There are so many things we once believed were true, good, and beautiful that we now no longer believe. Ideas we once defended with confidence now seem naive, misguided, or even harmful.

Every generation looks back at what their parents believed and rolls their eyes. Every generation thinks they stand on the right side of history, but history has a way of humbling our confidence. That only means future generations will look back and judge us to be wrong, false, and bad.

One day, we also will be on the wrong side of history. It's okay to be wrong about things that don't matter, like cultural trends, personal tastes, and leisure activities. But what if we're wrong about things that really matter, like faith, God, and eternal consequences? What if we've been believing all the wrong things? In How to Be on the Right Side of History, Sam Chan reveals how--when it comes to things of ultimate truth, goodness, beauty, and God--we can have confidence that our beliefs aren't just fads but are grounded in eternal reality.

Afro Samurai meets The Sword of Kaigen in this anime-inspired novella

This is no revenge story. I ain’t got time for that. I’ve got errands to run and things to do and barely enough time to make it home before sundown. I don’t care why folks are going around stealing ink. I don’t care why the monks are acting kinda strange. I don’t care that everybody is expecting me to save them. I might be a Sistah Samurai but those days playing hero were back when my knees didn’t ache, and I wasn’t the only one left. So leave me alone.

All I want to do is get home, drink some green tea lemonade, and enjoy my peace. I’m not asking for much, so why are all these demons daring to get in my way?

I am not the one. Not today.

Sistah Samurai is an Action Fantasy novella that is an homage to the anime, Afro Samurai. Both works feature a feudal Japan-inspired setting that is rife with anachronisms. In the words of Samuel L. Jackson, “Is that a motherf—ing RPG?”

Afro Samurai meets The Boondocks in this anime-inspired novel

I've wanted nothing more than to become a Sistah Samurai. When I was expelled from the training academy for sneaking in my stupid ex-boyfriend, I still had hope that I could cry enough to convince them to take me back. Then, demons invaded the capital and decimated the clan, and there went my dreams of ever naming my own pair of pink swords.

Until I heard a rumor of one last Sistah Samurai. I packed my favorite outfits and my trusty teddy bear, and recruited my forever bestie to help me find her. If we could manage not to interrupt her lunch, maybe we could convince her to train us? We were ready to do whatever she asked, even if that meant confronting old flames and taking down the patriarchy.

As long as we looked good while doing it.

The sequel of Sistah Samurai is an Action Fantasy novella that is an homage to the anime, Afro Samurai. Both works feature a feudal Japan-inspired setting that is rife with anachronisms. In the words of Samuel L. Jackson, “Is that a motherf—ing RPG?”

Now you can support your favorite independent bookstore everywhere you go!

Wear our little bookshop with Love and Pride.

A message from Chanecka Williams:

"Alice Walker has been a force in the world for over forty years. As a writer, poet and activist, she is relentless in her pursuit of a free(er) world for all. In this social, political, time-space reality, Walker’s work feels essential to be explored with new eyes. Join us as we read her novels, short story collections, and a few of her nonfiction works. It would be remiss to not mention that this journey is as spiritual as literary being that Alice Walker has always given credit to the spirits that accompany her. "

In honor of Bookstore Romance Day, we have gathered some of our favorite Black contemporary Romance authors, traditionally and indie published.

EVENT DEETS

WHEN: August 17 at 6:30PM

WHERE: Virtual Via Zoom

HOW: Be sure to purchase your $5 ticket or choose one of the bundles to gain entry to this virtual event. 

ROMANCE BOOK BUNDLES

Forbidden Love: The Perfect Find, Forbidden Promises - $26

Second Chance Romance: All I've Ever Want All I've Ever Needed , Seven Days in June - $31

Opposite Attract: Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up, The Secret to a Southern Wedding - $36

Meet Queer: D'Vaughn & Kris Plan A Wedding, Can't Let Her Go , A Dash of Salt & Pepper- $45

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Tia Williams had a fifteen-year career as a beauty editor for magazines including Elle, Glamour, Lucky, Teen People, and Essence. In 2004, she pioneered the beauty-blog industry with her award-winning site, Shake Your Beauty. She wrote the bestselling debut novel The Accidental Diva and penned two young adult novels, It Chicks and Sixteen Candles. Her award-winning novel The Perfect Find is a Netflix movie starring Gabrielle Union. Her latest novel is New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, Seven Days in June, published by Grand Central. Tia currently lives with her daughter and her husband in Brooklyn.

Like any good Southern belle, Kianna Alexander wears many hats: doting mama, advice-dispensing sister, fun aunt and gabbing girlfriend. She's a voracious reader, an amateur seamstress and occasional painter in oils.She has a passion for history and an endless curiosity. Kianna is proud to tell stories where Black women are loved, valued, and thriving. A native of the TarHeel state, Kianna still lives there while maintaining her collection of well-loved vintage 80's Barbie dolls.

Chencia Higgins hails from the big city of Houston in the greatest state of Texas. Writing has been her my passion since she was a young girl, when her subject matter were visions of middle school drama with her group of girlfriends. She entered the world of publishing in May 2016 with an erotic novella that set the stage for a career in which she would craft engaging tales of Black women being loved up on. She continues to write for women who love to read but are tired of never seeing themselves in the story. Higgins proud to be a part of an indie and self-published author community. When she's not writing, you can find her reading a book (or two, or three), saving recipes that she'll never make on Pinterest, and traveling as much as possible with her family.

A.E. Valdez published her first book, All I’ve Wanted, All I’ve Needed, in 2021. She has continued to write stories with endearing and relatable characters centered firmly around Black love. Readers have described her work as sweet and spicy, deeply emotional, and healing.

She currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with the love of her life and their two sons. When she’s not typing away on a keyboard, she enjoys spending time with her family, going on hiking trips, gaming, or curling up with a good book.

Kosoko Jackson is a digital-media specialist, who lives in the New York Metro Area and spends too much time listening to Halsey and Taylor Swift.

Charish Reid is a fan of sexy books and disaster films. When she's not grading papers or prepping lessons for college freshmen, she enjoys writing romances that celebrate quirky black women who deserve HEAs. Charish currently lives in Sweden, with her husband, avoiding most forms of exercise.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Let's celebrate a few of the new-ish Black women mystery writers! 

EVENT DEETS

When: Monday, August 11, 2025 @ 6:30 PM CT

Where: Virtual! Sign up and we'll send you the link to the Zoom. 

How: RSVP ONLY to get the link to the Zoom! RSVP WITH BUNDLE to get a copy of each of the authors' book and support the bookstore!

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Zoe B. Wallbrook is a recently tenured professor whose academic research has appeared in outlets such as the New York Times and The New Yorker. She was selected for mentorship by LA Times bestseller Elizabeth Little, and History Lessons, her first novel, was a runner-up for the Eleanor Taylor Bland Award. Zoe’s hobbies include beginning all emails with, “My sincerest apologies for my slow reply,” pretending to understand how astrological signs work, and crying at the end of every Call the Midwife episode. She and her husband live with their stalker, a black lab/pittie mix named Sophie.

SANDRA JACKSON-OPOKU is the author of Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him and the award-winning novel The River Where Blood is Born. She also coedited the anthology Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks. Her fiction, nonfiction, and dramatic works have been published and produced in Adi Magazine, Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, New Daughters of Africa, Obsidian, storySouth, the Chicago Humanities Festival, and others.

Elise Bryant is the NAACP Image Award-nominated author of Happily Ever Afters, One True Loves, Reggie and Delilah’s Year of Falling, and It’s Elementary. For many years, Elise had the joy of working as a special education teacher, and now she spends her days reading, writing, and eating dessert. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Long Beach, California. You can visit her online at www.elisebryant.com.

Spring is in the air, and love is on the page. Join D.W. Brooks, Alexandra Lechelle, and Zee Renee at Kindred Stories for a celebration of local romance authors.

EVENT DEETS

When: Saturday, May 23 @ 6PM

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

How: RSVP WITH BOOK to support the authors and our store programming. There are four options available: you can choose to support an individual author or select the Romance In Spring Bundle, which includes one book from all participating authors.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

D. W. Brooks

D. W. Brooks  is an author who has independently published three romantic suspense books and two contemporary romance novels. In addition to writing books, D. W. is also a retired ophthalmologist and a kidney transplant recipient of over eight years. She is originally from Alabama but now lives in Texas with her husband and daughter.

Alexandrea LeChelle

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.

Zee Renee

Writing is where Zee thrives, finding peace and purpose. Her journey began at thirteen with a black-and-white composition book, later blossoming on Wattpad, where she captivated over two million readers. In December 2023, she released her debut novel, All In, and was nominated for the 2023 Black Girl Who Writes Best New Author award. By November 2024, Zee became a National Best-Selling Author with the release of When He’s Not There, her third book.

Crafting urban fiction and romance, Zee transforms raw emotions into powerful stories. Her characters are deeply personal, each carrying a piece of her spirit. She is grateful for the opportunity to share her God-given talent and hopes readers will feel the same passion in her words as she does in writing them.

Join us for the official launch event of Black Chameleon: Memory, Womanhood & Myth with author, Deborah D.E.E.P Mouton and artist, Delita Martin. 

Event DEETS

When: March 7, 2023 at 7PM CST

Where: Project Row House Community Gallery (2521 Holman Street, HTX 77004)

How: Please RSVP reserve your spot. Checkout for RSVP with Book to support our store and the author/artists. 

About Black Chameleon

In the literary tradition of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, this debut memoir confronts both the challenges and joys of growing up Black and making your own truth.

Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah Mouton felt alienated from the stories she learned in class. She yearned for stories she felt connected to—true ones of course—but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. What she encountered was almost always written by white writers who prospered in a time when human beings were treated as chattel, such as the Greek and Roman myths, which felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins. When she sought myths written by Black authors, they were rooted too far in the past, a continent away.

Mouton writes, “The phrases of my mother and grandmother began to seem less colloquial and more tied to stories that had been lost along the way. . . . Mythmaking isn’t a lie. It is our moment to take the privilege of our own creativity to fill in the gaps that colonization has stolen from us. It is us choosing to write the tales that our children pull strength from. It is hijacking history for the ignorance in its closets. This, a truth that must start with the women.”

Mouton’s memoir is a song of praise and an elegy for Black womanhood. With a poet’s gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America. Of the moment yet timeless, playful but incendiary, Mouton has staked out new territory in the memoir form.

About Deborah DEEP Mouton

Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is an internationally known writer, educator, activist, and performer and the first Black poet laureate of Houston, Texas. She was formerly ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World (PSI). Her recent poetry collection, Newsworthy, garnered her a Pushcart nomination, was named a finalist for the 2019 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award, and received an honorable mention for the Summerlee Book Prize. Its German translation, under the title Berichtenswert, was released in Summer 2021 by Elif Verlag. The opera Marian’s Song, for which she wrote the libretto, debuted in 2020. 

About Delita Martin

Delita Martin is an artist currently based in Huffman, Texas. She received a BFA in drawing from Texas Southern University and an MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. Formerly a member of the fine arts faculty at UA Little Rock in Arkansas, Martin currently works as a full-time artist in her studio, Black Box Press. Martin’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Most recently Martin’s work was included in the State of the Arts: Discovering American Art Now, an exhibition that included 101 artists from around the United States. Her work is in numerous portfolios and collections.

Join us to celebrate the release of Decent People with Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner, De'Shawn Charles WInslow & MacArthur Genius Grant Fellow, Kiese Laymon. 

EVENT DEETS

When: January 18 at 7PM CST

Where: Kindred Stories Reading Garden, 2304 Stuart Street, Houston, TX 77004

How: RSVP for a free ticket or RSVP with book to support the author and our programming. 

ABOUT DECENT PEOPLE

From prizewinning author De’Shawn Charles Winslow, a sweeping and unforgettable novel of a Black community reeling from a triple homicide, and the secrets the killings reveal.

In the still-segregated town of West Mills, North Carolina, in 1976, Marian, Marva, and Lazarus Harmon—three enigmatic siblings—are found shot to death in their home. The people of West Mills— on both sides of the canal that serves as the town’s color line—are in a frenzy of finger-pointing, gossip, and wonder. The crime is the first reported murder in the area in decades, but the white authorities don’t seem to have any interest in solving the case.

Fortunately, one person is determined to do more than talk. Miss Josephine Wright has just moved back to West Mills from New York City to retire and marry a childhood sweetheart, Olympus “Lymp” Seymore. When she discovers that the murder victims are Lymp’s half-siblings, and that Lymp is one of West Mills’s leading suspects, she sets out to prove his innocence. But as Jo investigates those who might know the most about the Harmons’ deaths, she starts to discover more secrets than she’d ever imagined, and a host of cover-ups—ranging from medical misuse to illicit affairs—that could upend the reputations of many.

For readers of American Spy and Bluebird, Bluebird, Decent People is a powerful new novel about shame, race, money, and the reckoning required to heal a fractured community.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR