Lincoln

I had my chance at love and I threw it away. I don’t deserve another.

I’ve dedicated my entire life to my community. There’s no time for anything else.

But then I met her. Ciara Jeffries is everything I told myself I didn’t want but she might be everything I need. If I can just hold on to her.

Ciara

If I don’t get out of this town I’ll lose my sanity, my loved ones, and my life. I need a fresh start and Austin, Texas feels like as good a place as any.

I wasn’t supposed to build connections and I definitely wasn’t supposed to fall in love.

Lincoln Cole has other plans for me. He has me breaking all my rules and I feel safe in his arms.

But safety is a luxury I don’t have.

I thought I ran far enough but my past will never let me go and my recklessness may just get Lincoln burned.

Kai

How long do you have to be apart from someone before you can say you don’t know them anymore?

How long does someone have to be out of your life before your every waking thought doesn’t revolve around them?

Olivia Harding bulldozed her way into my life at twelve years old. She broke my heart at nineteen and I haven’t seen her once in the thirteen years since.

She chose her career over me. And now, because life is a cruel and coldhearted bitch, I’m praying that she gives me a chance to help her save it.

The smart thing to do would be to keep my distance, to keep it strictly professional.

But I’ve never been smart when it comes to her.

Olivia

Soccer is all I ever wanted in life.

And then I met Kai Morris.

He turned my life upside down in the best way possible. He was there when those that I needed weren’t and how did I repay him? I broke his heart.

He should hate me after what I did and he definitely shouldn’t be willing to help me get my career back on track.

Now, for the next year I’ll have to feel his touch, smell his intoxicating scent, and look into his devastatingly beautiful eyes. He makes me want things I haven’t thought about in so long.

But I can’t have him.

There’s too much at risk. Too much truth I’ve tried to protect him from all these years.

When the truth comes out, will he be able to forgive me? Because I don’t think I’m strong enough to walk away from him a second time.

From the buzzy, viral sensation Only For The Week, comes the next book in Natasha Bishop’s The Forever Falling series, featuring an intimate bucket list road trip, sexy banter, and a sweet and spicy second chance romance.

If you’re reading this, I’m dead.

Dani Jenkins is a boss. A model turned influencer, she doesn’t have time for taking a risk on romance. She prefers to keep things casual, but when her mentor Tanya dies, she is brought face-to-face with the man who broke her heart.

Dani and Micah had their chance at love...

Artist Micah Wright is a protector who loves fiercely. He’s known as the man everyone can count on, but he’s never forgiven himself for letting down the woman he loves. With Tanya’s dying wish forcing Dani and Micah back together to complete a scavenger hunt road trip, Micah sees a second chance for them to get things right.

Does time heal all wounds?

Tensions are high as their undeniable connection reignites, but Dani refuses to let her guard down. As they continue their journey, Micah is determined to prove to Dani that love is worth fighting for, but can she release her fears and relearn the art of loving?

Tropes: Friends to lovers / He falls first / Second chance romance / Black joy /Forced proximity / Right person, wrong time / Fling to forever

The buzzy, viral sensation Only For The Week, is the first book in Natasha Bishop’s The Forever Falling series, featuring Black love, messy family dynamics, sexy banter, and sweet and spicy romance.

You are cordially invited tothewedding of Amerie Cross and Arnold Hightower.

A destination wedding in Tulum should be a breeze, but Dr. Janelle Cross―thesister ofthebride andthe ex-girlfriend ofthegroom―can’t catch a break. Between her maid of honor duties, her sister’s Bridezilla antics, and her family tiptoeing around her non-existent feelingsforher ex, Janelle is desperate to let off some steam. So, whenthebest man, Rome, proposesthey give intotheir undeniable chemistry, Janelle agrees, under one condition:their affair canonlylast aweek.

What happens in Tulum doesn’t always stay in Tulum . . .

ForRome Martin, Janelle has always been off limits. She’s his best friends ex, and Rome is nothing if not loyal. But he’s never been able to get her off his mind, and now he might finally have a chance to win her over.

As thewedding bringsthem together, every kiss, adventure, and stolen moment feels right. Janelle and Rome agreed to live inthemoment, but arethey willing to risk it allforforever?

Tropes:
Friends with benefits
He falls first
Vacation romance
Family drama
Black joy
Forced proximity
Forbidden love
Fling to forever

In the first book of a new series inspired by African mythology, dragon gods rule the earth and sky—until the gods are betrayed, and one girl embarks on a journey to save the world from war and ruin. From the New York Times bestselling author of Skin of the Sea.

The people are calling . . .
And the gods will answer.

Moremi has only ever known peace in the Kingdom of Kwa, thanks to the two dragon gods keeping an unspeakable evil at bay. But when the king tries to claim the gods’ power for himself, it all goes dreadfully wrong. The great dragons are injured and flee . . . and the world’s darkest shadows are released.

Suddenly, Kwa’s ancient tales of monsters become all too real. Yet as death comes for those around her, Moremi somehow finds herself magically connected to both dragon gods—a feat that should be impossible.

Now, Moremi is Kwa’s only hope for restoring the gods to full strength. But will Jagun, the mysterious prince, let her anywhere near the dragons? And how does her childhood friend, Nox, feel about it all? It may not matter in the end, because if Moremi fails her quest, then she risks the earth caving in and the sky crumbling down.

Amid the current firestorm of interest in women’s basketball, Natasha Howard reveals the tremendous obstacles she overcame to become a three-time WNBA champion who continues to excel on the hardwood.

THE PAST THREE YEARS HAVE SEEN A WORLDWIDE EXPLOSION of interest in women’s basketball and the rise of young superstars like Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers. As the audience grows exponentially, the public is hungry to know more about some of the women who have ushered the sport into this bright spotlight, including elite and still-active veterans like Breanna Stewart, A’ja Wilson, Natasha Howard, Napheesa Collier, and others.

Before Natasha Howard was a three-time WNBA champion, before she was named Defensive Player of the Year, she was a thoughtful girl growing up in very difficult circumstances. Her mother faced challenges of her own while shepherding her four children between cities, and sometimes in and out of homeless shelters. 

Young Natasha’s life changed when her uncle Greg introduced her to basketball―with a bribe that included candy. Tash was instantly hooked. But what does a basketball player do when her school doesn't have a girls' team? She joins together with a friend to demand that they be allowed to try out for the boys' team. Which is what Tash did―and then became a starter.

In 2025 Natasha Howard was named MVP of the 2025 WNBA Commissioner’s Cup. She currently plays with the Minnesota Lynx and shows no signs of slowing down at the age of thirty-four. The Vision Through My Lens is her powerful story of building a life for herself through basketball. As a gay, Black woman, she used all her strength to forge forth, to triumph over an astonishing array of obstacles. Coauthored by Deyscha Smith, this memoir tells an unusually empowering tale of a strong girl becoming a stronger woman.

Celebrate the release of The Black Madonna with Christena Cleveland!

EVENT DEETS

When: Monday, September 21 @ 6:30 PM CST

Where: Virtual via Zoom. (We'll send you the Zoom link!)

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your spot.
• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your spot and purchase a copy of The Black Madonna, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup or shipped on the day of the event.

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If you do not retrieve your event book , it will be returned to the publisher and you are not eligible for a refund. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Meet Black Madonna—Mother of Abundance, Holy Insurrectionist, Our Lady of F Around and Find Out

This bold reclamation of the divine feminine offers a new vision of Black Madonna as a unifying figure of refuge, resistance, and renewal. When we are exhausted and burned out, Black Madonna invites us to surrender to her protective embrace and be revitalized by her subversive life force. When disillusionment takes hold, Black Madonna offers radical belonging—urging us to reclaim our own sacred power.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christena Cleveland, Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. A weaver of Black liberation and the Divine Feminine, Dr. Cleveland embraces the archetype of the Black Madonna as she guides people of all races and genders into freedom, wholeness, and embodied justice. She is the founder of the Black Madonna Freedom School, which nurtures courageous and compassionate people who are uprooting white patriarchal religious conditioning in themselves and their communities, while skillfully planting intersectional divine feminine wisdom. Her latest book is The Black Madonna: Icon of Resistance & Nourisher of Souls where she explores the miraculous, liberating, and zany ways that the Black Madonna has protected, empowered, and nourished people around the globe and throughout history. An award-winning researcher and former professor at Duke University’s Divinity School, Christena lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. You can discover more about the Black Madonna and Christena at www.christenacleveland.com.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Natasha Gordon-Chipembere, PhD., is an African Diasporic literature professor and writer. Her first academic book was Representation and Black Womanhood: The Legacy of Sarah Baartman (Palgrave 2011). Gordon-Chipembere has been published in various academic presses, including Callaloo and Small Axe and also writes public facing non-fiction, which has been published in Essence. She has been the recipient of three Fulbright Fellowships, where she conducted research and taught at the University of Nairobi Kenya (1992-1993), Chancellor College, the University of Malawi (June-August 2010) and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (June-July 2025). She continues to serve as a co-editor of the AfroLatin@Diasporas Book Series at Palgrave/Springer, as a founder with the late Miriam Jimenez-Roman and Juan Flores. Born and raised in New York to Costa Rican and Panamanian parents, Gordon-Chipembere relocated to Costa Rica with her husband and two children in 2014. In Costa Rica, Gordon-Chipembere focuses on promoting the Afro-descendant  legacy.  For five years, she wrote a monthly column on race and diversity, "Musings from an AfroCosta Rican¨ for the Tico Times, the longest established English language newspaper in Costa Rica. Her first historical fiction novel, Finding La Negrita (part one in a trilogy on AfroCosta Ricans) was published in 2022 (Jaded Ibis Press). It is a re-writing of the Black Madonna narrative in Costa Rica from an Africanist perspective.  Finding La Negrita won the 2023 Silver IPPY Award for Best Historical Fiction and was nominated for a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Best Debut Novel in 2023. Her second work-in-progress, 1710, focuses on the shipwrecks of two Danish slave ships on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica on March 2, 1710. Gordon-Chipembere is the founder and host of the annual Tengo Sed Writing Retreat for writers of color in Costa Rica. She co-edited with Yndia Lorick-Wilmont, Tengo Sed: An Anthology of Works Celebrating Black Voices, Identities, and Personhood (University of Illinois Press 2026), which documents the artistic production of Tengo Sed participants since its inception in 2015. Gordon-Chipembere is a member of a large AfroCosta Rican women advocacy group (CostaRicaAfro) in San Jose which provides mentorship, community discussions and cultural events to highlight the legacy of AfroCosta Ricans, who are not highly visible in the country. Dr. Gordon-Chipembere lectures widely on these issues nationally and internationally.

*ships in 7- 10 business days*

At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey investigates this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.

Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet’s attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.

Celebrate the release of Bringing Wreck with Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley!

EVENT DEETS

When: Sunday, October 18 @ 6 PM CST

Where: 2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.
• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy of Bringing Wreck, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup at the event.

Please Note: Books purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line. To participate in the signing and photo opportunity, you must either purchase a copy from Kindred Stories or select the RSVP: I Already Have the Book ticket option, which allows you to bring a copy purchased elsewhere. If you already purchased your book from Kindred Stories, you may select the RSVP Only ticket option and bring your Kindred Stories copy to the event.

If you purchase a ticket and are unable to attend the event, your ticket is non-refundable. If your ticket includes a book, an email will be sent to all attendees before and after the event with instructions on how to receive your book. Books must be claimed within 14 days following the event. If your book is not retrieved it will be returned to the publisher and will not be available for pick up in the future.

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley is Professor and Chair of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her books include The Color Pynk: Black Femme Art for Survival (2022), Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism (2018), Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders (2018), and Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism Between Women in Caribbean Literature (2010).

In How We Write Now Jennifer C. Nash examines how Black feminists use beautiful writing to allow writers and readers to stay close to the field’s central object and preoccupation: loss. She demonstrates how contemporary Black feminist writers and theorists such as Jesmyn Ward, Elizabeth Alexander, Christina Sharpe, and Natasha Trethewey mobilize their prose to ask readers to feel, undo, and reassemble themselves. These intimate invitations are more than a set of tools for decoding the social world; Black feminist prose becomes a mode of living and feeling, dreaming and being, and a distinctly affective project that treats loss as not only paradigmatic of Black life but also an aesthetic question. Through her own beautiful writing, Nash shows how Black feminism offers itself as a companion to readers to chart their own lives with and in loss, from devastating personal losses to organizing around the movement for Black lives. Charting her own losses, Nash reminds us that even as Black feminist writers get as close to loss as possible, it remains a slippery object that troubles memory and eludes capture.