Use discount code SALE to receive 30% off item at checkout. 

Perfect for fans of Amari and the Night Brothers and The Marvellers, Alby C. Williams' debut middle grade fantasy is a thrilling adventure filled with monsters, mysteries, and mischief.

Twelve-year-old Glory Brown is desperate for adventure far from her family’s quaint, quiet life at The Light Inn. Generations of Browns have been stewards of this humble hotel, which acts as a sanctuary in the stretch of monster-filled land called the Seam. But Glory wants nothing more than to learn how to use her Moxie, a special magic only kids have, and to train to become a spherinaut like her mother, exploring and documenting the perilous depths of the Outersphere.

When a mysterious boy named Marcus appears one day on a top-secret mission for the Parliamentarium―the school for aspiring spherinauts―Glory packs up her beloved books and sets off on a once-in-a-lifetime journey that will shuttle her across time and space . . . and reveal new dangers lurking in the worlds beyond the Seam.

For there’s mischief afoot that’s threatening the balance between the worlds, its magic, and its monsters. And it’s up to Glory to find a way to fix it before it’s too late.

A Note From Chanecka 

In April 1983, Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple won National Book Awards, one of America's most prestigious literary prizes.  Naylor’s debut novel won the award for First Novel while Walker’s novel  won the prize for overall Fiction. This was a historical moment in Black literature history that has mostly gone unnoticed. As we finish reading the works of Gloria Naylor, it feels necessary to honor these two women’s achievements as well as examine their work in context.

Meeting Details

When: August 21, 2022 at 2PM-4PM

Where: This meeting will be held online with the virtual conferencing platform, Zoom. 

How:  Be sure to register for this month's bonus meeting.

About Project Row Houses

Project Row Houses is a community platform that enriches lives through art with an emphasis on cultural identity and its impact on the urban landscape. We engage neighbors, artists, and enterprises in collective creative action to help materialize sustainable opportunities in marginalized communities. 

Project Row Houses occupies a significant footprint in Houston’s Historic Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American neighborhoods. The site encompasses five city blocks and houses 39 structures that serve as home base to a variety of community-enriching initiatives, art programs, and neighborhood development activities. PRH programs touch the lives of under-resourced neighbors, young single mothers with the ambition of a better life for themselves and their children, small enterprises with the drive to take their businesses to the next level, and artists interested in using their talents to understand and enrich the lives of others. Although PRH’s African-American roots are planted deeply in Third Ward, the work of PRH extends far beyond the borders of a neighborhood in transition. The Project Row Houses model for art and social engagement applies not only to Houston, but also to diverse communities around the world.

Join us to commemorate Phillip B. Williams's first novel, Ours: A Novel!

EVENT DEETS

When: Sunday, October 27 @ 3PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2304 Stuart Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve you seat (and bring your own copy) or RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your copy. 

If you are student or in financial need, please reach out to inquire about a free ticket.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjuror who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours.

It is in this miraculous place that Saint’s grand experiment—a truly secluded community where her people may flourish—takes root. But although Saint does her best to protect the inhabitants of Ours, over time, her conjuring and memories begin to betray her, leaving the town vulnerable to intrusions by newcomers with powers of their own. As the cracks in Saint’s creation are exposed, some begin to wonder whether the community’s safety might be yet another form of bondage.

Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phillip B. Williams is from Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of two collections of poetry: Thief in the Interior, which was the winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, and Mutiny, which was a finalist for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection and the winner of a 2022 American Book Award. Williams is also the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at New York University and the Randolph College low-residency MFA.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon is the Libbie Shearn Moody Professor of English and Creative Writing at Rice University. Laymon is the author of Long Division, which won the 2022 NAACP Image Award for fiction, and the essay collection, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, named a notable book of 2021 by the New York Times critics. Laymon’s bestselling memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, the Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose, the Barnes and Noble Discovery Award, the Austen Riggs Erikson Prize for Excellence in Mental Health Media, and was named one of the 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years by The New York Times. The audiobook, read by the author, was named the Audible 2018 Audiobook of the Year. Laymon is the recipient of 2020-2021 Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard. Laymon is at work on the books, Good God, and City Summer, Country Summer, and a number of other film and television projects. He is the founder of “The Catherine Coleman Literary Arts and Justice Initiative,” a program based out of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University, aimed at aiding young people in Jackson get more comfortable reading, writing, revising and sharing on their on their own terms, in their own communities. Kiese Laymon was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2022.

EVENT DEETS

When: October 20 at 7:00PM CST

Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX, 77004)

How: RSVP with book to support our programming and store or grab a free ticket. 

About the Book 

As a little boy grows into a bigger boy, ready to take on the world, he first must have that very difficult conversation far too familiar to so many Black Americans on how to live in a world where racism is ready to take on YOU....

Most Black and Brown children are given some form of The Talk, but it's not the easiest subject to broach. This book, gently and with unexpected humor, offers parents a way into this all too necessary conversation. The Talk isn't all gloom and worry. It shows Black children enjoying life, and that they are deserve to gather in big groups, laugh too loudly, run as fast as they can, and to live freely like the kids that they are.

It's just as vital that kids who aren't given The Talk, or aren't aware of it, BECOME aware of it, become aware of what others have to contend with, because you can't make a change without knowing what needs changing.

About the Author

Alicia D. Williams is the author of Genesis Begins Again, which received the Newbery and Kirkus Prize honors, was a William C. Morris prize finalist, and won the Coretta Scott King--John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Alicia D also debuted a picture book biography, Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston. And followed up with Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress and The Talk.  

Alicia shares a passion for storytelling which stems from conducting school residencies as a Master Teaching Artist of arts-integration. Alicia D infuses her love for drama, movement, and storytelling to inspire students to write. She resides in Charlotte, NC.

About the Illustrator

Briana Mukodiri Uchendu is an illustrator, visual development artist, and a first-generation Nigerian-American. Her work is inspired by her interests in folklore, film, and animation and her passion to highlight voices that usually go unheard. Briana is a graduate of Ringling College of Art and Design where she majored in Illustration. In her illustration debut, her work for The Talk by Newbery Honor-winner Alicia D. Williams (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books, October 2022) was juried into The Original Art 2022 by the Society of Illustrators and was awarded the Silver Medal. Her forthcoming projects include We Could Fly by Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell (Candlewick, Fall 2023), Soul Step by New York Times-bestseller Jewell Parker Rhodes and Kelly McWilliams (Little Brown, Summer 2024), and Night Market by Seina Wedlick (Random House Studio, Fall 2024). She currently lives in her hometown of Houston, Texas.  

Join us to celebrate the US release of Candice Carty-Williams' sophomore novel, People Person with our friends from Blue Willow Bookshop. 

Event DEETS:

When: Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 7 PM

Where: 3719 Navigation Blvd, HTX 77003

How: Grab a free ticket without a book OR support our store, programming and the author by purchasing a book with your ticket. Limited seating available. 

Only books bought from Kindred Stories are eligible from the signing line. 

About Book

The author of the “brazenly hilarious, tell-it-like-it-is first novel” (Oprah Daily) Queenie returns with another witty and insightful novel about the power of family—even when they seem like strangers.

If you could choose your family...you wouldn’t choose the Penningtons.

Dimple Pennington knows of her half siblings, but she doesn’t really know them. Five people who don’t have anything in common except for faint memories of being driven through Brixton in their dad’s gold jeep, and some pretty complex abandonment issues. Dimple has bigger things to think about.

She’s thirty, and her life isn’t really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer with a terrible and wayward boyfriend, Dimple’s life has shrunk to the size of a phone screen. And despite a small but loyal following, she’s never felt more alone in her life. That is, until a dramatic event brings her half siblings Nikisha, Danny, Lizzie, and Prynce crashing back into her life. And when they’re all forced to reconnect with Cyril Pennington, the absent father they never really knew, things get even more complicated.

From an author with “a flair for storytelling that appears effortlessly authentic” (Time), People Person is a vibrant and charming celebration of discovering family as an adult.

About Author

Candice Carty-Williams is a writer and the author of the Sunday Times (London) bestselling Queenie, which has been shortlisted by Waterstones, Foyles, and Goodreads for book of the year, 2019, as well as selected as the Blackwell’s Debut of the Year. In 2016, Candice created and launched the Guardian 4th Estate BAME Short Story Prize, the first inclusive ini­tiative of its kind in book publishing. Candice has written for The Guardian, i-D, Vogue, every itera­tion of The Sunday Times (London), BEAT magazine, Black Ballad, and more. She will probably always live in South London.

About Moderator

Join us to celebrate Tia Williams' newest release, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde!

EVENT DEETS

When: Tuesday, February 20 @7PM

Where: STAGES (800 Rosine Street, HTX, 77019)

How: Grab your tickets! Each ticket will come with a signed copy of A Love Song for Ricki Wilde. No refunds. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this enchanting love story from the New York Times bestselling author of Seven Days in June, a free-spirited florist and an enigmatic musician are irreversibly linked through the history, art, and magic of Harlem.

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.

Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.

When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.

One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.  

Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR