The bestselling Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents trade paperback books, complete with French flaps and deckled edges, together in a premium boxed set—a perfect gift for readers.

Parable of the Sower:
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy—a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions.

Precocious and clear-eyed, she must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith ... and a startling vision of human destiny.

Includes a foreword by LeVar Burton and an afterword by N. K. Jemisin.

Parable of the Talents:
In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction and ruin of everything she knew. Her peaceful community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president. Under his rule, Lauren's colony—a minority religious faction led by a young Black woman—becomes a target for the president’s reign of terror and oppression.

Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew. As she searches for answers, she struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.

Includes a foreword by Akwaeke Emezi.

Returning to print after nearly 50 years, Survivor completes Octavia E. Butler’s thrilling Patternist series, including a short story from the Patternist saga and new historical essays from a major Butler scholar.

This deluxe edition includes: 
* An incredible new cover and package
* Premium French flaps and newly designed, full color interior covers
*  High-quality paper with elegant deckled-edges  

The Patternist books (Wild Seed, Mind of My Mind, Clay's Ark, and Patternmaster) comprise Butler's longest, most complex series, stretching from late 17th century Africa to outer space in the far future, as rival factions of humanity develop incredible powers—only to use them to subjugate others. For nearly half a century, the fourth volume, Survivor, has been out of print at Octavia E. Butler's request.

It tells the story of Alanna, a colonist fleeing a plague-scarred Earth. But the planet she lands on is inhabited by the alien Kohn, whose battling tribes soon trap Alanna in their war. She must make alliances—while plotting betrayals. She must protect her heart—while putting it at risk. And she must decide if the best way to retain her humanity . . . is to leave it behind.

Now returning to print, Survivor is put into its proper historical context thanks to contributions from scholar and Octavia E. Butler Fellow Alyssa Collins.
This long-awaited volume also contains "A Necessary Being," the only short fiction set in the Patternist universe, to finally, fully bring together and complete the Patternist series for readers everywhere.

The New York Times best-selling author’s time-travel classic that makes us feel the horrors of American slavery and indicts our country’s lack of progress on racial reconciliation

Soon to be an FX Networks TV series adaptation with a pilot directed by Janicza Bravo (Zola), written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), and executive produced by Jacobs-Jenkins and Darren Aronofsky (The Fountain)

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present.

Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times).

A young woman harnesses her newfound power to challenge the ruthless man who controls her , in this brilliant and provocative novel from the award-winning author of Parable of the Sower.

Mary is a treacherous experiment. Her creator, an immortal named Doro, has molded the human race for generations, seeking out those with unusual talents like telepathy and breeding them into a new subrace of humans who obey his every command. The result is Mary: a young black woman living on the rough outskirts of Los Angeles in the 1970s, who has no idea how much power she will soon wield.

Doro knows he must handle Mary carefully or risk her ending like his previous experiments: dead, either by her own hand or Doro's. What he doesn't suspect is that Mary's maturing telepathic abilities may soon rival his own power. By linking telepaths with a viral pattern, she will create the potential to break free of his control once and for all-and shift the course of humanity.

Celebrate the release of Positive Obsession with Susana M. Morris!

EVENT DEETS

When: Friday, February 27 @ 7PM

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

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

Please note outside copies of the book will not be allowed in the bookstore and you will not be eligible for the signing/photo line. You must buy a book from Kindred Stories or purchase the RSVP (BUT I HAVE THE BOOK) ticket. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. 

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. Her fiction charts the rise and fall of the American project—the nation’s transformation from a provincial backwater to a capitalist juggernaut—made possible by chattel slavery—to a bloated imperialist superpower on the verge of implosion. 

In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her life: the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, women’s liberation, queer rights, Reaganomics. Morris reveals how these influences profoundly impacted Butler’s personal and intellectual trajectory and shaped the ideas central to her writing. Her cautionary tales warn us about succumbing to fascism, gender-based violence, and climate chaos while offering alternate paradigms to religion, family, and understanding our relationships to ourselves. Butler envisioned futures with Black women at the center, raising our awareness of how those who are often dismissed have the knowledge to shift the landscape of our world. But her characters are no magical martyrs, they are tough, flawed, intelligent, and complicated, a reflection of Butler’s stories. 

Morris explains what drove Butler: She wrote because she felt she must. “Who was I anyway? Why should anyone pay attention to what I had to say? Did I have anything to say? I was writing science fiction and fantasy, for God’s sake. At that time nearly all professional science-fiction writers were white men. As much as I loved science fiction and fantasy, what was I doing? Well, whatever it was, I couldn’t stop. Positive obsession is about not being able to stop just because you’re afraid and full of doubts. Positive obsession is dangerous. It’s about not being able to stop at all.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susana M. Morris is a Black feminist scholar and a cultural critic who has dedicated her career to studying the interior lives of Black women. She is an associate professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech and the co-founder of The Crunk Feminist Collective. A former Anschutz Distinguished Fellow at Princeton University and Norman Freeling Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, she is the author of Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler. Her other works include Close Kin and Distant Relatives: The Paradox of Respectability in Black Women's Literature, the co-edited collection The Crunk Feminist Collection, and the co-authored young adult handbook Feminist AF: The Guide to Crushing Girlhood. Her writing has appeared in Gawker, Long Reads, Cosmopolitan, and Ebony, and she has been featured in venues such as NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, and Essence magazine. 

ABOUT THE CONVERSATION PARTNER

Melanye Price is the inaugural Director of The Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice at Prairie View A&M University. Dr. Price is an Endowed Professor of Political Science and served as the Principal Investigator for the African American Studies Initiative and the HBCU Student Voting Rights Lab. She has secured grants for the Simmons Center and her own research from various foundations including Mellon, Ford, LUMINA, and others. Price is the author of two books: The Race Whisperer: Barack Obama and the Political Uses of Race (NYU, 2016) and Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion (NYU, 2009). She is currently working on her third book project on the five decade history of voting rights activism at Prairie View. She also served as a Special Assistant to Ruth J. Simmons in her last year as President of Prairie View.

Dr. Price completed her B.A. magna cum laude in geography at Prairie View A&M University and her MA and PhD in political science at The Ohio State University. Dr. Price was recently named the 2024 Anschutz Distinguished Fellow in the Effron Center for the Study of America at Princeton University. Price has been a Black History Month lecturer for the US Embassy in Germany where she lectured at universities and community organizations across the country. Professor Price was one of the contributors to Stanley Nelson’s documentary, Obama: Through the Fire, which aired on BET. She has been a regular contributor for The New York Times Opinion section and also done political commentary for various local and national outlets. Dr. Price has also served as a consultant and commenter for the audio tour of two major exhibits at the Museum Fine Arts Houston—Philip Guston Now and Kehinde Wiley’s Archaeology of Silence.

In her free time, Melanye is an avid watcher of television, supporter of all things Black and Houston, and intrepid gardener!

The bookmark measures 2×6”. The illustration is printed on front and back. One side is glossy and the other side is matte.

Pull up in your best to celebrate Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion with Pulitzer winning author, Michell S. Jackson and one of our favorite artist/community members, Tay Butler. 

EVENT DEETS

When: Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 7PM

Where: The Reading Room HTX (401 Franklin Street, 77201)

How: RSVP to grab your free ticket or RSVP book to reserve your seat and your copy of the book while supporting our programming. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

THE PAPERBACK BOOK HAS A BLACK & WHITE EDITION (ISBN 978-1734642773) AND A COLOR EDITION (ISBN 979-8255259076). PLEASE SELECT 'SEE ALL FORMATS AND EDITIONS" ABOVE AND CHOOSE YOUR DESIRED FORMAT/EDITION. YOU CAN ALSO LOOKUP THE BOOK BY DIRECTLY PUTTING THE ASIN NUMBER BELOW IN THE MAIN SEARCH BAR ABOVE FOR THE DESIRED FORMAT.

BLACK & WHITE EDITION (ASIN: 1734642777)
COLOR EDITION (ASIN: B0GWJLQSFG)

Ankh Wadja Seneb! Life, Prosperity, and Health! Drawing from the wisdom and the resilience of Ancient Egyptian knowledge, The Kemetic Path: Achieving High Spirituality unearths the most intimate constructs of the physical and metaphysical universe necessary to explore our purpose, our meaning, and our interconnectedness to things far greater than ourselves. With a heightened sense of consciousness and a mature desire for higher vibration, anyone embracing High Spirituality shall also discover the nourishing fruits of personal transformation, holistic liberation, inner peace, oneness with nature, self-actualization, and relentless self-autonomy, without adhering to structured dogmas, man-made control mechanisms, and organized religion. For you are the Light Bearer, the Seeker, and the Hotep!

This book, which is accompanied by audio, has been divided into three (3) parts, blending the innately beautiful touchstones of philosophy, spirituality, and natural freedom.

Part 1 Preliminaries & Fundamentals: Prepares the reader to receive the Kemetic teachings through philosophical, scientific, and mathematical fundamentals crucial for enhanced rationality.

Part 2 The Raw Kemetic Teachings - High Spirituality: Reveals all core High Spiritual principles and distinct phenomena associated with the unity, the systemization, the interconnectedness, the energies, the order, and the organization of the rational world governed by the High Power.

Part 3 Breaking Societal Controls: Explores how to break free from social controls by combating societal expectations/traps, countering manipulative techniques, challenging societal norms, and promoting a stronger sense of individual autonomy.

Spirituality encourages everyone to question all things and to pursue answers through knowledge and experience. Such is the greatest weapon and the greatest defense against faith tactics and unresolved matters of the heart and the mind.

At this point, we would like to thank all readers, and we wish you well on your spiritual journey.

Em Hotep!

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