A cunning teen memory merchant falls for the handsome rookie officer on her tail in this swoony dystopian romance that's “one to watch” (Amie Kaufman, New York Times bestselling author of The Isles of the Gods)

In 2364, eighteen-year-old Liv Newman dreams of a future beyond her lower-class life in the Metro. As a Proxy, she uses the neurochip in her brain to sell memories to wealthy clients. Maybe a few illegally, but money equals freedom. So when a customer offers her a ludicrous sum to go on an assignment in no-man’s-land, Liv accepts. Now she just has to survive.

Rookie Forceman Adrian Rao believes in order over all. After discovering that a renegade Proxy’s shady dealings are messing with citizens’ brain chemistry, he vows to extinguish the threat. But when he tracks Liv down, there’s one problem: her memories are gone. Can Adrian bring himself to condemn her for crimes she doesn’t remember?

As Liv and Adrian navigate the world beyond the Metro and their growing feelings for one another, they grapple with who they are, who they could be, and whether another way of living is possible.

In the critical essays collected in Black Looks, bell hooks interrogates old narratives and argues for alternative ways to look at blackness, black subjectivity, and whiteness. Her focus is on spectatorship―in particular, the way blackness and black people are experienced in literature, music, television, and especially film―and her aim is to create a radical intervention into the way we talk about race and representation. As she describes: "the essays in Black Looks are meant to challenge and unsettle, to disrupt and subvert." As students, scholars, activists, intellectuals, and any other readers who have engaged with the book since its original release in 1992 can attest, that's exactly what these pieces do.

An extraordinary new work, epic in scale and lyrical in flight, by the award-winning author of Dangerous Goods and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor. 

“How big is a home?” 

“What is space without reaching?” 

“You ever think about being remembered?”

Posing questions that belie their simplicity, Sean Hill’s new collection is rooted in our shared history, lived experience, and a speculative future. It considers how we fashion identities through formative relationships with history and community, with our ancestors, our children, and ourselves. These connections underscore our ties to nature and emphasize humanity’s seemingly inevitable turn to violence. For instance, a meditation on the white-headed woodpecker connects to knowledge of Black miners in nineteenth century Roslyn, Washington, and sparks an understanding of white-headed woodpeckers as “arboreal miners” with “a patch of red feathers / on the back of their crowns” that the speaker observes and “can’t help but see blood.” 

This collection ranges in setting from antebellum Georgia to twenty-first century Alaska, from the Wild West to the Asteroid Belt in the twenty-fifth century. The exploration of people in relation to place excavates the complexity of heritage and privilege, fatherhood amid environmental collapse, and the inherited memories, abilities, hardships, and love that link Black people living centuries apart. 

Taken together, these poems, queries, and possibilities paint a sensibility that strives to integrate itself into the known world, and through that world into an imagined future. In searching for answers that almost arrive, The Negroes Send Their Love reveals a heart as big as the home it seeks.

Murder. Secrets. Sacrifice: Three women seek the truth of the empire’s past. And the truth they find will have the power to ignite a war, in the sequel to The Final Strife, the continuation of a visionary fantasy trilogy inspired by the myths of Africa and Arabia.

“[A] riveting high-fantasy series . . . intense and compelling.”—Booklist

AN AUTOSTRADDLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

Anoor is the first blue-blooded ruler of the Wardens’ Empire. But when she is accused of a murder she didn’t commit, her reign is thrown into turmoil. She must solve the mystery and clear her name without the support of her beloved, Sylah.

Sylah braves new lands to find a solution for the hurricane that threatens to destroy her home. But in finding answers, she must make a decision: Should she sacrifice her old life in order to raise up her sword once more?

Hassa’s web of secrets grows ever thicker as she finds herself on the trail of crimes in the city. Her search uncovers the extent of the atrocities of the empire’s past and present. Now she must guard both her heart and her land.

The three women find their answers, but not the answers they wanted. The drumbeat of change thrums throughout the world.

And it sings a song of war.

Ready we will be, when the Ending Fire comes,
When the Child of Fire brings the Battle Drum,
The Battle Drum,
The Battle Drum.
Ready we will be, for war will come.

Book Two of The Ending Fire Trilogy

Don’t miss any of Saara El-Arifi’s searing Ending Fire Trilogy:
THE FINAL STRIFE • THE BATTLE DRUM • THE ENDING FIRE

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY

An engrossing memoir of escaping the First Liberian Civil War and building a life in the United States

When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking and hiding for three weeks until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across the border to Sierra Leone, reuniting the family and setting them off on yet another journey, this time to the United States.

Spanning this harrowing journey in Moore’s early childhood, her years adjusting to life in Texas as a black woman and an immigrant, and her eventual return to Liberia, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is a deeply moving story of the search for home in the midst of upheaval. Moore has a novelist’s eye for suspense and emotional depth, and this unforgettable memoir is full of imaginative, lyrical flights and lush prose. In capturing both the hazy magic and the stark realities of what is becoming an increasingly pervasive experience, Moore shines a light on the great political and personal forces that continue to affect many migrants around the world, and calls us all to acknowledge the tenacious power of love and family.

From the acclaimed novelist, a first-of-its-kind, deeply personal, and moving oral history of a generation of trans and gender nonconforming elders of color—from leading activists to artists to ordinary citizens—who tell their own stories of breathtaking courage, cultural innovations, and acts of resistance.

So Many Stars knits together the voices of trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, and two-spirit elders of color as they share authentic, intimate accounts of how they created space for themselves and their communities in the world. This singular project collects the testimonies of twenty elders, each a glimmering thread in a luminous tapestry, preserving their words for future generations—who can more fully exist in the world today because of these very trailblazers.

De Robertis creates a collective coming-of-age story based on hundreds of hours of interviews, offering rare snapshots of ordinary life: kids growing up, navigating family issues and finding community, coming out and changing how they identify over the years, building movements and weathering the AIDS crisis, and sharing wisdom for future generations. Often narrating experiences that took place before they had the array of language that exists today to self-identify beyond the gender binary, this generation lived through remarkable changes in American culture, shaped American culture, and yet rarely takes center stage in the history books. Their stories feel particularly urgent in the current political moment, but also remind readers that their experiences are not new, and that young trans and nonbinary people today belong to a long lineage.

The anecdotes in these pages are riveting, joyful, heartbreaking, full of personality and wisdom, and artfully woven together into one immersive narrative. In De Robertis’s words, So Many Stars shares “behind-the-scenes tales of what it meant—and still means—to create an authentic life, against the odds.”

A queer Palestinian refugee plans to come out at his elaborate birthday dinner party in this tragicomic modern reimagining of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

Firas Dareer wakes up on his twenty-third birthday with a sense of purpose: today he’ll jump from a Stage 3 to a Stage 6 in his self-determined Coming Out Scale, professing his sexuality to a captive audience of immediate and extended family, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and neighbours. But despite the meticulously designed invitations, carefully chosen place settings and floral centerpieces, painstakingly curated playlist, and agonizingly fretted-over menu, factors begin to spin out of his control.

Threatening to thwart his big moment are his younger brother, whose mental fragility requires him to be monitored at all times; his cantankerous grandfather, who’s just completed his third escape from the retirement home; the Dareers’ embittered housekeeper (and Firas’s arch nemesis), who could scoop the story before he gets the chance; his harried boss, who on this of all days calls him into work at the architecture firm, where his colleagues share a talent for butchering his name; and his mother, whose accidental text message may have blown the cover of an illicit extra-marital affair. There’s also the fact that Firas too has found himself in a love triangle of sorts, choosing between soft and steady Tyrese and fiery Kashif, who makes a sport out of demonstrating how Palestinian he is.

As the future Firas has precisely architected for himself slips further out of his grasp, the past comes crashing in like a wrecking ball. Sharp, darkly funny, and full of surprises, Three Parties pays twisted homage to a literary classic, gleefully upends the western coming-out narrative, and sensitively explores the traumas and pressures faced by Palestinian immigrants—all in the span of a single life-changing day.

For fans of Sinners and Immortal Dark, a teen girl must uncover her family’s deadly secrets in order to save her best friend and her island in this heart-pounding YA debut.

Addae has spent her whole life on the Golden Isle, a private island off the coast of South Carolina that has been in her family for centuries. Island residents don’t really fraternize with mainlanders, and for good reason. Golden Isle was founded by the Kinfolk, descendants―including Addae and her Nana Ama, the island matriarch―of escaped enslaved Black people.

But the Isle and the Kinfolk have secrets that must be protected from the outside world. Secrets of spirituality, mythology that are deeply rooted in their West African culture, beliefs, and traditions. The Kin are bound to protect the Golden Isle and, in turn, it protects them.

When Addae’s best friend Naria goes missing and one of the Kin turns up drained of blood, Addae's way of life is threatened. It looks like the work of the Adze, West African supernatural beings that drink human blood in order to survive―also known as vampires.

Believing Naira is alive, Addae travels to the mainland. But as Addae gets closer to finding Naria, she uncovers deep secrets about Nana Ama’s past, and about her own… secrets that could change how she feels about the Golden Isle and her lineage.

Torn between two worlds, Addae will have to decide how far she is willing to go―and who she is willing to cross―to save her best friend, and even herself.

Escape from grind culture and dehumanizing systems with this visionary guide from the author of the New York Times bestseller Rest Is Resistance
 
We don’t believe we are worthy of rest unless we burn ourselves out to accomplish it. Our thinking has been limited by disconnection, sleep deprivation, and the unattainable call for perfection. The systems will never give us rest. It is something we must create for ourselves and each other. 
 
Just as the North Star guided the enslaved on their journeys to freedom, visionary artist and founder of The Nap Ministry Tricia Hersey leads us to imagine a new world: one in which we subvert the narrative of productivity at all costs and embrace rest as a healing spiritual practice. 
 
Inspired by vintage hymnals, prayer books, and abolitionist pamphlets, We Will Rest! is a modern sacred object, medicine for a sick and exhausted world. Weaving together meditations and poetry with storytelling and powerful art, Hersey provokes liberation through refusal and trickster rebellion in the face of capitalism and white supremacy. 
 
There is another way. Focus on the escape. Focus on the transformation. We can just be. We are beautiful. We are enough. We are escape artists. We Will Rest!
 
 ***
 
Have you ever noticed
when you ask for rest
the body becomes a holy trumpet
the walls come tumbling down?

In the spirit of American cultural prophecy―from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Rebecca Solnit―acclaimed writer Casey Gerald offers a groundbreaking work of joyous dissent and stunning vision, a survival guide to a society in crisis.

“Somehow Casey Gerald has pulled off the most urgently political, most deeply personal, and most engagingly spiritual statement of our time by just looking outside his window and inside himself. Extraordinary.” ―Marlon James on There Will Be No Miracles Here

Most afternoons for the past three years, Casey Gerald took a walk. He would pass the compound that Elon Musk was building in his neighborhood; the burned-down Freedman's church; the little house where he and his lover Jack had seen a shooting star. He knew the world was crumbling, but he didn't fret. He had been promised: When it breaks, you'll be ready.

"There is a great unfolding going on," Gerald writes, "and all the clues for what's to come are planted in the people." In this quietly redemptive and lyrical book, Gerald shares his map for finding those clues, finding each other, and finding our way out of this dark and wearied time. On the other side of No, Gerald insists, there is a Yes―an embrace of what we really want, what we might finally claim once we refuse.

Calling forth a kaleidoscopic cast, from Odysseus to D'Angelo, Sun Tzu to Simone Biles, Black literati and desert mystics, Gerald implores us to take our power back and to remake the world together, on our terms. Written with Didion's cold eye and Baldwin's unflinching urgency, and with the dark humor of a man who’s seen too much but still wants to see what’s next, The Great Refusal is a lifeline from the other side of ruin.

A RUSA Award-winning novel!

The first book in a new culinary cozy series full of sharp humor and delectable dishes—one that might just be killer....

When Lila Macapagal moves back home to recover from a horrible breakup, her life seems to be following all the typical rom-com tropes. She's tasked with saving her Tita Rosie's failing restaurant, and she has to deal with a group of matchmaking aunties who shower her with love and judgment. But when a notoriously nasty food critic (who happens to be her ex-boyfriend) drops dead moments after a confrontation with Lila, her life quickly swerves from a Nora Ephron romp to an Agatha Christie case.

With the cops treating her like she's the one and only suspect, and the shady landlord looking to finally kick the Macapagal family out and resell the storefront, Lila's left with no choice but to conduct her own investigation. Armed with the nosy auntie network, her barista best bud, and her trusted Dachshund, Longanisa, Lila takes on this tasty, twisted case and soon finds her own neck on the chopping block…

From the New York Times bestselling creative team behind The ABCs of Black History comes a statement-making follow-up that celebrates women, their history, and their future by centering the diversity of the disruptors who blazed a path forward for everyone.

In a beautiful picture book brimming with G for Groundbreaking women, National Book Award nominee Rio Cortez and illustrator Lauren Semmer celebrate all the joys, challenges, and historic forward movement of women’s history in the United States, with a special focus on the Black women, brown women, transwomen, and others who make change happen. This is a book about Artists, Activists and Allies, about Civil Rights and Choice, about Freedom Fighters, Headliners, Labor -- and Librarians! It’s about historic moments—Kamala Harris being sworn in as the first African-American and first Asian-American Vice President of the United States; Title IX passing through Congress; Seneca Falls, where the first women’s rights convention was held; the Riot Grrrls movement; and so much more. 

The ABCs of Women’s History is a story of persistence. It’s a story of pride. And it’s a story of progress. This book celebrates the disruptors, the dreamers, the determined, and the do-it-yourself-ers who continue to inspire the next generation of women to build a brighter, better tomorrow.