Ishmael Reed has created a sharp, wildly funny slave’s-eye view of the Civil War.

Three slaves infected with Dysaethesia Aethipica (a term coined in the nineteenth century for the disease that makes Negroes run away) escape from Virginia. Not satisfied with leaving slavery halfway, one of the trio has vowed to go the whole distance to Canada; his master, Arthur Swille, determined to recover his property, pursues, hot on Raven Quickskill’s trail.

With myth-bending ingenuity, Reed merges history, fantasy, political reality, and high comedy as he parodies the fugitive slave narrative: the slave-poet Quickskill flees to Canada on a nonstop jumbo jet; Abe Lincoln waltzes through slave quarters to the tune of “Hello Dolly”; the plantation mistress lies in bed watching the Beecher Hour on TV. Flight to Canada’s preposterous episodes leap out from the pages of history to reveal a keen sense of America past and present.

Named one of the GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS of the last 100 years by The Atlantic

The 50th anniversary edition of the classic, freewheeling novel by one of the most iconic satirists of our time—now with a new introduction by the author.

“Mumbo Jumbo is a mixtape, a collage, a palimpsest...Even if it didn't have an eerie bearing on our modern politics, it’d be worth reading simply for the pleasure of spending time in Reed’s roving mind.”—The Atlantic

“Part vision, part satire, part farce… A wholly original, unholy cross between the craft of fiction and witchcraft.” —The New York Times

It is the 1920s in New York City and an epidemic known as Jes Grew is sweeping the nation—a dancing plague, irresistible, joyful, and undeniably Black. Naturally, the powers-that-be are having none of it. A repressive conspiracy is operating in the shadows, and it is dead set on squelching Jes Grew and its Carriers—Black artists and musicians—by any means necessary.

So begins the classic novel by Ishmael Reed, the iconic satirist whose contributions to American literature have drawn praise from the likes of James Baldwin and Harold Bloom. Mumbo Jumbo is an ingenious deconstruction of Western civilization—a cinematic collage that mixes portraits of historical figures and incidents with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Now with a new introduction by the author, this timeless and crucial work of twentieth-century fiction is ready to be discovered by a new generation of readers.

Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological climate of the school and obligingly adapting his beliefs to it. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints Puttbutt as academic dean, the fun really begins—for Puttbutt sets out to stir things up and settle old scores.

Turning every contemporary political and social movement on its head—from feminism to nationalism to jingoism—this boistrois and irreverent novel manages to be by turns hilarious and totally serious.

"One of the funniest satires of university politics I've ever read. Ishmael Reed is funnier than Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal." —Leslie Marmon Silko

"Reed is, as always, an American original; a wiseguy whose wisdom is the real thing," —The Boston Sunday Globe

Rediscover the sensational 1967 literary thriller that captures the bitter struggles of postwar Black intellectuals and artists

With a foreword by Ishmael Reed and a new introduction by Merve Emre about how this explosive novel laid bare America's racial fault lines

Max Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames, a character loosely modelled on Richard Wright.

In Amsterdam, among Harry’s papers, Max uncovers explosive secret government documents outlining “King Alfred,” a plan to be implemented in the event of widespread racial unrest and aiming “to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society.” Realizing that Harry has been assassinated, Max must risk everything to get the documents to the one man who can help.

Greeted as a masterpiece when it was published in 1967, The Man Who Cried I Am stakes out a range of experience rarely seen in American fiction: from the life of a Black GI to the ferment of postcolonial Africa to an insider’s view of Washington politics in the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, including fictionalized portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. John A. Williams and his lost classic are overdue for rediscovery.

Few novels have so deliberately blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality as The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), and many of its early readers assumed the King Alfred plan was real. In her introduction, Merve Emre examines the gonzo marketing plan behind the novel that fueled this confusion and prompted an FBI investigation. This deluxe paperback also includes a new foreword by novelist Ishmael Reed.

The classic memoir that shocked, outraged, and ultimately changed the way America looked at the civil rights movement and the black experience.
 
With a preface by Ishmael Reed • “As with Malcolm X, Cleaver’s book is a spiritual autobiography. An odyssey of a soul in search of itself, groping toward a personal humanism which will give meaning to life.”—The Progressive
 
By turns shocking and lyrical, unblinking and raw, the searingly honest memoirs of Eldridge Cleaver are a testament to his unique place in American history. Cleaver writes in Soul on Ice, “I’m perfectly aware that I’m in prison, that I’m a Negro, that I’ve been a rapist, and that I have a Higher Uneducation.” What Cleaver shows us, on the pages of this classic autobiography, is how much he was a man.

“Jasmine Reid writes a shapeful, theoretical work involved in the rigorous attending to emergent selves and the languages made in calling them into being.” —aracelis girmay

Interlocutor Goddess explores the creation of a trans language for selfhood within an exilic state of "ecstatic grief."

Reid's experimental work challenges societal norms, particularly the family as a political construct while reflecting on the trans experiences of a queer Black woman. The poems grapple with oppressive systems of separation and colonial legacies, rejecting extractive, empire-driven paradigms, and gender essentialism. Within her collection, Reid envisions alternative, ethical ways of being, rooted in unity and wholeness and finds kinship with the rhythms and lifeways of the natural world—soil, stars, and water. 

Her poetry employs a trans-lyricism, weaving together dual meanings through homonyms, homophones, and portmanteaus to create a layered, fugitive language that resists rigid classifications. At its core, Interlocutor Goddess is an act of transfiguration, a celebration of girlhood, and a reclamation of wholeness for all who exist beyond imposed boundaries.

*Ships in 7-10 business days*

This humorous and heartwarming sequel to Simon B. Rhymin' follows a young rapper navigating the inequality and injustice within his school and community.

Eleven-year-old Simon and his friends are disappointed with the lack of funding at Booker T. Washington School—there’s no AC, only one space for school activities, and the money for extracurricular programs is getting cut.

Desperate to save Maria’s beloved debate team, the crew start a petition to grab the attention of the local community and show they deserve to have the same opportunities as everyone else.

But when news of the petition reaches the school board, Simon must face his fears once again. Can he use his rhymes to take a stand and prove that he, Maria, and C.J. can make a difference in their hood?

From bestselling author B.B. Reid comes a wicked retelling of your favorite fairytale.

America's sweetheart has been canceled.

From teen star to international phenom to the biggest celebrity in the world, Aurelia George has suddenly found herself on the other side of adoration. The public thinks they hate her when they never really knew her. The saddest tragedy of all is that she doesn't know herself.

Done with the fame, glitz, and glam―the whole doe-eyed princess charade―Aurelia decides she's taking back her life, even if it costs her everything.

But her uncle has other plans.

Shipped far away until the heat dies, Aurelia finds herself in the one place where her name means nothing. When a blizzard causes her plane to crash, she becomes stranded in the wilds of Northern Canada, a sole survivor with no one to turn to.

No one except them.

The misanthropic mountain men who've shut themselves away.

It's their cabin Aurelia finds in the icy wilderness and their obsession she ignites when they discover her sleeping in one of their beds. Thorin, Khalil, and Ezekiel (and all of his personalities) have only longed for one thing in nine long years...a woman to warm their beds.

Surviving a plane crash, wolves, avalanches, frozen lakes, and a harsh winter with three feral men is nothing compared to Aurelia's hardest trial of all―finding herself.

*ships in 7-10 business days*

This epic work―named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, Time, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a notable book by the New York Times―tells the story of the Hemingses, whose close blood ties to our third president had been systematically expunged from American history until very recently. Now, historian and legal scholar Annette Gordon-Reed traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826.

A historical account of growing up Black in the Jim Crow South

The last generation of Americans with a living memory of Jim Crow will soon disappear. They leave behind a collective memory of segregation shaped increasingly by its horrors and heroic defeat but not a nuanced understanding of everyday life in Jim Crow America. In The South, Adolph L. Reed Jr. — New Orleanian, political scientist, and according to Cornel West, “the greatest democratic theorist of his generation” — takes up the urgent task of recounting the granular realities of life in the last decades of the Jim Crow South.

Reed illuminates the multifaceted structures of the segregationist order. Through his personal history and political acumen, we see America’s apartheid system from the ground up, not just its legal framework or systems of power, but the way these systems structured the day-to-day interactions, lives, and ambitions of ordinary working people.

The South unravels the personal and political dimensions of the Jim Crow order, revealing the sources and objectives of this unstable regime, its contradictions and precarity, and the social order that would replace it.

Celebrate the release of Don't Fall with B.B. Reid!

EVENT DEETS

When: Thursday, October 15 @ 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 Don't Fall, 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

The first in a brand-new frontlist duet by bestselling author B.B. Reid - a dark romance Red Riding Hood retelling, perfect for fans of Rina Kent, Emily McIntire, and Elizabeth Helen.

While caring for her grandmother, a young woman is caught between a sly wolf hellbent on seducing her and an enigmatic stranger with a heart of tarnished gold.

ABOUT THE BOOK

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.B. Reid is a bestselling author of several romances, including Crucible, the imaginative retelling of Goldilocks. She’s most known for her dark and contemporary romances, but began her career writing new adult. B.B. currently resides in Atlanta with Ivan, her moody tuxedo cat. When she’s not being a nomad, she enjoys gaming, white chocolate mocha, home decor, and retail therapy.

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

N.E. Davenport is the author of Our Vicious Oaths, the Blood Gift duology, and the YA novels Out of Body and Love Spells Trouble (as Nia Davenport). When she isn’t writing, she enjoys vacationing with her family, skiing, and being a huge foodie.

This bounce-to-the-beat picture book by America’s favorite rapping teacher follows a young son who helps his father overcome his fear of swimming.

Bloop. Dribble. Drip. Drizzle. Splish. Spray. Splash! I’m here with my dad in this cool swimming class! But I can tell something’s wrong and that this isn’t him, Cuz my dad makes every excuse not to swim. I wish I could convince him THE POOL IS COOL!

With rhyming text and vibrant illustrations that capture the essence of summer, this tender story about a father and son will encourage confident and reluctant swimmers alike to overcome their fears one stroke at a time.