182 results for “by ruth j. simmons”

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  • Galveston's Juneteenth Story: And Still We Rise (American Heritage) cover image
    $24.99

    Galveston was the birthplace of Juneteenth.

    Issued in Galveston on June 19, 1865, General Orders, No. 3 announced to the people of Texas that all slaves were free. It is one of the Island's most important historical moments. Although Juneteenth has now become the basis for a national holiday, many Americans wonder how and why this date emerged as the basis for the oldest continually celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery. To even begin to answer these questions, it is necessary to return to the historic roots of the event itself. The Galveston Historical Foundation's African American Heritage Committee tracks Emancipation Day observances through previously unknown images and untold stories which are also part of an interactive exhibit experience at Ashton Villa, the site of Galveston's city-wide Juneteenth celebration.

  • Don't Tell Me How It Ends: A Novel (Dial Delights) cover image
    $18.00

    A floundering twenty-something, who’s sworn off romance finds herself roped into her meddling sister’s matchmaking business—in this sparkling debut rom-com that asks: can we protect ourselves while falling in love?

    Kaia Harper may not have a plan for her life, but she knows what she won't be doing—falling for somebody's dusty son, promising forever. She'd rather spend the summer after college having disappointing one-night stands and watching crime show reruns. At least she won’t be caught off guard since she already knows how all those stories end.

    But when her very pregnant and newly single sister calls for help, Kaia reroutes, stumbling back home to suburban Connecticut…and into the business plan of her sister's new matchmaking company. Kaia’s views on love remain as bleak as her career prospects, but if becoming the inaugural client can distract her from existential questions like "What am I even doing with my life?", Kaia can suffer through a few bad dates and call it a favor.

    When Ro Jackson finds Kaia stalled on the side of the road, he isn’t put off by her attitude. His steady disposition is Kaia’s opposite and makes him exactly what she needs—a friend in town who can handle her just as she is. But as Ro talks Kaia through a summer of failed matches, she finds herself drawn to more than just his poetic outlook and friendship.

    Kaia hadn’t seen this one coming, but as she and Ro grow closer, she’ll have to decide what’s more important: needing to know the end of every story, or jumping into the unknown.

  • Talking About Abolition: A Police-Free World is Possible cover image

    Sonali Kolhatkar

    $16.95

    Powerful interviews with scholars, organizers, and activists who are leading the movement to end policing and prison.

    Award-winning journalist Kolhatkar presents a visionary outlook for a future rooted in liberation, freedom, and justice.

    Abolitionist thinkers have been envisioning police-free communities for decades, but only in the aftershock of the racial justice uprisings of 2020 have their radical ideas entered into mainstream discourse. In Talking About Abolition, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar presents an inspiring collection of her conversations with scholars, movement figures, and activists who are leading the movement to end policing and prisons. From articulating the best counter-arguments to pervasive “copaganda,” to exposing the moral bankruptcy of reformism, each conversation connects the dots between past and present while imagining a collective future rooted in liberation, freedom, and justice.

    Featuring interviews with Alicia Garza, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Leah Penniman, Gina Dent, Cat Brooks, Andrea Ritchie, Eunisses Hernandez, Noelle Hanrahan, Ivette Alé-Ferlito, Melina Abdullah, Reina Sultan, and Dylan Rodriguez, and with an introduction by Robin D. G. Kelley.

  • PRE-ORDER: To Catch a Sinner (The Blurred Lines Duet)
    $19.99

    From Wall Street Journal bestselling author Dylan Allen writing as Lucy Wilson-Tagoe comes the first story in her new Blurred Lines Duet series…

    Who gets to tell this story?
    The sinner who lived it?
    Or the saint who stole it?

    Sin Sackey is driven by the same hardwired need as every eldest first-generation daughter—to make her family proud. And she built her career and chose her partners with that single goal as her north star.

    Everyone said she had it all. And for more than twenty years, Sin let herself believe they were right.

    Until a near-death experience makes the truth impossible to deny.

    Her relationship is on life support. Her journalism career is in freefall. And the city she thought she’d conquer has chewed her up and spit her out.

    With everything to prove—and everything to lose—Sin moves back home to Washington, DC, determined to start over. No more chasing shadowy criminals. And no more men who look too good to be true.

    But on the eve of the first day of the rest of her new life, the saying about old habits proves painfully accurate.

    A new lead falls into her lap, and Sin dives back into the story that nearly cost her everything.
    Then, when a man who is all the things she’s sworn to avoid invites her to dinner, she says yes.

    After everything she’s been through, it’s reckless.

    But this story could resurrect her career—and take down an entire black-market empire. She’s closer than ever to catching its elusive leader, and she can’t let go now.

    And this man—who makes her blush, makes her laugh, and understands things she usually has to explain—could be the one. So, she lowers her walls just enough for him to climb over.

    But just when it seems her gamble might pay off, her lead starts to feel more like a trap. And the man she’s let herself love appears to be the one who set it.

    To Catch a Sinneris a steamy, suspenseful friends-to-lovers romance between a relentless journalist and a mysterious lawyer with a complicated shared past. Set against a fictionalized Washington, DC, this fast-paced, high-stakes story explores reclaiming identity, challenging power, and the pursuit of a new American dream.

  • The Mysterious Death of Junetta Plum (A Harriet Stone Mystery) cover image

    Valerie Wilson Wesley

    $27.00

    At the darkly glamorous height of the Roaring 20s, an independent Black intellectual and her bi-racial foster child are immersed in the vibrant world of the Harlem Renaissance – and a shocking murder on Striver’s Row – in this thrilling Jazz Age mystery for reader of Nekesia Afia, Jacqueline Winspear, Avery Cunningham’s The Mayor of Maxwell Street.

    1926: Harriet Stone, a liberated, educated Black woman, and Lovey, the orphaned, biracial 12-year-old she is bound to protect, are Harlem-bound, embarking on a new, hopefully less traumatic chapter in their lives. They have been invited to move from Connecticut by Harriet’s cousin, Junetta Plum, who runs a boardinghouse for independent-minded single women.

    It’s a bold move, since Harriet has never met Junetta, but the fatalities of the Spanish flu and other tragedies have already forced her and Lovey to face their worst fears. Alone but for each other, they have little left to lose—or so it seems as they arrive at sophisticated Junetta’s impressive brownstone.

    Her cousin has a sharp edge, which makes Harriett slightly uncomfortable. Still, after retiring to her room for the night, she finally falls asleep—only to awaken to Junetta arguing with someone downstairs. In the morning, she makes a shocking discovery at the foot of the stairs.

    What ensues will lead Harriet to question Junetta’s very identity—and to wonder if she and Lovey are in danger, as well. It will also tie Harriet to five strangers. Among them, Harriet is sure someone knows something. What she doesn’t yet know is that one will play a crucial role in helping her investigate her cousin’s murder . . . that she will be tied to the others in ways she could never imagine . . . and that her life will take off in a startling new direction. . . .

  • Book cover image

    Doug Jones

    $27.99

    In this powerful debut reminiscent of Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight, two men in Atlanta reconcile their human dignity against the price of their professional ambitions working for a real estate development company displacing Black residents in preparation for the 1996 Olympics.

    Daily interactions between Jacob and Daniel are a powder keg of sexual tension and uncertainty. A recent Morehouse graduate and Brooklyn transplant, Jacob fears that accepting the truth of his sexuality will disappoint the hopes his parents have for him to lead a respectable life. Grieving the death of his mother while searching for answers about a father he has never known, Daniel, an Atlanta native, has resigned himself to the reality that men who love men don’t have happy endings.

    When Jacob meets Sherman, a social worker fighting for one of the families being displaced by the project, he must decide if rejecting security is worth the risk of embracing the unknown. In the midst of navigating his grief, and volatile relationship with Jacob, Daniel learns of his father’s identity. Though meeting his father could provide Daniel with the closure he has always sought, the distance between what Daniel wants and what he’s willing to do for it remains a question only he can answer.

  • The Catch: A Novel cover image

    Yrsa Daley-Ward

    from $18.99

    This "highly-anticipated" (People) inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl × Liveright series is a darkly whimsical debut about women daring to live and create with impunity.

    Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life.

    Clara, a celebrity author in desperate need of validation, believes Serene is their mother, while Dempsey, isolated and content to remain so, believes she is a con woman. As they clash over this stranger, the sisters hurtle toward an altercation that threatens their very existence, forcing them to finally confront their pasts―together. In her riveting first foray into fiction, Yrsa Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that Black women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, “How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?”

  • The Dating Playbook by Farrah Rochon
    $15.99

    *ships in 7-10 business days

    When a personal trainer agrees to fake date her client, all rules are out the window in this "fun, heartfelt, and totally relatable" romantic comedy named one of the best of the year by USA Today, NPR, and Entertainment Weekly (Abby Jimenez, NYT bestselling author of Life's Too Short).

    When it comes to personal training, Taylor Powell kicks serious butt. Unfortunately, her bills are piling up, rent is due, and the money situation is dire. Taylor needs more than the support of her new best friends, Samiah and London. She needs a miracle.

    And Jamar Dixon might just be it. The oh-so-fine former footballer wants back into the NFL, and he wants Taylor to train him. There's just one catch—no one can know what they're doing. But when they're accidentally outed as a couple, Taylor's game plan is turned completely upside down. Is Jamar just playing to win . . . or is he playing for keeps?

  • Sincerely Sicily

    by Tamika Burgess

    $17.99

    *Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

    From the Desk of Zoe Washington meets Lupe Wong Won't Dance in Sincerely Sicily, a debut middle grade by Tamika Burgess that follows Sicily Jordan as she learns to use her voice and find joy in who she is—a Black Panamanian fashionista who rocks her braids with pride—while confronting prejudice both in the classroom and at home.

    Sicily Jordan’s worst nightmare has come true! She’s been enrolled in a new school, with zero of her friends and stuck wearing a fashion catastrophe of a uniform. But however bad Sicily thought sixth grade was going to be, it only gets worse when she does her class presentation.

    While all her classmates breezed through theirs, Sicily is bombarded with questions on how she can be both Black and Panamanian. She wants people to understand, but it doesn’t feel like anyone is ready to listen—first at school and then at home. Because when her abuela starts talking mess about her braids, Sicily’s the only one whose heart is being crumpled for a second time.

    Staying quiet may no longer be an option, but that doesn’t mean Sicily has the words to show the world just what it means to be a proud Black Panamanian either. Even though she hasn’t written in her journal since her abuelo passed, it’s time to pick up her pen again—but will it be enough to prove to herself and everyone else exactly who she is?

    Sincerely Sicily is a captivating and empowering story about learning to use your voice and taking pride in who you are, from debut author Tamika Burgess.

  • Trigger Warning: A Novel cover image

    Jacinda Townsend

    $18.00

    A new novel about the enduring trauma of police brutality by the award-winning author of Mother Country

    She’d gotten no trigger warning. And her entire life, she wanted to scream now, had deserved a trigger warning.

    Early in life, Ruth survived a series of devastating events: Her little brother died from a childhood illness, her mother died of grief, and then her father was shot by the police right in front of their home. In the years following her father’s murder, Ruth pushes her past underground. She changes her name and moves to Kentucky, marries a man named Myron, and together they raise a kid. It’s been two decades, and she is, by outside measures, living a good life―but why doesn’t it feel good? When her marriage comes to a sudden end, their house burns down in the middle of the night, and she learns that her estranged sister has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Ruth is jolted back into action. She flees again, this time back to her home state of California, with her nonbinary teenager in tow, perhaps ready at last to face her pain and retrieve her former self.

    Searing, surprisingly witty, and deeply human, Trigger Warning is a novel about the durational aftermath of anti-Black police violence. Through the perspectives of Ruth and Myron, and those of their friends and their child, Townsend explores divorce and desire, the heartbreaking brevity of parenting, the push and pull of old friendships, and the possibility, after incredible trauma, of reconnecting to what makes us feel alive.

  • Right Where I Left You

    by Julian Winters

    $12.99

    School’s out, senior year is over, and Isaac Martin is ready to kick off summer. His last before heading off to college in the fall where he won't have his best friend, Diego. Where—despite his social anxiety—he’ll be left to make friends on his own. Knowing his time with Diego is limited, Isaac enacts a foolproof plan: snatch up a pair of badges for the epic comic convention, Legends Con, and attend his first ever Teen Pride. Just him and Diego. The way it should be. But when an unexpected run-in with Davi—Isaac’s old crush—distracts him the day tickets go on sale, suddenly he’s two badges short of a perfect summer. Even worse, now he’s left making it up to Diego by hanging with him and his gamer buddies. Decidedly NOT part of the original plan. It’s not all bad, though. Some of Diego’s friends turn out to be pretty cool, and when things with Davi start heating up, Isaac is almost able to forget about his Legends Con blunder. Almost. Because then Diego finds out what really happened that day with Davi, and their friendship lands on thin ice. Isaac assumes he’s upset about missing the convention, but could Diego have other reasons for avoiding Isaac?

  • The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation by Jodie Patterson
    $18.00

    *ships in 7-10 business days*

    In 2009, Jodie Patterson, mother of five and beauty entrepreneur, has her world turned upside down when her determined toddler, Penelope, reveals, “Mama, I’m not a girl. I am a boy.” The Pattersons are a tribe of unapologetic Black matriarchs, scholars, financiers, Southern activists, artists, musicians, and disruptors, but with Penelope’s revelation, Jodie realizes her existing definition of family isn’t wide enough for her child’s needs.
     
    In The Bold World, we witness Patterson reshaping her own attitudes, beliefs, and biases, learning from her children, and a whole new community, how to meet the needs of her transgender son. In doing so, she opens the minds of those who raised and fortified her, all the while challenging cultural norms and gender expectations. Patterson finds that the fight for racial equality in which her ancestors were so prominent helped pave the way for the current gender revolution.
     
    From Georgia to South Carolina, Ghana to Brooklyn, Patterson learns to remove the division between me and you, us and them, straight and queer—and she reminds us to celebrate her uncle Gil Scott Heron’s prophecy that the revolution will not be televised. It will happen deeply, unequivocally, inside each and every one of us. Transition, we learn, doesn’t just belong to the transgender person. Transition, for the sake of knowing more and becoming more, is the responsibility of and gift to all.
     
    The Bold World is the result, an intimate and exquisite story of authenticity, courage, and love.

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