Capone promised he’d keep his family safe, but Erin’s afraid he’ll die trying, in the third book of #BookTok favorite Jahquel J.’s Delgato Family saga.

Everything’s looking up for Erin. She married her best friend in a picturesque sunset ceremony on the beaches of Barbados, they’re expecting a baby girl, and the pair are surrounded by their loved ones. Erin’s even made nice with Capone’s ex.

But danger’s never far away, and that scares Erin. Every day, Capone risks his life handling business in the streets. Then, a serious health scare forces him to slow down, and Erin and her brother, Jaiden―now entrenched in Capone’s world himself―purchase firearms to protect themselves.

Having dealt with arrests, shoot-outs, high-speed chases, and Molotov cocktails, Erin just wants to live with her husband and daughter in peace. Now that Capone has decided to take a step back from the grind, will she finally get the happily-ever-after she longs for?

The third book in the Delgato Family universe, Capone took BookTok by storm.

Capone III is an urban romance featuring depictions of murder, domestic violence, and substance abuse as well as explicit scenes. It is intended for mature readers.

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.

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

In this middle-grade graphic novel debut by Gonzalo Alvarez, the fate of Aztlan, the mythical homeland of the Aztec people, rests on one boy’s shoulders.

Emanuel is a chicken. He’d rather play with his canicas than stand up to bullies. Even the characters in his abuelita’s folk stories scare him. So imagine his surprise when one of those characters, El Raton, appears in his bedroom one night to steal his canicas and drag him through a portal into Aztlan, home to the ancient Aztecs.

Thankfully, Emanuel is rescued by a shapeshifter named Chiko, who introduces him to this magical land, where fabled monsters of his childhood run amok. It’s not before long Emanuel discovers he is the Sun Warrior, wielder of the Sun Stone, protector of Aztlan. Only he can put an end to El Raton’s reign and free the people of Aztlan from his terror.

Can Emanuel find the courage to embrace his newfound power, save the people of Aztlan and find his way home? Or will he become just another one of Abuelita’s folk tales?

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.

From National Book Award Longlist K. Ancrum comes a striking YA novel about the unexpected bond between a troubled girl and an otherworldly creature, for fans of Kacen Callender and Ari Tison.

Ellie is counting down the days until high school is over. Between her negligent guardian, abusive stepparents, and impoverished small town, every day is worse than the last. One night, Ellie’s reality explodes when she collides with an ancient shape shifter trapped in human form, who she finds stealing food at a gas station.

This beautiful angry creature reveals that he’s on the run from his captors after years of bondage. Seeing the same desperation in Ellie, he offers her the tools she needs to free herself, as well. As the two share their tales of subjugation, violence, and triumph, they begin to seize the life of peace they both deserve.

K. Ancrum's breathtaking new YA novel is magical, visceral, and memorable -- a must have for fans of deeply emotional reads like EVERY DAY and COMPOUND FRACTURE.

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

An artist’s odyssey from Jim Crow–era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery—a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Bryan Stevenson.

Winfred Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers and joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager. He was arrested after fleeing a demonstration, later survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent the next seven years on chain gangs.

During that time he met the undaunted Patsy, who would become his wife. Years later, at the age of 51 and with Patsy’s encouragement, he started drawing and painting scenes from his youth using leather tooling skills he learned in prison.

Chasing Me to My Grave presents Rembert’s breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert calls forth vibrant scenes of Black life on Cuthbert, Georgia’s Hamilton Avenue, where he first glimpsed the possibility of a life outside the cotton field. As he pays tribute, exuberant and heartfelt, to Cuthbert’s Black community and the people, including his wife, Patsy, who helped him to find the courage to revisit a traumatic past, Rembert brings to life the promise and the danger of Civil Rights protest, the brutalities of incarceration, his search for his mother’s love, and the epic bond he found with Patsy.

Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and paintings that celebrates Black life and summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American history and society

In Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work, award-winning author and renowned academic “bell hooks reveals the heart of her writing life and the process through which she has come to be known as a ‘visionary feminist’” (Essence).

Born and raised in the rural South, bell hooks learned early the power of the written word and the importance of speaking her mind. Her passion for words is the heartbeat of this collection of essays.

Remembered Rapture celebrates literacy, the joys of reading and writing, and the lasting power of the book. With grace and insight, these essays reveal bell hooks’s wide-ranging intellectual scope, untangling the complex personae of women writers, especially those whose work goes against the grain.

“For anyone who writes, or seeks to understand the writing process, or wants to know more about the erudite and passionate mind of bell hooks, this is the book to read.”―The Philadelphia Inquirer

Through his work across many media, Houston and Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Valdez bears witness to the world around him, chronicling an America at the margins. Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… features work from over twenty years and writings addressing Valdez's work through the lens of politics, history and humanity. Valdez's approach to imaging his country, its people, politics, pride, and foibles includes boxing, lynchings of Mexican Americans, border walls, politics, greed, the Ku Klux Klan, and the failings and triumphs of American society. Vincent Valdez: Just a Dream… accompanies survey exhibitions of his work by the same name at the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston (CAMH) in 2024-5 and MASS MoCA in 2025-6. The bilingual (English/Spanish) publication features both full-color works and a gatefold for The Strangest Fruit as well as a sewn-in booklet of behind-the-scenes studio images. Texts include a reprint of Joyce Carol Oates' On Boxing, essays by exhibition co-curators Denise Markonish and Patricia Restrepo; and a text by Evan Garza on the artist's relationship to Texas.

Learn about the art of coming home to your body with Lyvonne Briggs!

EVENT DEETS

When: April 5 @ 7PM CST

Where: 3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX 77003 (Holy Family HTX)

How: RSVP ONLY to grab your free ticket or support our programming, author, and store by RSVP WITH BOOK. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lyvonne Briggs, MDiv, ThM, an Emmy Award winner, is a body- and sex-positive womanist preacher, speaker, coach, and creator. Briggs is the host of the Sensual Faith podcast and the founder of beautiful scars, a healing- centered storytelling
agency focused on fostering pleasure and resiliency; visionary of The Proverbial Experience; and now curator of Sensual Faith Sunday, a series of virtual spiritual gatherings to nourish your soul. She has been featured in Essence, Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone, and The Washington Post, and Sojourners named her one of “11 Women Shaping the Church.” Briggs, a New York City native and proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, is currently based in New Orleans, Louisiana.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Wale (@theehotgirlbooks)is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor working with folks in New York and Texas. She has a double masters degree in mental health counseling from Teachers College Columbia University. After practicing in New York for a few years, Wale moved back to her hometown Houston and started her own therapy practice in 2020. Wale currently works with individuals and couples on a weekly basis.

Celebrate Taylor Byas' new poetry collection, Resting Bitch Face! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, September 4 @ 7 PM

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin Street, Houston, Texas, 77004) 

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and the bookstore!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Resting Bitch Face is a book for women, for Black women, for lovers of art and film criticism, and for writers interested in work that finds a middle ground between poetry and prose. Taylor Byas uses some of our most common ways of “watching” throughout history (painting, films, sculpture, and photographs) to explore how these mediums shape Black female subjectivity.

From the examination of artwork by Picasso, Gauguin, Sally Mann, and Nan Goldin, Byas displays her mastery of the poetic form by engaging in intimate and inventive writing. Fluctuating between watcher and watched, the speaker of these poems uses mirrors and reflections to flip the script and talk back to histories of art, text, photography, relationships, and men. From Polaroids to gesso primer to sculpture, Byas creates a world in which the artist calls out and the muse responds. For not only does she enter the world of the long-revered classic artist, but she also infuses her poems with such iconic pop culture works as The Joker, WandaVision, and Last Tango in Paris.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

TAYLOR BYAS is an award-winning poet and a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry collection I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times won the Maya Angelou Book Award, the Ohioana Book Award, the CHIRBy Award, and the BCALA Best Poetry Honor.

Celebrate the final installment of Attica Locke's Highway 59 Series, Guide Me Home! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, September 11, 2024 @ 7 PM

Where: Holy Family HTX (3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX, 77004) 

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat or RSVP WITH BOOK to support Attica Locke and the bookstore! 

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Attica Locke is a NY Times best-selling author of six novels, including Guide Me Home.  She is also a winner of an Edgar Award and the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Ernest Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and she has been short listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and nominated for an LA Times Book Prize and an NAACP Image award for her work as a novelist. Locke is also a screenwriter and TV producer, with credits that include Empire, When They See Us and the Emmy-nominated Little Fires Everywhere, for which she won an NAACP Image award for television writing. She co-created and executive produced an adaptation of her sister Tembi Locke’s memoir From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home for Netflix. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER