ever before. The Modern Library Torchbearers series features women who wrote on their own terms, with boldness, creativity, and a spirit of resistance.

Ignyte and Mythopoeic Award-winning author Eden Royce pens a Southern Gothic historical fantasy story of a contentious funeral in her adult fiction debut.

Phee St. Margaret is a daughter of the Reconstruction, born to a family of free Black business owners in New Charleston. Coddled to within an inch of her life by a mother who refuses to let her daughter live a life other than the one she dictates, Phee yearns to demonstrate she's capable of more than simply marrying well.

When word arrives that her Aunt Cleo, long estranged from the family, has passed away, Phee risks her mother's wrath to step up and accept the role of pomp―the highly honored duty of planning the funeral service. Traveling alone to the town of Horizon and her aunt's unsettling home, Phee soon discovers that visions and shadows beckon from every reflective surface, and that some secrets transcend the borders of life and death.

Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.

It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s almost a new person now—an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it’s time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn’t ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could have never imagined: a luxury trip to a tropical island, decadent meals in the glamorous home of a celebrity chef, and a major curator who wants to launch her art career.

She’s even started dating the perfect guy, but their new relationship might be sabotaged before it has a chance by the dangerous thrill Feyi feels every time she locks eyes with the one person in the house who is most definitely off-limits. This new life she asked for just got a lot more complicated, and Feyi must begin her search for real answers. Who is she ready to become? Can she release her past and honor her grief while still embracing her future? And, of course, there’s the biggest question of all—how far is she willing to go for a second chance at love? ​

Akwaeke Emezi’s vivid and passionate writing takes us deep into a world of possibility and healing, and the constant bravery of choosing love against all odds.

From Playboy to Jay-Z, the racial origins of toxic masculinity and its impact on women, especially Black and “insufficiently white” women

More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are looking for in a steady partner, they’ll often rely on superficial norms of attractiveness rooted in whiteness and anti-Blackness.

Connecting the past to the present, sociologist Sabrina Strings argues that following the Civil Rights movement and the integration of women during the Second Wave Feminist movement, men aimed to hold on to their power by withholding love and commitment, a basic tenet of white supremacy and male domination, that served to manipulate all women. From pornography to hip hop, women—especially Black and “insufficiently white” women—were presented as gold diggers, props for masturbation, and side-pieces.

Using historical research, personal stories, and critical analysis, Strings argues that the result is fuccboism, the latest incarnation of toxic masculinity. This work shows that men are not innately “toxic.” Nor do they hate love, commitment, or sex. Instead, men across race have been working a new code to effectively deny loving partnerships to women who are not pliant, slim, and white as a new mode of male domination.

The author of It’s Me They Follow chronicles the improbable true story of how she left an abusive past to build a bookshop that survived the Covid pandemic and become an international sensation.

Jeannine Cook always thought she’d open a bookshop in her old age. Raised by a blind librarian, books were integral to her life, and she expected she would eventually write one as well. Instead, Jeannine found herself a burnt-out workaholic with three jobs and no time to read or write, feeling like she hadn't fulfilled her purpose.

In her journal, Jeannine began an imaginary dialogue with Harriet Tubman, “Q&As” she dubbed Conversations with Harriett. Jeannine wondered how Harriet became a “wade through waist-high water in the winter: type of woman—and how she could become one too.

On February 1, 2020, Jeannine fulfilled her dream and opened a bookstore in Philadelphia which she named after her hero and inspiration, Harriet Tubman. Harriett’s Bookshop would be a place to celebrate women authors, artists, and activists. While the name was ironic—Harriet could neither read nor write—it was also fitting. The City of Brotherly love was one of Harriet's first stops to freedom on the Underground Railroad. But in only six weeks, Jeannine would be forced to shut the shop’s doors when Covid turned the world upside down—not knowing whether her dream would survive.

Five years later, this small independent bookshop is thriving, with satellite stores in unconventional places, from movie theaters to horse trailers. Despite global death and destruction, book bans, the downward spiral in readership, the lack of physical customers, AI, and more, Jeannine's shops have survived. Shut Up & Read is her story—the story of the little bookseller who could, and of the woman who has been the driving force behind it all.

Exploring how Afro-Atlantic religion has been used to portray Black womanhood by writers and artists from Beyoncé to Ntozake Shange

In this book, Sheneese Thompson analyzes works of film and literature to explore how Afro-Atlantic religion intersects with themes of resilience in Black femininity and womanhood. Focusing on Beyoncé’s visual album Lemonade, Thompson examines iconography of the Yoruba goddess Oshun, represented by rivers, the color yellow, and other symbols. Thompson argues that Beyoncé’s tribute to Oshun creates a narrative of self-repossession amid external definitions, generational trauma, and emotional violence and draws connections to other works that feature similar religious references.

Oshun, “Lemonade,” and Intertextuality also explores Beyoncé’s album Black Is King, the television series She’s Gotta Have It, Julie Dash’s movie Daughters of the Dust, Ntozake Shange’s novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, and Jamaica Kincaid’s stories in At the Bottom of the River. These works highlight the significance of African traditional religions for the healing and transformation of their characters. Thompson discusses the ways in which Yoruba and Lucumí imagery and practices such as oríkì, or praise poetry, have long been incorporated into Black cultural texts such as these to tell stories of racial and gender-based injustices. In looking at Lemonade together with influential older texts created by Black women, Thompson establishes the use of Afro-Atlantic religion—to think through Black womanhood, to explore self-defined sexuality—as a central tenet of Black women’s literature, one that these artists and writers have brought to the global stage.

Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

A love letter to Puerto Rican cooking through 100 recipes interwoven with stories, histories, and traditions that shine with joy and a celebratory spirit, from TikTok star and Next Level Chef runner-up Omi Hopper

“Omi is truly an incredible cook—trust me, I saw it firsthand. It’s so exciting to see her passion put into every page of Cooking con Omi. You’re in for quite the treat!”—Gordon Ramsay

Growing up in Puerto Rico, food had as much of an impact on Omi Hopper’s life as the culture. When her family moved to the mainland, Omi began to lose her connection with the island. So, she started cookingconomi to tie her life as a wife and mother to her desire to keep her culture alive and thriving.

Cooking con Omi is a celebration of Puerto Rican cooking with 100 classic and US-influenced Latino dishes that capture the vibrant, warm, and lively essence of Puerto Rican culture, including:

· Tostadas Francesas de Pasta de Guayaba y Queso / Guava and Cheese French Toast
· Guanimes en Coco con Bacalao Guisado / Coconut Dumplings with Stewed Codfish
· Mofongo / Mashed Plantain with Garlic and Pork Crackling
· Sanocho / Hearty Meat and Vegetable Stew
· Pernil / Roasted Pork
· Flancocho de Chocolate y Dulce de Leche / Chocolate and Dulce de Leche Flancocho
· Bizcocho Nube de Parcha / Passionfruit Cloud Cake

For Omi, cooking is not a task or a chore, but a memory-making experience. It’s the crush of garlic in a pilón, the scent of sizzling sofrito, the bubbling of the caldero alongside the music and laughter of a full house of loved ones settling down to eat. Each section includes an introduction from Omi, sidebars about the origin of ingredients, headnotes with the stories behind each recipe, vibrant full-color photography, and an overall message of love and unity Omi communicates through her food.

Ultimately, Cooking con Omi is a culinary record about the power of food to keep tradition alive. For some, it will be a chance to visit Puerto Rico through these mouthwatering dishes; for others, it will be a way back home.

This poetry book is a raw and unfiltered memoir about love and heartbreak-the kind that shapes you and shatters you. It's about first loves and lost loves, about the way girls are taught to shrink themselves for affection and the journey of unlearning that. It delves into grief, the loss of a sibling and the quiet ways absence rewrites you. It is about a childhood marked by hardship, by domestic violence, by wounds that take years to name. And yet, at its core, this book is about survival. It is about finding the strength to keep loving, to keep hoping, and to turn even the deepest sadness into something resembling joy.

A home cook’s guide to one of America’s most diverse – and delicious – cuisines, from James Beard Award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty

‘Our cuisine, with its grits and black-eyed peas, crab cakes, red rice, and endless variations on the staple foods of the region, casts a spell that, if you’re lucky, gets passed down with snapping string beans at the table and chewing cane on the back porch.’ – Michael W. Twitty

In the introduction to this groundbreaking recipe collection, acclaimed historian Michael W. Twitty declares, ‘No one state or area can give you the breadth of the Southern story or fully set the Southern table.’ To answer this, Recipes from the American South journeys from the Louisiana Bayou to the Chesapeake Bay, showcasing more than 260 of the region’s most beloved dishes.

Across more than 400 pages, Twitty explores the broad culinary sweep that Southern history and its many cultures represent. Recipes for breads and biscuits, mains and sides, stews, sauces, and sweets feature insightful headnotes and clear, step-by-step instructions. Home cooks will discover both iconic dishes and lesser-known specialties: Chicken and Dumplings, She-crab Soup, Red Eye Gravy, Benne Seed Wafers, Hummingbird Cake, and Mint Juleps appear alongside Shrimp Pilau, Chorizo Dirty Rice, Sumac Lemonade, and Cajun Pig’s Ears Pastry.

A masterful storyteller, Twitty enriches his extensive recipe collection with lyrical, deeply researched essays that celebrate the region’s “multicultural gumbo” of influences from immigrants from across the globe. Vibrant food photography adds further color to the fascinating narrative.

Expansive, authoritative, and beautifully designed, Recipes from the American South is a classic cookbook in the making.