From New York Times bestselling author Ryan Douglass comes a gripping and tender reimagining of The Great Gatsby about the pursuit of happiness—and love—in a society built on cruelty and secrets. 

Seventeen-year-old Nick Carrington wants nothing more than to leave Greenwood, Oklahoma, behind and make a name for himself in the papers. But when tragedy strikes, dreams turn into a twisted reality. Forced to start anew in Harlem, only a letter of acceptance from the prestigious West Egg Academy is able to pull him back into the world.

But the supposedly integrated private boys’ school is more of a catchy headline than a fact, with the same prejudices Nick left behind back home. And his secret but growing feelings for the founder’s wickedly charismatic son, Jay Gatsby Jr.— who dances past society’s conventions with practiced ease—only add more complications.

When Nick’s cutting pen exposes dangerous truths about West Egg and leads to perilous consequences, he and Jay must decide whether to spend a lifetime outrunning trouble or be the ones to light the match. Can they not only fight back but triumph? Or will the powers that be win yet again?

For the first printing only! This hardcover features sprayed stenciled edges while the special edition supply lasts.

Teen influencers compete in a horror movie–themed overnight competition, only to realize the real test is staying alive in this chilling, blood-soaked horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Taking of Jake Livingston and the production company behind Clown in a Cornfield.

Mara is a horror buff whose only fond memories of her dad are bonding over movies by Jack Stanley—the producer of the eighties. Stanley’s campy slasher movies may have kept Mara’s fraught parental relationship on life support and gained a cult following, but the man himself has faded from the public eye…until he announces a contest centered around Asylum, his most terrifying film. Five teen influencers will be invited to spend the night on the fully constructed set; whoever sticks it out until morning wins a hundred thousand dollars.

Stuck in a dead-end job, Mara seriously needs that cash. She may not be a famous influencer, but there has to be a way to manufacture an online presence that will capture Stanley’s attention. With the help of her brother and best friend, Mara finds some creative solutions to her dilemma and lands herself onto the roster of the lucky chosen few by way of her engaging authenticity.

When Mara and the other contestants arrive on set, it’s a horror fan’s dream being immersed in the asylum setting, but as the night wears on, they realize the danger is more than movie magic… They’re not there to win or lose but to live or die. As Mara fights to survive, she discovers an inner ruthlessness she didn’t know she had. Just how far will she go to see the sunrise—and will she still recognize herself by the end?

A groundbreaking analysis of Frederick Douglass as constitutional theorist, showing how his vision, which prefigured today’s originalism, melded history and natural rights to address the evil of slavery.

In his celebrated address “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass denounced America’s hypocritical celebration of freedom. But he did not blame the nation’s founding document for enabling the evil of slavery. Rather, he proclaimed that “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document.”

This was no mere rhetorical flourish. Examining Douglass not just as an activist but as a legal and political theorist, Until the Last Yoke Is Broken reveals that his abolitionism was guided by rigorous constitutional interpretation. Reconstructing Douglass’s method from his speeches and writings, Bradley Rebeiro shows that his approach both anticipated and challenged aspects of contemporary originalism. Like today’s originalists, Douglass saw historical meaning as central to constitutional analysis. But unlike today’s originalism, Douglass’s goes beyond simply asking how the Constitution was understood at its ratification. Instead, Douglass insisted that whenever a constitutional provision is ambiguous, the interpreter must adopt whatever meaning best agrees with the natural rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence.

Rebeiro also shows how Douglass balanced this constitutional vision with pragmatism during Reconstruction. When political tensions pitted the fate of black suffrage against women’s suffrage, Douglass set aside the theoretically pure for the politically possible; as soon as black suffrage was secured, he returned to advocating for universal voting rights. “It was mine to stand for the freedom of people of all colors,” Douglass wrote near the end of his life, “until in our land the last yoke was broken and the last bondsman was set free.”

A new collection of the seminal writings and speeches of a legendary writer, orator, and civil rights leader
 
This compact volume offers a full course on the remarkable, diverse career of Frederick Douglass, letting us hear once more a necessary historical figure whose guiding voice is needed now as urgently as ever. Edited by renowned scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Pulitzer Prize–nominated historian John Stauffer, The Portable Frederick Douglass includes the full range of Douglass’s works: the complete Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, as well as extracts from My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; The Heroic Slave, one of the first works of African American fiction; the brilliant speeches that launched his political career and that constitute the greatest oratory of the Civil War era; and his journalism, which ranges from cultural and political critique (including his early support for women’s equality) to law, history, philosophy, literature, art, and international affairs, including a never-before-published essay on Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L’Ouverture.
 
The Portable Frederick Douglass is the latest addition in a series of African American classics curated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. First published in 2008, the series reflects a selection of great works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by African and African American authors introduced and annotated by leading scholars and acclaimed writers in new or updated editions for Penguin Classics. In his series essay, “What Is an African American Classic?” Gates provides a broader view of the canon of classics of African American literature available from Penguin Classics and beyond. Gates writes, “These texts reveal the human universal through the African American particular: all true art, all classics do this; this is what ‘art’ is, a revelation of that which makes each of us sublimely human, rendered in the minute details of the actions and thoughts and feelings of a compelling character embedded in a time and place.”
 
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials

A Penguin Vitae Edition

The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838, how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and driver, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass’s classic autobiography, this new edition also includes his most famous speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” and his only known work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, which was written, in part, as a response to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Penguin Classics presents Penguin Vitae, loosely translated as “Penguin of one’s life,” a deluxe hardcover series featuring a dynamic landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction that has shaped the course of our readers' lives. Penguin Vitae invites readers to find themselves in a diverse world of storytellers, with beautifully designed classic editions of personal inspiration, intellectual engagement, and creative originality.

Douglass’s letters from the 1880s reveal both his unrelenting efforts to protect African American rights and little-known details about his personal life
 
The fourth volume of the Correspondence Series presents Frederick Douglass as a still-influential public figure but also as a man aware that the gains African Americans made during the Civil War and Reconstruction were not as well secured as he had hoped.
 
For this volume, the editors selected 247 of the 914 known letters sent to or from Douglass between 1881 and 1888. An active partisan, Douglass corresponded regularly with Republican party leaders from the local to national level about campaign tactics and strategies. Douglass also often received letters from African Americans who detailed the deteriorating state of race relations across the South in the 1880s. Douglass used his correspondence to advance the political stature of Republicans he regarded as most sympathetic to protecting African American rights.
 
Douglass wrote about his taste in reading; his fondness for carriage riding; his feuds with family members and neighbors; his first wife, Anna Murray; and his remarriage, to Helen Pitts, and the controversy that the interracial marriage generated. Douglass’s correspondence details the seven-month honeymoon the couple took in Europe and Egypt, the reunion with old abolitionist friends in Great Britain, and candid appraisals of places he visited and people he met overseas.

Use discount code: SALE to receive 30% off. 

Night of the Living Queers is a YA horror anthology that explores a night when anything is possible exclusively featuring queer authors of color putting fresh spins on classic horror tropes and tales.

No matter its name or occasion, Halloween is more than a Hallmark holiday, it’s a symbol of transformation. NIGHT OF THE LIVING QUEERS is a YA horror anthology that explores how Halloween can be more than just candies and frights, but a night where anything is possible. Each short story will be told through the lens of a different BIPOC teen and the Halloween night that changes their lives forever. Creative, creepy, and queer, this collection will bring fresh terror, heart, and humor to young adult literature.

Contributors include editors Alex Brown and Shelly Page, Kalynn Bayron, Ryan Douglass, Sara Farizan, Maya Gittelman, Kosoko Jackson, Em Liu, Vanessa Montalban, Ayida Shonibar, Tara Sim, Trang Thanh Tran, and Rebecca Kim Wells.

Frederick Douglass was the most prominent African American of the 19th Century and Sidney Morrison has created a mesmerizing historical novel richly detailing his life and the Civil War Era

Born into slavery, Frederick Douglass did what seemed impossible: he escaped, reinvented himself, and rose to become one of the most powerful voices in American history—a fierce abolitionist, gifted orator, founder of The North Star, and collaborator with Abraham Lincoln, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Susan B. Anthony in ending slavery and shaping U.S. democracy itself.

But in this singular work of historical fiction, Sidney Morrison is able to move beyond the legend to explore the full complexity of Douglass's interior life: the loves he protected, the choices he made, the costs paid for his greatness. Anna Murray Douglass, the wife instrumental to his escape. Julia Griffith, the British abolitionist whose closeness sparked scandal. Ottilie Assing, the German journalist who died by suicide after Douglass married another woman. Here is Douglass as history has never quite shown him: a towering public figure and a deeply complex private man, whose life was rich in conflict, consequence, and humanity.

Celebrate the release of Love Cake with author, Douglas Bell!

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, May 18, 2024 at 2 PM

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

How: RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat. RSVP WITH BOOK to support the author and our programming.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Love Cake is contemporary fiction about Bryan Hicks and his transgender girlfriend, Nadia Brooks. Together they own and operate a bakery in conservative Texas. At its red velvet core, Love Cake is a story about how love persists in the face of prejudice and about the value of found family. It speaks to the power of loving people despite the mistakes they make.

With thought-provoking insight, Douglas Bell in Love Cake, the second book of The Cakes Series duology and the sequel to Cake Walk, rings a bell again on an untold story that teaches how we can find the courage to show up for each other as the world tries to tear us apart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Douglas Bell is a fiction writer based in the bustling city of Houston, Texas. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the teachings of Buddha and the Dalai Lama, as well as the powerful storytelling of James Baldwin. When he's not writing, you can usually find him hitting the gym, experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen, or staying up to date with the latest fashion trends. 

My Bondage and My Freedom is the second of three published autobiographies from one of the most brilliant and eloquent abolitionists and human rights activists in American history. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave was published ten years before in 1845, while The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was published twenty-five years later.

For five years, Zahara Douglass has been haunted by her sister’s impossible disappearance. Now, in December 1999, with the world on the brink of chaos, Zahara sets out to find her sister no matter the cost in this twisty and compelling modern fantasy from Leslye Penelope.

In April 1994, Zahara watched her twin sister, Annica, get hustled into a stranger’s car and disappear—only to return to a world where no one remembers Annica ever existed. Not her mother. Not the police. No one.

Now, as the world braces for the looming Y2K crisis, Zahara finds evidence that proves her sister was real. Determined to uncover the truth, she hires a private investigator and begins digging into her family’s shadowed past. When the investigation leads to two charismatic men who once served with her father in Vietnam, Zahara realizes she and her sister may be pawns in a dangerous power struggle with unthinkable consequences.

To find her sister, Zahara must face the truth about her family, her memories, and the power lurking within her. But the sisters’ reunion comes at a price—one that could unravel reality and bring about the end of the world.