A collective work of art whose time has come. Of lasting value for all lovers of literature and the erotic, this is a glorious, groundbreaking celebration of black sensuality, including works by Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and many more.

*ship in 7-10 business days

Award-winning author, screenwriter, and editor Gary Phillips gathers his most thrilling, outlandish, and madcap pulp fiction in an 17-story collection that straddles the line between bizarro, science fiction, noir, and superhero classics.

Aztec vampires, astral projecting killers, oxygen stealing bombs, undercover space rangers, aliens occupying Los Angeles, right wing specters haunting the ’hood, masked vigilantes, and mad scientists in their underground lairs plotting world domination populate the stories in this rip-snorting collection. In these pages grindhouse melds with blaxploitation along with strong doses of B movie hardcore drive-in fare.

Phillips, editor of the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, and author of One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, said this about pulp. “The most common definition of pulp is it’s fast-paced, a story containing out there characters and a wild plot. There is that. But certainly, as we’ve now arrived at the era of retro-pulp, these stories have elements of characterization: not just action, but a glimpse behind the steely eyes of these doers of incredible deeds.” As an added bonus, Phillips resurrects Phantasmo, a Golden Age comics character created by Black artist-writer E.C. Stoner in an all-new outing of ethereal doings (includes 4 original illustrations by cover artist Adam Shaw).

Her man demanded loyalty, but her body wouldn’t obey.

Have you ever rolled over in the middle of the night and realized you were doing things you swore you’d never do? Sexing brothers you vowed you’d never touch? Bending backwards and stooping lower than you ever thought you’d stoop? Well if you can feel me even a little bit, then let me hit you with a story that just might blow your mind. . . .

Nineteen-year-old Juicy Stanfield is the sexy young girlfriend of Granite “G” McKay, owner of Harlem’s notorious G-Spot Social Club. A drug dealer with a lethal streak, he runs Harlem with an iron fist. But even the cash and the bling can’t keep Juicy from getting restless, and while G fulfills her every material desire, she’s burning up with unrequited sexual energy. To cheat on him would mean a death sentence; so Juicy finds pleasure in secret ways: fantasizing on crowded subways or allowing her eyes to hungrily take in the male dancers on the club’s ladies night.

But as Juicy’s sexual cravings grow stronger, one thing becomes frighteningly clear: She’s a virtual prisoner in G’s dangerous world. As G begins to suspect her of playin’ him, he pulls the reins he keeps on her even tighter. If she’s ever to escape and get a life of her own she must find a way to start stashing away some of G’s cash. But doing that under G’s watchful eye is a challenge she might not live up to–especially when her appetite tempts her with the deadliest desire of all: G’s very own son. . . .

In Film Blackness Michael Boyce Gillespie shifts the ways we think about black film, treating it not as a category, a genre, or strictly a representation of the black experience but as a visual negotiation between film as art and the discursivity of race. Gillespie challenges expectations that black film can or should represent the reality of black life or provide answers to social problems. Instead, he frames black film alongside literature, music, art, photography, and new media, treating it as an interdisciplinary form that enacts black visual and expressive culture. Gillespie discusses the racial grotesque in Ralph Bakshi's Coonskin (1975), black performativity in Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street (1989), blackness and noir in Bill Duke's Deep Cover (1992), and how place and desire impact blackness in Barry Jenkins's Medicine for Melancholy (2008). Considering how each film represents a distinct conception of the relationship between race and cinema, Gillespie recasts the idea of black film and poses new paradigms for genre, narrative, aesthetics, historiography, and intertextuality.

From Marlon James, author of the Booker Prize–winning A Brief History of Seven Killings: a propulsive novel about the murder of a gay man in 1980s Jamaica and its tragic consequences

In 1988, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare.

One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution.

In The Disappearers, Marlon James has written a riveting and deeply human story of men forced to make compromises to survive what the society they live in demands. It is both a dramatic page-turner and an unflinching exploration of queer life in Jamaica during the 1980s and 1990s.

We're meeting to discuss Blood Slaves by Markus Redmond!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, July 21 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Horror Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT BLOOD SLAVES

For readers of Victor LaValle, Tananarive Due, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, this ingenious reimagining of the vampire origin story set during the early days of American slavery blends alternate history with supernatural horror, as the last surviving member of an ancient African vampire tribe meets a slave desperate for freedom, and together, they lead an army of enslaved people in a cinematically blood-soaked battle for freedom and revenge.

What if nobody ever freed the slaves…because they freed themselves – 150 years before the Civil War?

In the Province of Carolina, 1710, freedom seems unattainable for Willie, for his beloved Gertie, and for their unborn child. They live, suffer, and toil under their brutal master, James “Big Jim” Barrow, whose grand plantation was built by the blood, sweat, and tears of the enslaved. To flee this hell on earth is be hunted and killed. Until one strange night Willie is offered a dark hope by Rafazi, an enigmatic slave with an irresistible and blood-chilling path to liberation.

Hailing from the Kingdom of Ghana, Rafazi is the lone survivor of the Ramanga, an African vampire tribe rendered nearly extinct by plague. Rafazi has roamed the world for centuries with an undying desire to replenish the power that once defined his heritage. In Willie, Rafazi has found his first biddable subject to be turned and to help in a hungry revolt. And Willie desires nothing more than to free his people from malicious bondage. Whatever it takes.

One by one, as an army of blood slaves thirsting for revenge is gathered, the headstrong Gertie fears that no good can come from the vampiric legacy that courses through Rafazi’s veins. Willie knows that only evil can fight evil. And when the woman he loves stands between the reemergence of the Ramanga and the justified slaughter of the oppressors, Willie must make an irreversible decision. Only one thing is certain: on the Barrow plantation, and beyond, blood will spill.

Part historical drama, part supernatural horror, and part alternate history, Blood Slaves is an ingenuous and defiant new creation myth of the vampire, one rooted in both justice and the sometimes-violent means necessary to achieve it.

We're meeting to discuss The Missed Connection!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Wednesday, July 8 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Romance Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

*This book is currently on PRE-ORDER and has an on sale date for June 9th. You can purchase now for your book to be picked up or shipped on June 9th. 

ABOUT THE MISSED CONNECTION

New York Times bestselling author Tia Williams returns with an intensely romantic, deliciously sexy tale about a woman searching for her handsome seatmate on a European flight--and the unexpected places her hunt for love leads her.

Sasha Cruz knows types. As a booked-and-busy casting agent, she's always casting -- at happy hour, the post office, the grocery store, everywhere. She's all about finding the perfect person to slot into the perfect role. What she doesn't do, however, are relationships. Too much energy, not enough time. Men find her intimidating, and she likes it that way.

But when Sasha's seated next to a mysterious, broodingly handsome Italian man on the way to a work trip in Paris, sparks fly - but they miss the chance to exchange contact information. Now, convinced that she's lost out on her soulmate, Sasha is on a manhunt to find Seat F.

Sasha enlists her work friend for help in the search, but when she accidentally emails the entire global company, colleagues around the world begin looking for Seat F, too - with some finding love along the way. Meanwhile, Sasha takes matters into her own hands, hiring a smoldering detective who complicates matters in unforeseen ways

We're meeting to discuss Kin by Tayari Jones!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Thursday, July 30 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Fiction Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT KIN

A magnificent new novel from the bestselling, award-winning author of An American Marriage—Tayari Jones has written an unforgettable novel that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Honeysuckle at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and discovers a world of affluence, manners, aspiration, and inequality. Annie, abandoned by her mother as a child and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, culminating in a battle for her life.

A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in 

We're meeting to discuss Judge Stone by Viola Davis!

BOOK CLUB MEETING DEETS

When: Tuesday, July 28 @ 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories (2310 Elgin St, Houston, TX 77004)

How: RSVP ONLY to let us know you plan to attend! Support the Mystery/Thriller Book Club by purchasing a copy of the book from Kindred Stories here!

ABOUT JUDGE STONE

"Informative and full of big flavors, this is a delicious and accessible introduction to Caribbean food for novices; will be a welcome addition to library shelves." —Library Journal

Through 80+ recipes, Code Noir tells the interesting and complex story of Caribbean cuisines that are not only incredibly rich in flavor but also in history.

Code Noir is a cookbook steeped in history. Not just because of the title, which hits on a seventeenth-century decree in which King Louis XIV recorded how enslaved Africans in the French colonies were to be treated, but also because it deals with the food and the people that, through the gruesome course of history, came together in the Caribbean.

Inside, chef and culinary activist Lelani Lewis goes back to her Caribbean roots with classics like jerk chicken, salted cod fritters, pepperpot stew, and Guinness punch. She also shares new creations with typically Caribbean ingredients like cassava, corn, coconut, lime, plantain, and chilies: plantain with peanut and lime salsa, sweet potato gratin with ginger cream, and crème anglaise of creamed corn and caramelized guava.