“ I mean to live and die by my own mind,” Zora Neale Hurston told the writer Countee Cullen. Arriving in Harlem in 1925 with little more than a dollar to her name, Hurston rose to become one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance, only to die in obscurity. Not until the 1970s was she rediscovered by Alice Walker and other admirers. Although Hurston has entered the pantheon as one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century, the true nature of her personality has proven elusive.

Now, a brilliant, complicated and utterly arresting woman emerges from this landmark book. Carla Kaplan, a noted Hurston scholar, has found hundreds of revealing, previously unpublished letters for this definitive collection; she also provides extensive and illuminating commentary on Hurston’s life and work, as well as an annotated glossary of the organizations and personalities that were important to it.

From her enrollment at Baltimore’s Morgan Academy in 1917, to correspondence with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Langston Hughes, Dorothy West and Alain Locke, to a final query letter to her publishers in 1959, Hurston’s spirited correspondence offers an invaluable portrait of a remarkable, irrepressible talent.

Acclaimed chef, TV host, Top Chef fan-favorite, and author Carla Hall returns to her first culinary love story—baking—with over 80 sweet and savory recipes.

“For years, I have had the pleasure of sitting next to Carla and listening to her explain the science and the art of baking. Now you get to experience her knowledge, wisdom, and humor as well in Carla Bakes.”—Duff Goldman

For Carla Hall, baking is a creative outlet, her source of play, and her first true passion. But her journey from absolute beginner to Top Chef fan-favorite didn't start until she was well into her twenties with two careers— accounting and modeling —already behind her. Away from home and missing the Southern flavors she grew up with, she took to the kitchen and began to experiment, master, and perfect.

Now, as a multi-cookbook author and guest judge on multiple baking competitions, Carla is ready to share all her baking knowledge that will guide you whether you're at novice baker or an expert one. Carla Bakes is filled with over 80 recipes for baking savory and sweet goods rooted in her Southern traditions and inspired by her world travels. Carla brings her joy and playfulness to every recipe, showing you just how much fun it is to bake and bring your own twists to new recipes, including:

• breakfast treats like Sorghum Flour Drop Biscuits, Crisp Sweet Corn Waffles, and Savory Clafoutis with Tomatoes, Goat Cheese, and Smoky Tomato Curd
• cookies like Nut Butter Puffed Cereal Treats, Southern Pecan Crinkle Baklava, and Shortbread Cookie Canvas
• pastries like Giant Frosted Strawberry Pop Tart, Sweet Po-Punkin Pie, and Ham & Cheese Paris-Brest
• cakes like Double Chocolate Oat Flour Snack Cake, Lemon Meringue Cake, and Fairytale Forest Party Cake
• yeasted goods like Hot Cross Milk Buns with Port- and Hibiscus-Soaked Fruit, Butternut Squash Beignets with Spiced Sugar, and Chocolate Focaccia

If you've ever felt intimidated by baking, set those fears aside. Carla's expert guidance and encouragement in Carla Bakes will leave you feeling confident and inspired in your kitchen!

Celebrate the release of Carla Bakes with Carla Hall!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, December 11 @ 7PM 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 Carla Bakes, supporting both the author and our store programming. The book will be available for pickup at the event.

• RSVP (I ALREADY HAVE THE BOOK) to reserve your seat and bring your copy of Carla Bakes that you purchased from another retailer. 

Please Note: Copies of Carla Bakes purchased from other retailers are not permitted in the bookstore and are not eligible for the signing or photo line unless you 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

Acclaimed chef, TV host, Top Chef fan-favorite, and author Carla Hall returns to her first culinary love story—baking—with over 80 sweet and savory recipes.

For Carla Hall, baking is a creative outlet, her source of play, and her first true passion. But her journey from absolute beginner to Top Chef fan-favorite didn't start until she was well into her twenties with two careers— accounting and modeling —already behind her. Away from home and missing the Southern flavors she grew up with, she took to the kitchen and began to experiment, master, and perfect. 

Now, as a multi-cookbook author and guest judge on multiple baking competitions, Carla is ready to share all her baking knowledge that will guide you whether you're a novice baker or an expert one. Carla Bakes is filled with over 80 recipes for baking savory and sweet goods rooted in her Southern traditions and inspired by her world travels.  Carla brings her joy and playfulness to every recipe, showing you just how much fun it is to bake and bring your own twists to new recipes, including:

• breakfast treats like Sorghum Flour Drop Biscuits, Crisp Sweet Corn Waffles, and Savory Clafoutis with Tomatoes, Goat Cheese, and Smoky Tomato Curd
• cookies like Nut Butter Puffed Cereal Treats, Southern Pecan Crinkle Baklava, and Shortbread Cookie Canvas
• pastries like Giant Frosted Strawberry Pop Tart, Sweet Po-Punkin Pie, and Ham & Cheese Paris-Brest
• cakes like Double Chocolate Oat Flour Snack Cake, Lemon Meringue Cake, and Fairytale Forest Party Cake
• yeasted goods like Hot Cross Milk Buns with Port- and Hibiscus-Soaked Fruit, Butternut Squash Beignets with Spiced Sugar, and Chocolate Focaccia

If you've ever felt intimidated by baking, set those fears aside. Carla's expert guidance and encouragement in Carla Bakes will leave you feeling confident and inspired in your kitchen!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carla Hall first won over audiences on Bravo’s Top Chef, where her “cook with love” philosophy became her hallmark. Her belief that food connects us all, provides a through-line in her work both on and off camera. Carla charmed viewers as a co-host on ABC’s Emmy Award–winning The Chew for seven years, appearing on the Food Network on various baking shows and now on Next Level Baker on Fox. She is also the host of the Emmy-winning travel-food series Chasing Flavor on HBO Max. Carla is the author or co-author of five cookbooks—including the NAACP Image Award–nominated Carla Hall’s Soul Food—and two children’s books. She also hosts the hit podcast Chewed Up and created and stars in her acclaimed one-woman show, Carla Hall: Please Underestimate Me. Carla is active in many charitable endeavors and focuses her board member-level participation in organizations where she can make an impact advocating for children through Beyond Bedtime (formerly Pajama Program) and GENYOUth.

*Paperback Release Date -02/02/27*

A dedicated journalist unearths a generations-old family secret—and a connection to a string of missing girls that hits way too close to home—in this gripping debut novel.

In the wake of her grandmother's passing, Sydney Singleton finds a hidden photograph of a little girl who looks more like Sydney than her own sister or mother. She soon discovers the mystery girl in the photograph is her aunt, Carol, who was one of six North Carolina Black girls to go missing in the 1960s. For the last several decades, not a soul has talked about Carol or what really happened to her. But now, with her grandmother gone and Sydney looking to start a family of her own, she is determined to unravel the truth behind her long-lost aunt’s disappearance, and the sinister silence that surrounds her.

Unfortunately, this is familiar territory for Sydney: Years earlier, while she worked the crime beat as a journalist, her obsession with the case of another missing girl led to a psychotic break. And now, in the suffocating grip of fertility treatments and a marriage that's beginning to crumble, Sydney’s relentless pursuit for answers might just lead her down the same path of self-destruction. As she delves deeper into Carol's fate, her own troubled past reemerges, clawing its way to the surface with a vengeance. The web of secrets and lies entangling her family leaves Sydney questioning everything—her fixation on the missing girls, her future as a mom, and her trust in those she knows and loves.

Delving into family, community, secrets, and motherhood, We Don’t Talk About Carol is a gripping and deeply emotional story about overcoming the rot at the roots of our family trees—and what we’ll do for those we love.

3" x 2.1" Vinyl sticker 2 Year waterproof and weatherproof PVC Free UV Protective coating These cute and durable stickers are PVC-free and come with a UV protective coating, making them waterproof and weatherproof for up to 2 years. Perfect for personalizing your laptop, water bottle, or any surface that needs a little extra charm. Designed with love and care, they bring a sprinkle of joy to your everyday items.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.”—Selena Gomez

FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME

Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own. 
 
Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. 
 
In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. 
 
In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.

Celebrate the release of The Gift of Us with Lula White!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, November 6 @ 7 PM CST

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

How: 

• RSVP ONLY to reserve your seat.

• RSVP WITH BOOK to reserve your seat and purchase a copy The Gift of Us, 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 purchase a copy from Kindred Stories. 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

Welcome to so-tiny-you'll-blink-and-miss-it town of Elaine for Christmas.

SUNDAY

Just days before Christmas, Sunday Conklin is on the brink of losing everything-her family's scenic farm-in the heart of her small Arkansas town. It's the legacy she's given up her life to protect. With the bank out of mercy and her options gone, her family's oldest enemy, the Adlers, will finally take the Conklin Fields for themselves. But a miracle arrives-one that could save Sunday, her neighbors, and the historic town of Elaine itself. There's just one problem: that miracle comes tangled up with the most infuriating man she's ever met... who belongs right back in Texas where he came from.

SEVEN

Seven Hardcastle can't believe his luck this Christmas, when he's assigned to a middle-of-nowhere Arkansas town. He's ready to return to his perfectly manicured life in Dallas with his wife and kids. All he needs is one signature-Sunday Conklin's. But when the town of Elaine strikes it big, Seven's fate is tied up with that of its most stubborn, maddening, and undeniably magnetic farm-owner. As the town's secrets unravel, and Sunday's fight becomes his own, Seven is handed a Christmas gift he never expected... one that forces him to question his past, his future, and where home truly is.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lula White is the pen name for Shannon Humphrey. She grew up on Confederate Boulevard not far from Sweet Home, Arkansas, fishing with her grandfather, baking with her grandmother, and riding her bicycle to Granite Mountain in her bare feet.

Lula is the original creator of the fictional Black Hamptons with her first romance series, Sag Harbor Black Romances, using her fiction to open conversations on generational wealth and high society that were previously limited to history and sociology texts. In her follow-up, Explore Men of the Hamptons, Lula continued using her creativity to expand our collective self-perception. 

She has continued telling the truth in ways that reexamine our potential in The Young and Luxurious, Who’s Lovin’ You and now, The Gift of Us.

Her hunger for life and travel took her from college to Capitol Hill, law school, and now Los Angeles where she is a civil rights litigator and author of over thirty novels. Having traveled the turbulent road of success herself, she is uniquely positioned to fight for indigent families and create worlds where we can have our dreams. 

When she dons her lawyer cape, Shannon is the 40th President of Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles, Inc., a former Deputy District Attorney for the County of Los Angeles, and a former appellate lawyer whose advocacy secured the reversal of several trial courts at the California Court of Appeals.

She was named one of the Top Forty Attorneys Under Forty for the National Bar Association, and is a graduate of the Los Angeles African American Women’s Public Policy Institute. 

A 2018 writer-in-residence at the prestigious Hedgebrook for women writers in Seattle, whether she writes as Lula or Shannon, or the genre be romance, historical fiction, or science fiction fantasy, she weaves every plot to entertain, inspire, and illuminate our highest selves.  

Her stories are for every soul ready to claim their heaven on Earth now. We don’t need permission.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Alexandrea LeChelle is a contemporary romance author whose stories explore love, grief, healing, and the complicated beauty of human connection.

Her novels unfold between Houston and Louisiana and center Black characters navigating family legacies, emotional vulnerability, and the quiet courage it takes to love deeply and unapologetically.

Through rich, emotional storytelling and cinematic detail, Alexandrea writes the kind of love stories she rarely saw growing up and entering adulthood. Stories where Black characters are allowed to be flawed, passionate, and deeply human.

What began as a way to process emotions and channel creativity through her own healing journey, slowly evolved into something much bigger: an urge to create and share stories about love, healing, and the complicated paths of life that bring people together.

Her stories often explore themes such as emotional healing, family dynamics, grief and growth, healthy Black love, the courage to begin again. Every story is planted in the belief that love, in all its forms, has the power to change us for the better.

When she’s not reading, Alexandrea can be found working her way through her own TBR, journaling or planning new creative projects, adding recipes to her personal cookbook, and listening to playlists that eventually inspire new stories.

At the heart of everything she creates is a simple hope: That readers will find pieces of themselves in her stories.