Winner of the Man Booker PrizeOne of Entertainment Weekly's Top 10 Books of the Decade One of the Top 10 Books of 2014 - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times A "thrilling, ambitious . . . intense" (Los Angeles Times) novel that explores the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in the late 1970s, from the author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James combines masterful storytelling with his unrivaled skill at characterization and his meticulous eye for detail to forge a novel of dazzling ambition and scope. On December 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play the Smile Jamaica Concert to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven unnamed gunmen stormed the singer's house, machine guns blazing. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. Little was officially released about the gunmen, but rumors abounded regarding the assassins' fates. A Brief History of Seven Killings is James's fictional exploration of that dangerous and unstable time in Jamaica's history and beyond. Deftly spanning decades and continents and peopled with a wide range of characters--assassins, drug dealers, journalists, and even ghosts--James brings to life the people who walked the streets of 1970s Kingston, who dominated the crack houses of 1980s New York, and who reemerged into a radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. Brilliantly inventive, A Brief History of Seven Killings is an "exhilarating" (The New York Times) epic that's been called "a tour de force" (The Wall Street Journal). BIO Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. His most recent novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book. James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow's Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was a New York Times Editors' Choice. James lives in Minneapolis. REVIEWS "How to describe Marlon James's monumental new novel A Brief History of Seven Killings? It's like a Tarantino remake of The Harder They Come but with a soundtrack by Bob Marley and a script by Oliver Stone and William Faulkner, with maybe a little creative boost from some primo ganja. It's epic in every sense of that word: sweeping, mythic, over-the-top, colossal and dizzyingly complex. It's also raw, dense, violent, scalding, darkly comic, exhilarating and exhausting--a testament to Mr. James's vaulting ambition and prodigious talent." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "James has written a dangerous book, one full of lore and whispers and history... [a] great book... James nibbles at theories of who did what and why, and scripts Marley's quest for revenge with the pace of a thriller. His achievement, however, goes far beyond opening up this terrible moment in the life of a great musician. He gives us the streets, the people, especially the desperate, the Jamaicans whom Marley exhorted to: 'Open your eyes and look within: / Are you satisfied with the life you're living?'" -- The Boston Globe "A sweeping novel that touches on family, friendship, celebrity, art, sexuality, ghetto politics, geopolitics, drug trade, gender, race and more, sending the reader from Jamaica to New York via Miami and Cuba and back." -- Newsweek [H] Riverhead Books / October 02, 2014 ﻿1.41" H x 9.55" L x 6.42" W (2.2 lbs) 688 pages [P] Riverhead Books / September 08, 2015 1.7" H x 8.2" L x 5.4" W (1.35 lbs) 704 pages

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A national best seller, deemed one of Morrison's most haunting works by the New York Times, A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the story of a mother and a daughter--a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment. In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives. BIO Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019. REVIEWS "A Mercy is a sinewy novel [that] contains passages of insight and sensuality . . . It gathers its own power: Morrison plays a tight game with the social, legal and personal connections between her chess set of characters, a game in which each word-and every detail-counts. . . . Morrison renders the ugly beautiful and the unimaginable real: she is a fine teacher." --Heather Thompson, The Times Literary Supplement "The landscape of A Mercy is full of both beauties and terrors: snow 'sugars' eyelashes, yet icicles hang like 'knives' . . . But whatever the glories and rigors of nature may signify to the civilized, for these characters, living in the midst of it, nature doesn't signify. It's simply to be embraced or dreaded-like the people with whom they have to live. In Morrison's latest version of pastoral, it's only mercy or the lack of it that makes the American landscape heaven or hell, and the gates of Eden open both ways at once." --David Gates, The New York Times Book Review "Above all, A Mercy brims with the omnipresence of the author's questing, sifting brain, which the reader can feel injecting each strand of the story, subjecting it to the closest scrutiny before weaving it into the whole. The result is both a compelling yarn and a meditation on the varieties and degrees of enslavement and liberation; it is as precise, taut and tough-minded as Morrison herself." --Kevin Nance, Poets & Writers [H] Knopf Publishing Group / November 11, 2008 0.88" H x 9.56" L x 5.88" W (0.85 lbs) 176 pages [P] Vintage / August 11, 2009 0.7" H x 7.9" L x 5.2" W (0.46 lbs) 195 pages

A national best seller, deemed one of Morrison's most haunting works by the New York Times, A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the story of a mother and a daughter--a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.
In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives. 
BIO
<meta charset="utf-8">Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.
REVIEWS
<meta charset="utf-8"><meta charset="utf-8">"A Mercy is a sinewy novel [that] contains passages of insight and sensuality . . . It gathers its own power: Morrison plays a tight game with the social, legal and personal connections between her chess set of characters, a game in which each word-and every detail-counts. . . . Morrison renders the ugly beautiful and the unimaginable real: she is a fine teacher." --Heather Thompson, The Times Literary Supplement 
"The landscape of A Mercy is full of both beauties and terrors: snow 'sugars' eyelashes, yet icicles hang like 'knives' . . . But whatever the glories and rigors of nature may signify to the civilized, for these characters, living in the midst of it, nature doesn't signify. It's simply to be embraced or dreaded-like the people with whom they have to live. In Morrison's latest version of pastoral, it's only mercy or the lack of it that makes the American landscape heaven or hell, and the gates of Eden open both ways at once." --David Gates, The New York Times Book Review
"Above all, A Mercy brims with the omnipresence of the author's questing, sifting brain, which the reader can feel injecting each strand of the story, subjecting it to the closest scrutiny before weaving it into the whole. The result is both a compelling yarn and a meditation on the varieties and degrees of enslavement and liberation; it is as precise, taut and tough-minded as Morrison herself." --Kevin Nance, Poets &amp; Writers 
[H] Knopf Publishing Group  /  <meta charset="utf-8">November 11, 2008
0.88" H x 9.56" L x 5.88" W (0.85 lbs) 176 pages
[P] Vintage  /  August 11, 2009
<meta charset="utf-8"><meta charset="utf-8">0.7" H x 7.9" L x 5.2" W (0.46 lbs) 195 pages

A Mercy /// Toni Morrison

By the time of her death, at the tragically young age of thirty-four, Lorraine Hansberry had created two electrifying masterpieces of the American theater. With A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry gave this country its most movingly authentic portrayal of black family life in the inner city. Barely five years later, with The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, Hansberry gave us an unforgettable portrait of a man struggling with his individual fate in an age of racial and social injustice. These two plays remain milestones in the American theater, remarkable not only for their historical value but for their continued ability to engage the imagination and the heart.With an Introduction by Robert Nemiroff BIO Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) electrified the theatrical world with her first play, A Raisin in the Sun, which won the New York Critics Circle Award for the 1958-59 season. Before her tragic death from cancer at the age of 34, she had already produced a remarkable body of work, including The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window and Les Blancs. Her former husband and literary executor, the late Robert Nemiroff, posthumously produced and published her To Be Young, Gifted and Black and the musical Raisin. REVIEWS "Rich and warm and funny and varied … beautifully written." -– Los Angeles Times, on The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window"One of a handful of great American plays — it belongs in the inner circle, along with Death of a Salesman, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and The Glass Menagerie." -– Washington Post, on A Raisin in the Sun [P] Vintage / June 13, 1995 0.9" H x 7.9" L x 5.1" W (0.6 lbs) 368 pages

A Raisin in the Sun and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window /// Lorraine Hansberry

A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession, and political corruption from the celebrated author of Stay with Me, “in the lineage of great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie” (The New York Times).Eniola is tall for his age, a boy who looks like a man. Because his father has lost his job, Eniola spends his days running errands for the local tailor, collecting newspapers, begging when he must, dreaming of a big future.Wuraola is a golden girl, the perfect child of a wealthy family. Now an exhausted young doctor in her first year of practice, she is beloved by Kunle, the volatile son of an ascendant politician.When a local politician takes an interest in Eniola and sudden violence shatters a family party, Wuraola’s and Eniola’s lives become intertwined. In her breathtaking second novel, Ayobámi Adébáyo shines her light on Nigeria, on the gaping divide between the haves and the have-nots, and the shared humanity that lives in between. BIO Ayobámi Adébáyo was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut novel, Stay with Me, won the 9mobile Prize for Literature, was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Wellcome Book Prize, and the Kwani? Manuscript Prize. It has been translated into twenty languages and the French translation was awarded the Prix Les Afriques. Longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, Stay with Me was a New York Times, Guardian, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Book of the Year. REVIEWS A SheReads Best Book Club Pick of The Year A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Refinery 29, Financial Times, The Guardian, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Brittle Paper, and Write or Die Mag“Adebayo is a gifted storyteller, and like her debut novel, Stay with Me, her second book does not disappoint. The thin line between the poor and the wealthy is decimated when the lives of Eniola, an errand boy for a tailor, and Wuraola, a physician, collide. The violence of elections and the empty promises of politicians, the obscene wealth of the connected, the hunger and desperation of the have-nots all intersect in this examination of a community in Nigeria.” -- Oprah Daily“Eniola and Wuraola come from different classes in Nigeria, and in this dynamic sophomore novel from Adebayo, we see how socioeconomic stratification, exacerbated by gender inequality, can destroy lives at all levels. Never mind that these layers are all interdependent and innately connected —a paradox that leads here to a shocking, violent act from which there is no turning back.” -- Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times“Adébáyo shines a light on modern Nigeria in this dynamic political novel, crafting a dazzling tale of wealth and love in the process.” -- Chicago Review of Books [H] Knopf Publishing Group / February 7, 2023 1.5" H x 9.7" L x 6.8" W (1.5 lbs) 352 pages

A Spell of Good Things /// Ayobámi Adébáyo

A remarkable poetry collection with "inextinguishable generosity and abundant wisdom" (Monica Youn) from Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed.Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult. Above Ground wrestles with how we hold wonder and despair in the same hands, how we carry intimate moments of joy and a collective sense of mourning in the same body. Smith’s lyrical, narrative poems bring the reader on a journey not only through the early years of his children’s lives, but through the changing world in which they are growing up—through the changing world of which we are all a part.Above Ground is a breathtaking collection that follows Smith's first award-winning book of poetry, Counting Descent. BIO Clint Smith III is an American writer, poet and scholar. He is the author of #1 New York Times Best Seller, How the Word Is Passed, which won the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named one of the top ten books of 2021 by the New York Times. REVIEWS “I think there is an emergent theory, and maybe also a demand, when Clint Smith considers the brutalizing facts and language of war almost alongside a reverie about sprinkling sand on his baby’s feet; when he mourns the long and brutal and ongoing history of American slavery almost alongside making French toast with the kids or dancing until the whole family falls down. When he makes us witness the most incomprehensibly awful (and daily) brutalities not only beside but almost in tandem with the most incomprehensibly tender (and daily) actions of care. It’s a theory, and a demand, to which I think we must pay very close attention.”-- Ross Gay, author of Inciting Joy “Clint Smith is a brilliant poet, one who knows ‘we are not all left / standing after the war has ended. Some of us have become ghosts,’ who knows that ‘you come from the parachute that didn't open -- / and then did.’—and who finds words to sing and to mourn, and to see us for who we are. Here is a poet who offers wisdom that ‘our bodies have / always been inexpricable vessels of energy we can / not control,’ and despite that (or perhaps because of it), also offers grace. This is a beautiful, vivid book, where ‘grandfather is a fist / full of embers’ and a dance party becomes a life-giving ceremony, and Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, is a reason enough to spark an love note. Much to love in this poetry collection, lyric keeping us above the ground, rooted into our world, blessed to be alive, despite it all. Clint Smith is a marvelous poet.” -- Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa “I’m so grateful that Clint Smith’s poems remind us of our interdependence on each other—on chrysanthemums, jellyfish, plankton, to note just a few of his magnificent poetic negotiations—all while turning his wide and generous eyes to fatherhood. This book is an illumination I sorely needed of both the outdoors and the quotidian—a joyful embrace and legacy of bright language and poignant questions.” -- Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders [H] Little Brown and Company / March 28, 2023 0.63" H x 9.53" L x 6.06" W (0.57 lbs) 128 pages

Above Ground /// Clint Smith

Akata Woman is the New York Times bestselling third book in the series that started with Akata Witch, named one of Time magazine’s “100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time” and “100 Best YA Books of All Time,” from award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor.“In this series, Okorafor creates a stunningly original world of African magic that draws on Nigerian folk beliefs and rituals instead of relying on the predictable tropes of Western fantasy novels.”—Time magazineFrom the moment Sunny Nwazue discovered she had mystical energy flowing in her blood, she sought to understand and control her powers. Throughout her adventures in Akata Witch and Akata Warrior, she had to navigate the balance between nearly everything in her life—America and Nigeria, the “normal” world and the one infused with juju, human and spirit, good daughter and powerful Leopard Person.Now, those hard lessons and abilities are put to the test in a quest so dangerous and fantastical, it would be madness to go . . . but it may destroy the world if she does not. With the help of her friends, Sunny embarks on a mission to find a precious object hidden deep in an otherworldly realm. Defeating the guardians of the prize will take more from Sunny than she has to give, and triumph will mean she will be forever changed. BIO Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for children and adults. Her works include Who Fears Death (currently in development at HBO into a TV series), the Binti novella trilogy, The Book of Phoenix, the Akata books, and Lagoon. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Lodestar Awards, an Eisner Award nominee, and her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Nnedi has also written comics for Marvel, including Black Panther: Long Live the King and Wakanda Forever (featuring the Dora Milaje) and the Shuri series. Her science fiction comic series LaGuardia (from Dark Horse) is an Eisner and Hugo Award nominee and her memoir Broken Places & Outer Spaces is a Locus Award nominee. Nnedi is also creating and co-writing the adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed with Viola Davis and Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu. Nnedi holds two MAs (literature and journalism) and a PhD (literature). She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Illinois. Follow Nnedi on Twitter (as @Nnedi), Facebook, and Instagram. Learn more about Nnedi at Nnedi.com. [H] Viking Books for Young Readers / January 18, 2022 1.4" H x 8.4" L x 5.9" W (1.15 lbs) 416 pages [P] Viking Books for Young Readers / January 17, 2023 1.1" H x 8.19" L x 5.43" W (0.88 lbs) 416 pages

Akata Woman /// Nnedi Okorafor

2022 HOUSATONIC BOOK AWARDS FINALIST2022 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDS FINALIST2021 BIG OTHER BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY FINALIST All the Rage addresses everyday pleasure as well as the present condition of racism in the United States—a time marked both by recurring police violence and intense artistic creativity—from a variety of perspectives: being Black, an immigrant, a woman, and queer. At its core dwells “Living in the Abattoir,” a series in which people of color live out their days as both workers and meat. All the Rage simultaneously invokes both anger at ongoing systemic violence and the frivolity of something that is, perhaps temporarily, “trending.” BIO Rosamond S. King is a creative and critical writer, performer, and artist whose work is deeply informed by the many cultures and communities she is part of, by history, and by a sense of play. Her poetry has been published in more than two dozen journals and anthologies, and she has performed in theatres, museums, nightclubs, and traditional literary venues in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and throughout North America. She has also received numerous honors, including a Fulbright Award and fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson, Mellon and Ford Foundations, Poets House and the Franklin Furnace Fund. She is the author of the chapbook, At My Belly and My Back and the critical book, Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination, which won the 2015 Caribbean Studies Association Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Prize for the best book in Caribbean studies. King holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a minor in Performance Studies from New York University, and is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. The goal of her work is to make people feel, wonder, and think, in that order. REVIEWS Rosamond S. King proves again and again that she is a poet rooted in place with connections across seas and communities. The collection, inclusive of Trinidadian Creole English, hashtags, and outside textual references, ends with a section that takes the reader into moments of bodily and psychic joy. This book, as the title suggests is all the rage. -- Rajiv Mohabir, Electric Lit It’s been a constant question, what kind of art will come from this moment, what kind of art this moment needs. Poet, performance artist, and literary theorist Rosamond S. King’s newest collection is a bold and urgent movement towards meeting this unmeetable moment. At once formally innovative and passionate, this collection struggles and dances in a single motion. -- C. Bain, Muzzle Magazine Lambda Award winner Rosamond S. King’s All the Rage (Nightboat, Apr.) presents an intersection of Black, immigrant, female, and queer issues, with the gut-punch ‘Living in the Abattoir’ series at its heart presenting people of color living in an abattoir where they are both workers and product. -- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal "Rosamond S, King’s second poetry collection, All the Rage, addresses the everyday joy, pleasure and ever-present force of racism in America. In a time where the focus on and threat of police violence on Black men and women is so great, creativity and artistry continue to rise. This collection addresses the reality of living in America from a multitude of perspectives, exploring how people of color might live in an alternate yet familiar reality." -- Bella Morais, The Root "Simple and direct language butts up against poems structured like riddles. King shows that she can tell the truth through wordplay, irony, and allegory, but most often she chooses to tell it straight, not slant." -- Emily Pérez, RHINO [P] Nightboat Books / April 06, 2021 0.8" H x 7.9" L x 6.3" W (0.45 lbs) 112 pages

2022 HOUSATONIC BOOK AWARDS FINALIST 2022 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDS FINALIST 2021 BIG OTHER BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY FINALIST
All the Rage addresses everyday pleasure as well as the present condition of racism in the United States—a time marked both by recurring police violence and intense artistic creativity—from a variety of perspectives: being Black, an immigrant, a woman, and queer. At its core dwells “Living in the Abattoir,” a series in which people of color live out their days as both workers and meat. All the Rage simultaneously invokes both anger at ongoing systemic violence and the frivolity of something that is, perhaps temporarily, “trending.”
BIO
Rosamond S. King is a creative and critical writer, performer, and artist whose work is deeply informed by the many cultures and communities she is part of, by history, and by a sense of play. Her poetry has been published in more than two dozen journals and anthologies, and she has performed in theatres, museums, nightclubs, and traditional literary venues in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and throughout North America. She has also received numerous honors, including a Fulbright Award and fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson, Mellon and Ford Foundations, Poets House and the Franklin Furnace Fund. She is the author of the chapbook, At My Belly and My Back and the critical book, Island Bodies: Transgressive Sexualities in the Caribbean Imagination, which won the 2015 Caribbean Studies Association Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Prize for the best book in Caribbean studies.
King holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a minor in Performance Studies from New York University, and is an Associate Professor in the English Department at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York. The goal of her work is to make people feel, wonder, and think, in that order.
REVIEWS
<div class="review first">
Rosamond S. King proves again and again that she is a poet rooted in place with connections across seas and communities. The collection, inclusive of Trinidadian Creole English, hashtags, and outside textual references, ends with a section that takes the reader into moments of bodily and psychic joy. This book, as the title suggests is all the rage. -- Rajiv Mohabir, Electric Lit
</div>
<div class="review">
It’s been a constant question, what kind of art will come from this moment, what kind of art this moment needs. Poet, performance artist, and literary theorist Rosamond S. King’s newest collection is a bold and urgent movement towards meeting this unmeetable moment. At once formally innovative and passionate, this collection struggles and dances in a single motion. -- C. Bain, Muzzle Magazine
</div>
<div class="review">
Lambda Award winner Rosamond S. King’s All the Rage (Nightboat, Apr.) presents an intersection of Black, immigrant, female, and queer issues, with the gut-punch ‘Living in the Abattoir’ series at its heart presenting people of color living in an abattoir where they are both workers and product. -- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
</div>
<div class="review">
"Rosamond S, King’s second poetry collection, All the Rage, addresses the everyday joy, pleasure and ever-present force of racism in America. In a time where the focus on and threat of police violence on Black men and women is so great, creativity and artistry continue to rise. This collection addresses the reality of living in America from a multitude of perspectives, exploring how people of color might live in an alternate yet familiar reality." -- Bella Morais, The Root 
</div>
<div class="review">
"Simple and direct language butts up against poems structured like riddles. King shows that she can tell the truth through wordplay, irony, and allegory, but most often she chooses to tell it straight, not slant." -- Emily Pérez, RHINO
[P]  Nightboat Books  /  <meta charset="utf-8">April 06, 2021  
<meta charset="utf-8">0.8" H x 7.9" L x 6.3" W (0.45 lbs) 112 pages
</div>

All the Rage /// Rosamond S. King

Fresh and exhilarating. . . Cosby keeps his eye on the story and the pedal to the metal.” —Stephen King, The New York Times Book ReviewA Black sheriff. A serial killer. A small town ready to combust.The new novel from New York Times bestselling and Los Angeles Times Book Prize-winning author S. A. Cosby, "one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction.” —Washington Post.“An atmospheric pressure cooker.” —PeopleTitus Crown is the first Black sheriff in the history of Charon County, Virginia. In recent decades, quiet Charon has had only two murders. But after years of working as an FBI agent, Titus knows better than anyone that while his hometown might seem like a land of moonshine, cornbread, and honeysuckle, secrets always fester under the surface.Then a year to the day after Titus’s election, a school teacher is killed by a former student and the student is fatally shot by Titus’s deputies. As Titus investigates the shootings, he unearths terrible crimes and a serial killer who has been hiding in plain sight, haunting the dirt lanes and woodland clearings of Charon.With the killer’s possible connections to a local church and the town’s harrowing history weighing on him, Titus projects confidence about closing the case while concealing a painful secret from his own past. At the same time, he also has to contend with a far-right group that wants to hold a parade in celebration of the town’s Confederate history.Charon is Titus’s home and his heart. But where faith and violence meet, there will be a reckoning.Powerful and unforgettable, All the Sinners Bleed confirms S. A. Cosby as “one of the most muscular, distinctive, grab-you-by-both-ears voices in American crime fiction” (The Washington Post). BIO S. A. Cosby is a "Southern noir" crime fiction writer. He resides in Gloucester, Virginia, on the Chesapeake Bay. Cosby has published four crime novels: All Sinners Bleed, My Darkest Prayer, Blacktop Wasteland, and Razorblade Tears. Cosby's novel, Razorblade Tears, debuted number 10 on the New York Times bestseller list. His previous novel, Blacktop Wasteland "...won a landslide of awards, including a Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2020." It also was chosen as a 2020 New York Times Notable Book and charted at number 22 on that list. Additionally, Blacktop Wasteland is a 2021 Anthony Awards winner. The International Thriller Writers, an association spanning 49 countries, with a membership of 4,500 authors of the genre, "...named Cosby’s novel Blacktop Wasteland the Best Hard Cover Fiction Novel of 2021." REVIEWS “The body count is high and the action pretty much nonstop. . . A crackling good police procedural. . . Cosby delivers a fine climax. Then, in an epilogue, he serves up a final treat that’s worth the whole trip. . . Fresh and exhilarating.” -- New York Times Book Review, Stephen King“S. A. Cosby’s novels always hit the grand slam of crime fiction; unstoppable momentum, gripping intrigue and deep character with a hard and telling look at culture and society. I hesitate to call All The Sinners Bleed his masterpiece because he has many more books to write and they only get better and better. Cosby no doubt carries the mantle of Faulkner with him as he uses the crime story to show us where we are and how far we still need to go. Sheriff Titus Crown lives in these pages and your heart. He's a character for the ages.” -- Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Desert Star“On the basis of four novels, each better than the last (and All the Sinners Bleed the best of them all), it’s fairly easy to say that American crime fiction has found its future and his name is S.A. Cosby.” -- Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Small Mercies“Compelling characters, dark plot twists, mordant humor and ruthless violence....He’s a master of building a sense of creeping dread that explodes into hair-raising action. He’s also deft at bringing complex characters to life, and at pointed humor…Riveting ride.” -- Tampa Bay Times“A rural, hair-raising crime story.” -- The New York Times, 9 New Books Coming in June [H] Flatiron Books / June 06, 2023 1.4" H x 9.3" L x 6.3" W (1.15 lbs) 352 pages

All the Sinners Bleed /// S.A. Cosby

FINALIST FOR THE 2022 LA TIMES ART SEIDENBAUM AWARD FOR FIRST FICTION.“The electrifying fiction debut that has been called ‘a modern Mrs. Dalloway.’”—THE ATLANTIC"Mind-bending and utterly original."—Brandon Taylor“Slim in the hand, but its impact is massive.”—Ali SmithOne woman. One day. One decision. A blistering, fearless, and unforgettable literary debut from "a stunning new writer." (Bernardine Evaristo) Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?Assembly is a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers.And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away. BIO Natasha Brown has spent a decade working in financial services, after studying Maths at Cambridge University. She developed Assembly after receiving a 2019 London Writers Award in the literary fiction category. REVIEWS “Natasha Brown’s exquisite prose, daring structure and understated elegance are utterly captivating. She is a stunning new writer.” -- Bernadine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other “Mind-bending and utterly original. Assembly is like Thomas Bernhard in the key of Rachel Cusk but about black subjectivity.” -- Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life and Filthy Animals “The narrator of this tightly conceived and distinctively written debut novel is perceptive, precise and unsparing with her words…an elegiac examination of a Black woman’s life and an acerbic analysis of Britain’s racial landscape. Brown’s rhythmic, economic prose renders the narrator’s experiences with breathless clarity, especially the steady, gnawing stream of racial and sexual harassment she faces. At only 100 pages, the book moves at an almost dizzying speed…Assembly is a smart novel that takes risks with the questions it raises. I look forward to Brown’s next work, in which she might try — with the same refreshing conviction — to answer them.” -- New York Times Books Review “[A] crisp debut...As well as being a shrewd exploration of the psychological toll of generational trauma and colonial legacies, the book is also, thanks to its biting humor, a broad criticism of the absurdity of contemporary life.” -- The New Yorker [H] Little Brown and Company / September 14, 2021 0.7" H x 7.1" L x 5.0" W (0.25 lbs) 112 pages [P] Back Bay Books / September 13, 2022 0.5" H x 8.0" L x 5.4" W (0.3 lbs) 112 pages

Assembly /// Natasha Brown

A motley group of misfits takes on a magical aura at Bailey's Cafe as each character describes his or her motivations, desires, obsessions, and idiosyncrasies. By the author of The Women of Brewster Place. BIO Gloria Naylor was born in New York City in 1950. She received her B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and her M.A. in Afro-American studies from Yale. Her books include The Women of Brewster Place, which won both the American Book Award and the National Book Award for first novel, and was also adapted into a television movie by Oprah Winfrey; Linden Hills; Bailey’s Cafe; and The Men of Brewster Place. She taught writing and literature at George Washington University, New York University, Boston University, and Cornell University. She died in 2016 REVIEWS Set in a diner where the food isn't very good and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, this bestselling novel from the author of Mama Day and The Women of Brewster Place is a feast for the senses and the spirit. "A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humor." -- New York Times Book Review [P] Vintage / August 31, 1993 0.7" H x 8.3" L x 5.2" W (0.6 lbs) 240 pages

Bailey's Cafe /// Gloria Naylor

"Remarkable. . . . Iweala never wavers from a gripping, pulsing narrative voice. . . . He captures the horror of ethnic violence in all its brutality and the vulnerability of youth in all its innocence." --Entertainment Weekly (A) The harrowing, utterly original debut novel by Uzodinma Iweala about the life of a child soldier in a war-torn African country As civil war rages in an unnamed West-African nation, Agu, the school-aged protagonist of this stunning novel, is recruited into a unit of guerilla fighters. Haunted by his father's own death at the hands of militants, which he fled just before witnessing, Agu is vulnerable to the dangerous yet paternal nature of his new commander. While the war rages on, Agu becomes increasingly divorced from the life he had known before the conflict started--a life of school friends, church services, and time with his family, still intact. As he vividly recalls these sunnier times, his daily reality continues to spin further downward into inexplicable brutality, primal fear, and loss of selfhood. In a powerful, strikingly original voice, Uzodinma Iweala leads the reader through the random travels, betrayals, and violence that mark Agu's new community. Electrifying and engrossing, Beasts of No Nation announces the arrival of an extraordinary writer. BIO Uzodinma Iweala received the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, all for Beasts of No Nation. He was also selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. A graduate of Harvard University and the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he lives in New York City and Lagos, Nigeria. REVIEWS "A startling debut.... Iweala's acute imagining allows him to depict the war as a mesh of bestial pleasures and pain."--The New Yorker "The hypnotic present tense, first-person narration draws the reader deep into the child soldier's shattered psyche."--Washington Post "An outstanding first novel. . . . Resonant, beautiful. . . . Iweala's book will be readily embraced by readers."-- Janet Maslin, New York Times [P] Harper Perennial / September 07, 2021 ﻿0.3" H x 7.0" L x 4.5" W (0.25 lbs) 160 pages

Beasts of No Nation /// Uzodinma Iweala

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding New York Times bestseller transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel--first published in 1987--brings the unimaginable experience of slavery into the literature of today and into the reader's comprehension. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement. ﻿Introduction by A. S. Byatt in the hardcover edition. BIO Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019. REVIEWS "A masterwork. . . . Wonderful. . . . I can't imagine American literature without it." --John Leonard, Los Angeles Times "There is something great in Beloved a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you." --The New Yorker "Compelling . . . . Morrison shakes that brilliant kaleidoscope of hers again, and the story of pain, endurance, poetry and power she is born to tell comes right out." --The Village Voice [H] Everyman's Library / October 17, 2006 1.02" H x 8.22" L x 5.28" W (1.12 lbs) 316 pages [P] Vintage / June 08, 2004 0.9" H x 7.9" L x 5.1" W (0.75 lbs) 352 pages

Beloved /// Toni Morrison

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize A Phenomenal Book Club Pick TIME • Best Books of the Month New York Times • Editors’ Choice Vulture • Most Anticipated Books 2022 Goodreads • Hot and Fresh: 60 Highly Anticipated Debut Novels Ms. Magazine • Most Anticipated Reads for the Rest of Us 2022 SheReads.com • Best Books Coming in Summer 2022 Essence • 18 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This SummerAn extraordinary debut novel shot through with remarkable nuance and tenderness, Big Girl traces the intergenerational hungers of the profoundly lovable Malaya Clondon.“Alive with delicious prose and the cacophony of ’90s Harlem, Big Girl gifts us a heroine carrying the weight of worn-out ideas, who dares to defy the compulsion to shrink, and in turn teaches us to pursue our fullest, most desirous selves without shame.” —Janet MockMalaya Clondon hates when her mother drags her to Weight Watchers meetings in the church’s stuffy basement community center. A quietly inquisitive eight-year-old struggling to suppress her insatiable longing, she would much rather paint alone in her bedroom, or sneak out with her father for a sampling of Harlem’s forbidden street foods.For Malaya, the pressures of going to a predominantly white Upper East Side prep school are compounded by the high expectations passed down over generations from her sharp-tongued grandmother and her mother, Nyela, a painfully proper professor struggling to earn tenure at a prestigious university. But their relentless prescriptions—fad diets of cottage-cheese and sugar-free Jell-O, high-cardio African dance classes, endless doctors’ appointments—don’t work on Malaya.As Malaya comes of age in a rapidly gentrifying 1990s Harlem, she strains to understand “ladyness” and fit neatly within the suffocating confines of a so-called “femininity” that holds no room for her body. She finds solace in the lyrical riffs of Biggie Smalls and Aaliyah, and in the support of her sensitive father, Percy; still, tensions at home mount as rapidly as Malaya’s weight. Nothing seems to help—until a family tragedy forces her to finally face the source of her hunger on her own terms.Exquisitely compassionate and clever, Big Girl is “filled with everyday people who, in Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s gifted hands, show us the love and struggle of what it means to be inside bodies that don’t always fit with the outside world” (Jacqueline Woodson). In tracing the perils and pleasures of the inheritance that comes with being born, Sullivan pushes boundaries and creates an unforgettable portrait of Black womanhood in America. BIO Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D. is the author of the novel Big Girl, a 2022 most anticipated pick from Vulture, Ms, The Root, Goodreads and SheReads.com. Her previous books are The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, and the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith Markowitz Award for Fiction from Lambda Literary. She is Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University. A native of Harlem, she currently lives in Washington, DC. REVIEWS Sullivan (the collection Blue Talk and Love) charms in her stunning debut novel about a Black girl’s coming-of-age.... All of Sullivan’s characters—even the cruel ones—brim with humanity, and the author shines when conveying the details of Malaya’s comforts, such as Biggie Smalls lyrics, the portraits she paints in her room, the colors she braids into her hair, and the sweet-smelling dulce de coco candies she eats with a classmate with whom she shares a close and sexually charged friendship. This is a treasure.--Publishers Weekly, starred review [A] young girl learns—and redefines—what it means to take up space . . . Sullivan writes with tenderness and uses the language of poetry to communicate her protagonist’s inner life . . . A lyrical and important coming-of-age novel.--Kirkus Reviews In Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s achingly beautiful coming-of-age debut novel, Big Girl, this body carries the weight of an entire neighborhood.... Big Girl triumphs as a love letter to the Black girls who are forced to enter womanhood too early — and to a version of Harlem that no longer exists. In this novel, gentrification means a violent thinning of the true beauty of Black and immigrant cultures and tightknit communities that have been nearly erased in service of commercialism and whiteness.--Cleyvis Natera , New York Times Book Review [H] Liveright Publishing Corporation / July 12, 2022 1.11" H x 9.26" L x 6.26" W (1.02 lbs) 288 pages [P] Liveright Publishing Corporation / June 13, 2023 288 pages

Big Girl /// Mecca Jamilah Sullivan

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE - READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY - In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings deal with their mother's death and her hidden past--a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. "At turns delightfully juicy and then stunningly wise, Black Cake is a winner."--Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022--Glamour, Bustle, Marie Claire, Essence, Parade, Business Insider, Town & Country, Vulture, PopSugar, W magazine, BookPage In development as a Hulu original series produced by Marissa Jo Cerar, Oprah Winfrey (Harpo Films), and Kapital Entertainment We can't choose what we inherit. But can we choose who we become? In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child, challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage, and themselves. Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor's true history, and fulfill her final request to "share the black cake when the time is right"? Will their mother's revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever? Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel is a story of how the inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, and even names, can shape relationships and history. Deeply evocative and beautifully written, Black Cake is an extraordinary journey through the life of a family changed forever by the choices of its matriarch. BIO Charmaine Wilkerson is an American writer who has lived in Jamaica and is based in Italy. A graduate of Barnard College and Stanford University, she is a former journalist whose award-winning short fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Black Cake is her first novel. REVIEWS "Exquisite and expansive, Black Cake took ahold of me from the first page and didn't let go. This is a novel about the formation and reformation of a family, and the many people, places, and events that can shape our inheritances without our knowing. A gripping, poignant debut from an important, new voice." --Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What's Mine and Yours"Black Cake has all the ingredients of the tastiest stories: secrets, romance, danger, and a cast of characters so real you want to scream at them one moment and hug them the next." --Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev"So beautifully written I'm struggling to believe it's a debut . . . The cake is the glue that holds all the layers together and the scenes are so well drawn I could almost taste the cake, feel the warm sea on my skin." --Nikki May, author of Wahala [H] Ballantine Books / February 01, 2022 1.6" H x 9.3" L x 6.2" W (1.4 lbs) 400 pages [P] Ballantine Books / November 29, 2022 0.92" H x 7.97" L x 5.12" W (0.73 lbs) 416 pages

Black Cake  /// Charmaine Wilkerson

A Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Seen on the Today Show“If you like Practical Magic… you will love Black Candle Women.” —Jenna Bush HagerNamed a Best Book of the Month by: Shondaland, MS. Magazine, TODAY.com, Reader’s Digest, Katie Couric Media, AARP Sisters, Goodreads, BookRiotA warm and wry family drama with a magical twist about four generations of Black women, a family love curse, and the secrets they keep for and from each other over one very complicated yearGenerations of Montrose women—Augusta, Victoria, Willow—have always lived together in their quaint California bungalow. They keep to themselves, never venture far from home, and their collection of tinctures and spells is an unspoken bond between them. But when young Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, their quiet lives are thrown into disarray.For the family has withheld a crucial secret from Nickie all these years: any person a Montrose woman falls in love with will die. Their surprise guest forces each woman to reckon with her own past choices and mistakes. And as new truths about the curse emerge, they're set on a collision course dating back to 1950s New Orleans’s French Quarter—where a hidden story in a mysterious book may just hold the answers they seek in life and in love…BIO Diane Marie Brown is a professor at Orange Coast College and a public health professional for the Long Beach Health Department. She has a BA and MPH from UCLA and a degree in fiction from USC’s Master of Professional Writing Program. She grew up in Stockton and now lives in Long Beach, California, with her husband, their four daughters, and their dog, Brownie. Black Candle Women is her debut novel. REVIEWS Richly imagined and elegantly told, with plenty of satisfying secrets, heartaches, and twists. Black Candle Women is a promising debut.” -- Sadeqa Johnson, New York Times bestselling author of Yellow Wife and Reese's Book Club Pick The House of Eve“A spellbinding romp. This book will have you asking yourself, who amongst us isn’t cursed? More importantly, how far would you go for a chance at love?” -- Carolyn Huynh, author of GMA Book Club Pick The Fortunes of Jaded Women“Written with warmth and an eye for detail, Diane Marie Brown’s Black Candle Women explores the bonds of family and the magical power of belief to transform our lives.” -- Shaunna J. Edwards and Alyson Richman, authors of The Thread Collectors“Propulsive and poignant, Black Candle Women concocts an intoxicating potion of warmth, wisdom, and wonder.” -- Ava DuVernay [H] Graydon House / February 28, 2023 1.6" H x 12.0" L x 7.9" W (1.05 lbs) 368 pages

Black Candle Women /// Diane Marie Brown

A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 by Oprah Magazine - Time - Vogue - Vulture - Essence - Elle - Cosmopolitan - Real Simple - Marie Claire - Refinery 29 - Shondaland - Pop Sugar - Bustle - Apartment Therapy - The Rumpus - She Reads - The Everygirl - Medium - Career Contessa"Nothing short of sublime, and the territory [Mans'] explores...couldn't be more necessary."--Vogue "A tender distillation of black girlhood. Mans draws together both intricate adornment and the unvarnished truth."--Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster "[Mans'] lucid and lyrical lines are as undeniable as those of a pop song yet as arresting as only spoken word artistry can be." -- O, the Oprah Magazine From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself--and us--home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America--and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing. BIO Jasmine Mans is a Black American poet, artist from Newark, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison, with a B.A. in African American Studies. Her debut collection of poetry, Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels, was published in 2012. Mans is the resident poet at the Newark Public Library. She was a member of The Strivers Row Collective. REVIEWS "If your grandmother has ever surprised you by bopping along to trap music at a cookout you will love Jasmine Mans' work." --Essence "Jasmine Mans pulls at all the threads of who she is as a Black queer woman from Newark, unravels herself, then puts herself back together via clear, precise language that brooks no argument... Black Girl, Call Home moves from vignette to cultural criticism to ballad to eulogy to memoir with grace." --Vulture "Writing in surefooted verse, Mans refuses to allow our stories to be misunderstood."--Dr. Alysia Harris, Pushcart nominated author of How Much We Must Have Looked Like Stars to Stars Berkley Books / March 09, 2021 0.6" H x 7.8" L x 5.1" W (0.4 lbs) 256 pages

Black Girl, Call Home /// Jasmine Mans

One of TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All TimeWinner of the L.A. Times Ray Bradbury Prize Finalist for the 2019 National Book AwardThe New York Times BestsellerNamed a Best Book of 2019 by The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, GQ, Vogue, and The Washington Post“A fantasy world as well-realized as anything Tolkien made.” –Neil Gaiman“Gripping, action-packed….The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York TimesThe epic novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of A Brief History of Seven KillingsIn the stunning first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: “He has a nose,” people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.As Tracker follows the boy’s scent–from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers–he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that’s come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that’s also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both. BIO Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book. James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. James divides his time between Minnesota and New York. REVIEWS “Gripping, action-packed… The literary equivalent of a Marvel Comics universe — filled with dizzying, magpie references to old movies and recent TV, ancient myths and classic comic books, and fused into something new and startling by his gifts for language and sheer inventiveness.” -- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times“No novel this year was as intoxicated by the pleasures and possibilities of storytelling as this bloody, bawdy, profane, deliriously overstuffed work of high fantasy. The first part of a planned trilogy, Marlon James’s book already boasts more swagger and invention than most multivolume epics dragging toward their 10th installment.” -- The Wall Street Journal, Best Books of 2019“The first volume of a promised trilogy, a fabulist reimagining of Africa, with inevitable echoes of Tolkien, George R.R. Martin and Black Panther, but highly original, its language surging with power, its imagination all-encompassing. . . . Marlon is a writer who must be read.” -- Salman Rushdie, TIME “James’ visions don’t jettison you from reality so much as they trap you in his mad-genius, mercurial mind. . . . Drenched in African myth and folklore, and set in an astonishingly realized pre-colonized sub-Saharan region, Black Leopard crawls with creatures and erects kingdoms unlike any I’ve read. . . . This is a revolutionary book.” -- Entertainment Weekly [H] Riverhead Books / February 05, 2019 1.5" H x 9.4" L x 6.1" W (2.0 lbs) 640 pages [P] Riverhead Books / February 04, 2020 1.5" H x 9.0" L x 6.1" W (1.6 lbs) 640 pages

Black Leopard, Red Wolf /// Marlon James

Black Nature is the first anthology to focus on nature writing by African American poets, a genre that until now has not commonly been counted as one in which African American poets have participated. Black poets have a long tradition of incorporating treatments of the natural world into their work, but it is often read as political, historical, or protest poetry--anything but nature poetry. This is particularly true when the definition of what constitutes nature writing is limited to work about the pastoral or the wild. Camille T. Dungy has selected 180 poems from 93 poets that provide unique perspectives on American social and literary history to broaden our concept of nature poetry and African American poetics. This collection features major writers, such as Phillis Wheatley, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling Brown, Robert Hayden, Wanda Coleman, Natasha Trethewey, and Melvin B. Tolson, as well as newer talents, such as Douglas Kearney, Major Jackson, and Janice Harrington. Included are poets writing out of slavery, Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century African American poetic movements. Black Nature brings to the fore a neglected and vital means of considering poetry by African Americans and nature-related poetry as a whole. BIO Camille T. Dungy is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University. She is the author of two poetry collections, What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison and Suck on the Marrow, and has helped edit two other poetry anthologies. REVIEWS "Dungy has compiled what might have taken a lifetime to assemble, yet here it is at this moment when our culture is assessing both its relationship to the natural world and its relationship with its black citizens. The timing could not be better for such a comprehensive look at what black poets have contributed to our understanding of nature. What excites about this anthology is that it is not only the richest and most comprehensive collection of poems by black poets I have read, it is the richest and most comprehensive collection of poems about nature that I have read. I believe the book should be widely read, taught, and talked about." --Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Rope "With extraordinary insight and substantial creative vision the rich synthesis of this anthology offers a strikingly original contour to the seasons of black poets and poetry. The critical wisdom accumulated here is as important as the beautifully structured cycles that Dungy uses as landscaped categories to contain these important poems. The methodology here is as graceful as it is rigorously intelligent. Dungy's anthology is a major contribution to twenty-first century Black Studies." --Karla FC Holloway, author of BookMarks: Reading in Black and White--A Memoir University of Georgia Press / December 01, 2009 1.0" H x 8.9" L x 5.9" W (1.35 lbs) 387 pages

Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry /// edited by Camille Dungy

As the title implies, this beautifully written collection bursts with stories reminiscent of blackberries-–-small, succulent morsels that are inviting and sweet, yet sometimes bitter. Crystal Wilkinson provides an almost voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of her characters: Two misfit teenagers seek stolen moments of love and acceptance in the cloak of night ("Hushed"); a woman spends every waking hour obsessed with dying yet ironically watching her loved ones pass away before her ("Waiting on the Reaper"); a wife confronts her husband's mistress in a diner over potato skins and cornbread ("Need"); and a pious young woman's torment erupt in a violent and unsuspecting resolution ("No Ugly Ways"). The stories in this award-winning collection are terse and transient, like snippets taken from random dreams, thoughts, or conversations. Wilkinson is able to embed a vibrancy into each stunningly descriptive and evocative tale. Infused with humor, sadness and honesty, this provocative and haunting work features a new foreword and a new afterword by nationally acclaimed authors Nikky Finney and Honorée Jeffers. BIO Crystal Wilkinson is the author of The Birds of Opulence (winner of the 2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence), Blackberries, Blackberries (winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature), and Water Street (finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award). The winner of the 2008 Denny Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage magazine and the Sallie Bingham Award from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, she has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts. She was named a 2020 USA Fellow by United States Artists and teaches at the University of Kentucky, where she is Associate Professor of English in the MFA in Creative Writing Program. Nikky Finney is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and the John H. Bennett, Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. She edited Black Poets Lean South and authored On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice, The World Is Round, Head Off & Split (winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry), and Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry. Finney's work, including her now legendary National Book Award acceptance speech, is on display in the inaugural exhibition of the African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, D.C. REVIEWS "Crystal Wilkinson's characters live and breathe. They walk, talk and leap off the page into your lap and living rooms from their front porch. Her honest and sensual narrative pulls the reader in like a lover sharing their most intimate secrets. Sometimes whispering, often times singing, but always clear and evocative. Her Affrilachian tenor rings throughout this work. Let out the sleeper sofa. Throw in more potatoes to stretch the soup. Her characters are about to move in." --Frank X. Walker, author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York "These tales work the magic Wilkinson intended." --The Atlanta Tribune "Wilkinson makes a stunning debut with this lyrical collection of short stories set in the rural outback of the South. Written with an extraordinary grasp of descriptive prose, the author transports readers to the humid beauty of the backcountry and the people who inhabit the area. Proud -- yet vulnerable -- women waiting for a little bit of happiness to find them, women looking back at their lives with fondness and just a tinge of regret.... [A]ll of these characters come alive under Wilkinson's sure hand." --Today's Librarian [P] University Press of Kentucky / February 24, 2017 0.5" H x 8.4" L x 5.4" W (0.5 lbs) 176 pages

Blackberries, Blackberries /// Crystal Wilkinson with foreword by Nikky Finney and afterword by Honorée Jeffers

Poems of migration, womanhood, trauma, and resilience from the celebrated collaborator on Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Black Is King, award-winning Somali British poet Warsan Shire“The beautifully crafted poems in this collection are fiercely tender gifts.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist“Shire is the real thing—fresh, cutting, indisputably alive.”—Dwight Garner, The New York TimesMama, I made it / out of your home / alive, raised by / the voices / in my head.With her first full-length poetry collection, Warsan Shire introduces us to a young girl, who, in the absence of a nurturing guide, makes her own way toward womanhood. Drawing from her own life, as well as pop culture and news headlines, Shire finds vivid, unique details in the experiences of refugees and immigrants, mothers and daughters, Black women and teenage girls. In Shire’s hands, lives spring into fullness. This is noisy life, full of music and weeping and surahs and sirens and birds. This is fragrant life, full of blood and perfume and shisha smoke and jasmine and incense. This is polychrome life, full of henna and moonlight and lipstick and turmeric and kohl. The long-awaited collection from one of our most exciting contemporary poets, this book is a blessing, an incantatory celebration of resilience and survival. Each reader will come away changed. BIO Warsan Shire is a Somali British writer and poet born in Nairobi and raised in London. She has written two chapbooks, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and Her Blue Body. She was awarded the inaugural Brunel International African Poetry Prize and served as the first Young Poet Laureate of London. She is the youngest member of the Royal Society of Literature and is included in the Penguin Modern Poets series. Shire wrote the poetry for the Peabody Award–winning visual album Lemonade and the Disney film Black Is King in collaboration with Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. She also wrote the short film Brave Girl Rising, highlighting the voices and faces of Somali girls in Africa’s largest refugee camp. Warsan Shire lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two children. Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head is her full-length debut poetry collection. REVIEWS “It is not overstatement to say Shire writes the way Nina Simone sang. All the brilliance of her lean, monumental Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth is magnified in this remarkable new book.” —Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin “Heartbreaking, full-bodied, and luscious . . . If someone from another planet wanted to know what it was like for a woman to survive on earth, they should read this book!” —Pascale Petit, author of Tiger Girl “Warsan Shire’s exquisite, memorable, and finely tuned poems articulate a depth of experience that never fails to surprise and profoundly move me, as she so powerfully gives voice to the unspoken.” —Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, Other [P] Random House Trade / March 01, 2022 0.5" H x 8.8" L x 5.4" W (0.28 lbs) 96 pages

Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head: Poems /// Warsan Shire

From the best-selling author of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, a searing multi-generational novel—set in the 1980s in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia and in the tiny town of Bonaparte, Alabama—about a mother fighting for her sanity and survival“[A] powerful book.” —Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of GileadFrom the moment Ava Carson and her ten-year-old son, Toussaint, arrive at the Glenn Avenue family shelter in Philadelphia 1985, Ava is already plotting a way out. She is repulsed by the shelter’s squalid conditions: their cockroach-infested room, the barely edible food, and the shifty night security guard. She is determined to rescue her son from the perils and indignities of that place, and to save herself from the complicated past that led them there.Ava has been estranged from her own mother, Dutchess, since she left her Alabama home as a young woman barely out of her teens. Despite their estrangement and the thousand miles between them, mother and daughter are deeply entwined, but Ava can’t forgive her sharp-tounged, larger than life mother whose intractability and bouts of debilitating despair brought young Ava to the outer reaches of neglect and hunger.Ava wants to love her son differently, better. But when Toussaint’s father, Cass, reappears, she is swept off course by his charisma, and the intoxicating power of his radical vision to destroy systems of racial injustice and bring about a bold new way of communal living. Meanwhile, in Alabama, Dutchess struggles to keep Bonaparte, once a beacon of Black freedom and self-determination, in the hands of its last five Black residents—families whose lives have been rooted in this stretch of land for generations—and away from rapidly encroaching white developers. She fights against the erasure of Bonaparte’s venerable history and the loss of the land itself, which she has so arduously preserved as Ava’s inheritance.As Ava becomes more enmeshed with Cass, Toussaint senses the danger simmering all around him—his well-intentioned but erratic mother; the intense, volatile figure of his father who drives his fledgling Philadelphia community toward ever increasing violence and instability. He begins to dream of Dutchess and Bonaparte, his home and birthright, if only he can find his way there. Brilliant, explosive, vitally important new work from one of America’s most fiercely talented storytellers. BIO Ayana Mathis' first novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie was a New York Times best seller, an NPR Best Book of 2013, the second selection for Oprah’s Book Club 2.0. and has been translated into sixteen languages. Her nonfiction has been published in the The New York Times, The Atlantic, Guernica, and RollingStone. Mathis is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She was born in Philadelphia, and currently lives in New York City where she teaches writing in Hunter College’s MFA Program. REVIEWS “Poignant, heartbreaking . . . Mathis skillfully and subtly drops allusions to historical events, sending the reader on a kind of intellectual treasure hunt.” -- The New York Times Book Review“Ten years after The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, Mathis again strikes story-telling gold.” -- People“An ardent, ambitious, and carefully stitched tapestry of a novel, one that deserves and rewards our attention.” -- The Minneapolis Star Tribune“A decade after taking the world by storm with her debut novel, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie—the 72nd Oprah’s Book Club selection and an instant bestseller—Mathis is back with a highly anticipated and emotionally propulsive follow-up . . . Through a chorus of distinctive and virtuosic voices, we gather the story of a mother, a daughter, and the land that both unites and divides them.” -- Oprah Daily“Shelter without the grace of welcome is exposure to the worst coldness of the world. Loyalty and the offer of comfort satisfy needs we feel in our bones. In The Unsettled, Ayana Mathis brings these extremes of experience intensely to life. This is a fine, powerful book.” -- Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead [H] Knopf Publishing Group / September 26, 2023 ﻿1.1" H x 9.5" L x 6.3" W (1.32 lbs) 336 pages

The Unsettled /// Ayana Mathis /// new

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2023An exuberant collection of two decades of Major Jackson’s passionately intelligent poetry.A preeminent voice in contemporary literature, Major Jackson offers steady miracles of vision and celebrations of language in rapturous, sophisticated poems. Razzle Dazzle traces the evolution of Jackson’s transformative imagination and fierce music through five acclaimed volumes: his Cave Canem Poetry Prize–winning debut, Leaving Saturn (2002), which captures the spirit of resilience in the Philadelphia neighborhoods of the poet’s youth; Hoops (2006), which finds transcendence in the solemn marvels of ordinary lives; Holding Company (2010), which shifts away from narrative to explore the seductive force of art, literature, and music; Roll Deep (2015), which addresses human intimacy, war, and the spirit of aesthetic travel; and his vulnerable, philosophical latest, The Absurd Man (2020). The volume opens with over three dozen new poems that erupt into full-throated song in the face of indignity and invite us into a passionate experience of the world.Taken together, these two decades of writing offer a sustained portrait of a poet “bound up in the ecstatic,” whose buoyant lyricism confronts the social and political forces that would demean humanity. Equally attuned to sensuous connection, metaphysical inquiries, the natural world, and ever-changing urban landscapes, Jackson possesses a sensibility at once global and personal, driven by an enduring conviction in the possibilities of art and language to mark our lives with meaning.Whether addressing racial conflict and the ongoing struggle for human dignity in America, bearing witness to the plight of refugees, or grieving the contradictory nature of humankind, these dexterous poems proclaim the remarkable power of renewal, justice, and accountability. BIO Major Jackson is the author of six volumes of poetry. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review and the host of the podcast The Slowdown, Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [H] W.W. Norton & Company / September 05, 2023 ﻿1.2" H x 9.3" L x 6.2" W (1.2 lbs) 288 pages

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2023 An exuberant collection of two decades of Major Jackson’s passionately intelligent poetry. A preeminent voice in contemporary literature, Major Jackson offers steady miracles of vision and celebrations of language in rapturous, sophisticated poems. Razzle Dazzle traces the evolution of Jackson’s transformative imagination and fierce music through five acclaimed volumes: his Cave Canem Poetry Prize–winning debut, Leaving Saturn (2002), which captures the spirit of resilience in the Philadelphia neighborhoods of the poet’s youth; Hoops (2006), which finds transcendence in the solemn marvels of ordinary lives; Holding Company (2010), which shifts away from narrative to explore the seductive force of art, literature, and music; Roll Deep (2015), which addresses human intimacy, war, and the spirit of aesthetic travel; and his vulnerable, philosophical latest, The Absurd Man (2020). The volume opens with over three dozen new poems that erupt into full-throated song in the face of indignity and invite us into a passionate experience of the world. Taken together, these two decades of writing offer a sustained portrait of a poet “bound up in the ecstatic,” whose buoyant lyricism confronts the social and political forces that would demean humanity. Equally attuned to sensuous connection, metaphysical inquiries, the natural world, and ever-changing urban landscapes, Jackson possesses a sensibility at once global and personal, driven by an enduring conviction in the possibilities of art and language to mark our lives with meaning. Whether addressing racial conflict and the ongoing struggle for human dignity in America, bearing witness to the plight of refugees, or grieving the contradictory nature of humankind, these dexterous poems proclaim the remarkable power of renewal, justice, and accountability.
BIO
Major Jackson is the author of six volumes of poetry. His honors include a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. The poetry editor of the Harvard Review and the host of the podcast The Slowdown, Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
[H]  W.W. Norton &amp; Company  /  September 05, 2023
﻿<meta charset="utf-8">1.2" H x 9.3" L x 6.2" W (1.2 lbs) 288 pages

Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems 2002-2022 /// Major Jackson /// new

GMA’s 15 Spectacular New Books to Read in September Ms. Magazine’s September 2023 Reads for the Rest of UsThe Millions “Most Anticipated” Books of 2023LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black feminist writer who stands alongside giants like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, curated by National Book Award winner Imani Perry with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Tarana Burke. In the late ’60s, Ntozake Shange was a student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school’s literary journal, and finding her unique voice. By the time she left us in 2018, Shange had scorched blazing trails across countless pages and stages, redefining genre and form as we know them, each verse, dance, and song a love letter to Black women and girls, and the community at large. Sing a Black Girl’s Song is a new posthumous collection of Shange’s unpublished poems, essays, and plays from throughout the life of the seminal Black feminist writer. In these pages we meet young Shange, learn the moments that inspired for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf…, travel with an eclectic family of musicians, sit on “The Couch” opposite Shange’s therapist, and discover plays written after for colored girls’ international success. Sing a Black Girl’s Song houses, in their original form, the literary rebel’s politically charged verses from the Black Arts Movement era alongside her signature tender rhythm and cadence that capture the minutia and nuance of Black life. Sing a Black Girl’s Song is the continuation of a literary tradition that has bolstered generations of writers and a long-lasting gift from one of the fiercest and most highly celebrated artists of our time. BIO Ntozake Shange, author of thirty-six published works, is increasingly recognized as one of America’s greatest writers having, for fifty years, embodied the struggle of women of color for equality and the recognition of their contribution to human culture. Shange’s literary legacy, preserved in the Shange Institute at Barnard College, comprises thirteen plays, seven novels, six children’s books and nineteen poetry collections, the majority of which are published and in print. Her 1974 “choreo-poem,” for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow Is enuf, retains its status as the longest-running play by an African American writer in Broadway history. The 2022 Broadway revival of for colored girls garnered seven TONY Award nominations. She has been posthumously inducted into both the NY State Writers and the Off-Broadway Alliance Halls of Fame, cementing her legacy as one of the most cherished Black feminist writers of our time. Imani Perry (Editor) is the Carol K. Pforzheimer professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and professor of African American studies and women and gender studies at Harvard University. She is the author of seven books, including South to America, winner of the 2022 National Book Award. She is a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and the Hurston Wright Award, and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, among others. She has written for The New York Times; TheAtlantic; Harpers; O, the Oprah Magazine; New York Magazine; and The Paris Review. Perry earned her PhD in American studies from Harvard University, a JD from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center, and a BA from Yale College in literature and American studies. Tarana J. Burke (Foreword), for more than 25 years as activist, advocate, and author, has worked at the intersection of sexual violence and racial justice. Fueled by commitments to interrupt sexual violence and other systemic inequalities disproportionately impacting marginalized people, particularly Black women and girls, Tarana has created and led various campaigns focused on increasing access to resources and support for impacted communities, including the ‘me too.’ Movement, which has galvanized millions of survivors and allies around the world, and the me too. International nonprofit organization, founded in 2018. Her New York Times bestselling books You Are Your Best Thing and Unbound have illuminated the power of healing, vulnerability, and storytelling in the movement to end sexual violence. [H] Legacy Lit / September 12, 2023 ﻿1.51" H x 9.25" L x 6.43" W (1.53 lbs) 496 pages

Sing A Black Girl’s Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange /// Ntozake Shange, edited by Imani Perry, foreword by Tarana Burke /// new

mahogany is about the passing of time and unimaginable loss, strength, humor, and lovemahogany takes its name from the dark wood prized for its durability, workability, and elegant look, and from the Diana Ross movie, whose theme song asks if what lies ahead is what you really want. This book is the third in a trilogy, and like the first two books it is steeped in pop music. Each poem here takes its title from a line of a Diana Ross and The Supremes song, as well as songs from Diana Ross' solo career. Short lines flow down the page like postmodern psalms, connecting dailyness to timelessness, merging the historical and the beloved through reverence for family, music, and the life we actually live. mahogany is a lament for the passing of time and unimaginable loss, and at the same time it models the daily search for joy, and the deep shine that can arise from the darkest times.[sample poem]i'm like a woman who once knew splendor*sometimes i feel like the pink pantherall naked and pinklost in the morass ofdo the best you can todayand nigga heal thy selfour end of winterspirits breaklike old tibetan snowi rememberyou was conflictedand i found myself alonehere on my ancient hurtthe disquieting humof living historydear god, pleaseput my head above my heartwe can only be togetherif the stories are toldplain facesame instrumentjust a couple of coke bottlesfull of gasolinelike god and rainis a waste of timemy mother used to clean housesas a childsome days i can barelyget out of bedin my mindshe's like diana rossscrubbing the white lady's stairsin lady sings the bluesexcept prettierand with green eyesi've just been livingoff of cough dropsand water and angerjust sitting in the whole foodsparking lot eating pineapplei am literallythe definition of "hot mess"pain changes everythingsomebody comeand pick upmy limp bodyoff the groundi am dyinga slow ohio deathwe miss you starmanit's our first sunrise of the burn* "dark side of the world"erica lewis BIO erica lewis (San Francisco, CA) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her books include the precipice of jupiter (2009, with artist Mark Stephen Finein), camera obscura (2010, with artist Mark Stephen Finein), murmur in the inventory (2013); and the first two books of the box set trilogy: daryl hall is my boyfriend (2015) and mary wants to be a superwoman (2017). REVIEWS "To read mahogany is to st/roll with a new friend. The poems are as much tirade as they are tender telling, as much lyric blitz as spoken invitations to a way of surviving..." -- Divya Victor, author of Curb"erica lewis melds the raw emotions of love, loss, death, anxiety, and joy into a solid tribute to black endurance, her daily life and the heart of her history. Her dynamic phrasing riffs on her experiences like a praise song." -- Lyn Ford, storyteller, poet, writer/Ohio Arts Council and the National Association of Black Storytellers"In the tight-lined poems of mahogany, the repetitiveness of longing cycles into the brave insights of despair. After all, 'what is grief' one poem notes, 'if not preserving/love.' Like the Diana Ross's songs through which the poet refracts her own story, intense grief and love turn these poems 'inside out' until, sometimes, 'all that's left is joy'." -- Camille T. Dungy, author of Trophic Cascade [H] Wesleyan University Press / September 05, 2023 0.7" H x 9.4" L x 6.3" W (0.75 lbs) 128 pages [P] Wesleyan University Press / September 05, 2023 0.34" H x 8.99" L x 6.12" W (0.49 lbs) 128 pages

mahogany /// erica lewis /// new

Zadie Smith is back with her first novel since 2016. A work of historical fiction, Smith takes on the divisive "Tichborne Trial" that took place in Victorian England — and just happens to feature Charles Dickens. A brilliant book about authenticity and belief, this novel was well worth the wait. From acclaimed and bestselling novelist Zadie Smith, a kaleidoscopic work of historical fiction set against the legal trial that divided Victorian England, about who gets to tell their story—and who gets to be believedIt is 1873. Mrs. Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper—and cousin by marriage—of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she has lived for thirty years.Mrs. Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects her cousin of having no talent; his successful friend, Mr. Charles Dickens, of being a bully and a moralist; and England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.Andrew Bogle, meanwhile, grew up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica. He knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realize. When Bogle finds himself in London, star witness in a celebrated case of imposture, he knows his future depends on telling the right story.The “Tichborne Trial”—wherein a lower-class butcher from Australia claimed he was in fact the rightful heir of a sizable estate and title—captivates Mrs. Touchet and all of England. Is Sir Roger Tichborne really who he says he is? Or is he a fraud? Mrs. Touchet is a woman of the world. Mr. Bogle is no fool. But in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what is real proves a complicated task. . . .Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about truth and fiction, Jamaica and Britain, fraudulence and authenticity and the mystery of “other people.” BIO Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives. REVIEWS Mesmerizing . . . Smith weaves Eliza’s shrewd and entertaining recollections of her life, a somber account of Bogle’s ancestry and past, brief excerpts from Ainsworth’s books, and historic trial transcripts into a seamless and stimulating mix, made all the more lively by her juxtaposing of imagination with first-and secondhand accounts and facts. The result is a triumph of historical fiction.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Smith, in her most commanding novel to date, dramatizes with all-too relevant insights crucial questions of veracity and mendacity, privilege and tyranny, survival and self, trust and betrayal . . . Smith is always a must-read, and this spectacularly entertaining and resonant historical novel will have enormous appeal.” -- Booklist (starred review) “The cultural and literary life of Victorian England erupts vibrantly from each page of this extraordinary novel . . . Smith wrestles contemporary themes surrounding women’s independence, racism, and class disparity from centuries-old events . . . Readers of Geraldine Brooks or Hilary Mantel will be enthralled.” -- Library Journal (starred review) [H] Penguin Press / September 05, 2023 1.8" H x 9.2" L x 6.5" W (1.7 lbs) 464 pages

The Fraud: A Novel /// Zadie Smith /// new

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize“Once in a while, a writer comes along with a brilliance that stops the breath. Kim Coleman Foote is that writer.” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Red at the Bone“A masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true . . . This is the American story.” ―Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less Is Lost“Kim Coleman Foote has the rare talent of completely immersing you in time and place . . . A sweeping yet intimate family saga.” —Sarah Jessica ParkerColeman Hill is the exhilarating story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a remarkable, character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations.In 1916, during the early days of the Great Migration, Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes flee the racism and poverty of their homes in the post–Civil War South for the “Promised Land” of Vauxhall, New Jersey. But the North possesses its own challenges and bigotries that will shape the fates of the women and their families over the next seventy years. Told through the voices of nine family members—their perspectives at once harmonious and contradictory—Coleman Hill is a penetrating multigenerational debut.Within ten years of arriving in Vauxhall, both Celia and Lucy’s husbands are dead, and they turn to one another for support in raising their children far from home. Lucy’s gentleness sets Celia at ease, and Celia lends Lucy her fire when her friend wants to cower. Encouraged by their mothers’ friendship, their children’s lives become enmeshed as well. As the children grow into adolescence, two are caught in an impulsive act of impropriety, and Celia and Lucy find themselves at irreconcilable odds over who’s to blame. The ensuing fallout has dire consequences that reverberate through the next two generations of their families.A stunning biomythography—a word coined by the late great writer Audre Lorde—Coleman Hill draws from the author’s own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination to create an unforgettable new history. The result is a kaleidoscopic novel whose intergenerational arc emerges through a series of miniatures that contain worlds. BIO Kim Coleman Foote was born and raised in New Jersey, where she started writing fiction at the age of seven(ish). A recent fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, she has received additional fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Phillips Exeter Academy, Center for Fiction, and Fulbright, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Hedgebrook, among others. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2022, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, the Missouri Review, the Literary Review, Kweli, and Obsidian. REVIEWS Foote debuts with a gleaming, partly fictionalized account of her family’s history. At the center are Celia Coleman and Lucy Grimes, who meet in the early 1900s on a train leaving the Jim Crow South for New Jersey and become caught in a tragic cycle of domestic violence, alcohol abuse, and poverty. Celia’s husband, Jim, left Alabama and, after establishing himself, sent for Celia and their children to join him. But Jim soon dies, leaving Celia to support her children on a maid’s salary. Celia takes up Jim’s whiskey habit to cope with the cold winters and her own grief, rage, and exhaustion. Lucy—similarly widowed and deeply religious—has a daughter who becomes pregnant by Celia’s son, Jeb—who “unlike Jim, took out his woes on his wife, not his two little sons”—resulting in a marriage that tenuously unites the two families. The women’s will to survive sustains the generations, despite the many dangers they endure—and the ones they themselves inflict. Gripping, poetic, and with a big heart, it’s a memorable work of grim determination and surprising optimism. This is book club gold. -- Publishers Weekly Coleman Hill is a masterpiece. Brilliant, vivid, heartbreaking, epic, beautiful, raw and true; a reading experience unlike anything else. This is the American story.” -- Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less Is Lost“Once in a while, a writer comes along with a brilliance that stops the breath. Kim Coleman Foote is that writer.” -- Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award–winning author of Red at the Bone“A meaningful deep dive into family and power, love and survival.” -- Shannon Gibney, Star Tribune“A beautiful multigenerational novel.” -- The Root“In this sweeping and astonishing debut, Kim Coleman Foote explores complex questions of legacy and inheritance, reckoning frankly with the violence that has followed the Coleman family from slavery through emancipation and the Great Migration, but holding space for the resilience, storytelling, and second acts that also compose the family history. Coleman Hill is a gorgeous collage of history, memory, and imagination.” -- Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections“Remarkable . . . Three generations come to life in poignant, beautifully rendered scenes . . . a polyvocal symphony.” -- Laura Sackton, Bookpage [H] Sjp Lit / September 05, 2023 1.2" H x 9.1" L x 5.8" W (1.25 lbs) 320 pages

Coleman Hill: A Novel /// Kim Coleman Foote /// new

***Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize******A Most Anticipated Book in The Rumpus***A resistance group takes America's racial reckoning into its own hands in this powerful, stirringly original debut novel After the murder of an unarmed Black teenager by the hands of the police, protests spread like wildfire in Bliss City, New Jersey. A full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray.Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group’s pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their very survival.Haunting, provocative, heart-pounding and tender, Hush Harbor presents a high-stakes world grounded on the thought-provoking premise: What would you sacrifice in the name of justice? BIO Anise Vance is a writer from the African and Iranian diasporas. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden. As a Mitchell Scholar, he received an MPhil in Geography from Queen's University Belfast. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children. REVIEWS "Throughout, there’s a sense of edgy anticipation, and not just because of the content. Readers will also understand that they are encountering an exciting new voice in literature." -- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal STARRED review“From the opening chapter of Anise Vance’s Hush Harbor, I was totally engrossed. This powerful narrative strikes like a mighty python, wrapping itself around your heart and refusing to let go. At first, you think it’s the rhythmic tale of race war in America, then you see it’s far more complicated than that. It’s about human suffering and who gives a damn; it asks the question 'Will you fight oppressions that have nothing to do with you?'; It’s a song of redemption for a people and a nation too consumed with themselves to see each other. With this novel, Vance conjures black ancestral texts and voices such as Sutton Griggs’s Emperium in Emperio and Martin Delaney’s Blake. All I can say is, this book is an absolute must-read. ” -- Daniel Black, author of Don’t Cry For Me and Black on Black “An emotional, conceptual, page-turning tour-de-force.” -- Shelf Awareness “A tension wire crackling with electricity, Hush Harbor dazzles with incredible writing and boils with righteous fury. I could not stop reading.” -- Lauren Grodstein, author of Our Short History and A Friend of the Family "Taut, gripping, morally complex, and masterfully executed, Hush Harbor could not be more timely. Anise Vance illuminates America’s racial realities with unflinching, clear-eyed vision while also asking a timeless question. How do we remain humane to those who strip us of humanity? This is a marvelous achievement." -- Ye Chun, author of Hao and Straw Dogs of the Universe [H] Hanover Square Press / September 05, 2023 ﻿ 0.93" H x 9.28" L x 6.35" W (0.87 lbs) 288 pages

Hush Harbor: A Novel /// Anise Vance /// new

“In delicious, decadent prose, Denene Millner does what few authors can–compose a sprawling multigenerational tale that is necessary American reading. One Blood sings the song of the South in a voice that is heartbreaking, hopeful, and resilient. A masterpiece.”–Tara M. Stringfellow, National Bestselling author of MemphisJoin New York Times bestselling author Denene Millner as she explores the lives of three generations of women tied together by love, hope, dreams, ambition...and family secrets in this epic novel.Meet Grace: raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her grandmother. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie―a woman who firmly left behind her Southern roots in pursuit of upward mobility. Feeling like a fish out of water in the high society world filled with fancy teas and coveted debutante balls, Grace’s only place of comfort is with the smart, handsome son of one of the society’s grand dames.Meet Delores: beautiful, intelligent and fierce, Delores a.k.a. Lolo has never had it easy. Once she makes it north, she puts aside her dream of being a model to do what she has to do to survive as a woman with little money and no mooring: get married and have a family of her own. When secrets start to spill out and she and her family slowly begin to unravel, Lolo is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her dream intact and those she loves together.Meet Rae: when Lolo’s headstrong daughter, Rae discovers that she is adopted, it’s just one secret among others that her family is keeping. When Rae finds out that she’s about to become a mother herself, she knows that there is an important reckoning that must be faced about herself and her two mothers.Potent, poetic, powerful, told with deep love, and spanning from the Great Migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in early 2000s, Denene Millner’s beautifully wrought novel explores three women’s intimate, and often complicated, struggle with what it truly means to be to be family. BIO Denene Millner is a six-time New York Times bestselling author, Emmy Award–nominated TV show host and award-winning journalist who has written thirty-one books, among them Taraji P. Henson’s Around the Way Girl and the picture book Early Sunday Morning. Millner is also the editorial director of Denene Millner Books, an award-winning imprint that has published two Caldecott Honor books, a Newbery Honor Book, the Kirkus Prize for Children’s Literature and a Southern Book Award. A MacDowell Fellow, Millner has written essays for the New York Times, Glamour and NPR, which hosted her critically-acclaimed podcast, “Speakeasy with Denene.” Millner is a graduate of Hofstra University. She lives in Atlanta with her two daughters and their goldendoodle, Franklin REVIEWS “In delicious, decadent prose, Denene Millner does what few authors can--compose a sprawling multigenerational tale that is necessary American reading. One Blood sings the song of the South in a voice that is heartbreaking, hopeful, and resilient. A masterpiece.” -- Tara M. Stringfellow, National Bestselling author of Memphis"One Blood is the haunting, yet wonderfully written story of three women, Grace, LoLo and Rae, who are connected through time, circumstances…and more than just blood. From the first pages, Denene Millner had me captivated with the intimate stories and too many heartbreaking moments of these women as they struggled against every adversity, fighting to find their place and their voice in this world. With prose that was so beautiful, I often paused to read a sentence twice, I was left thinking about these women and how their lives were eternally linked, long after I finished this amazing novel." -- New York Times bestselling author Victoria Christopher Murray"Denene Millner is a masterful weaver of words, characters, and worlds. ONE BLOOD is a beautiful, brilliant American epic that speaks to Black motherhood, female relationship, marriage, family, legacy, love and healing. It is simultaneously deeply intimate and grandly sweeping." -- Tarana Burke, New York Times bestselling author of Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement"Clear your calendar before you turn the first page of Denene Miller’s irresistibly engaging One Blood because you won’t be able to put this compulsively readable novel aside once you start. A profound meditation on generational trauma, Miller’s characters leap off the page. Grace, Lolo, and Rae’s stories will become your stories, stories that will linger long after you turn the final page." -- Sarah Bird, author of Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen [H] Forge / September 05, 2023 ﻿1.37" H x 9.55" L x 6.51" W (1.38 lbs) 432 pages

One Blood: A Novel /// Denene Millner /// new

From Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’” —Inferno, Dante AlighieriLet Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation.Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother. Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take. While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.From one of the most singularly brilliant and beloved writers of her generation, this miracle of a novel inscribes Black American grief and joy into the very land—the rich but unforgiving forests, swamps, and rivers of the American South. Let Us Descend is Jesmyn Ward’s most magnificent novel yet, a masterwork for the ages. BIO Jesmyn Ward received her MFA from the University of Michigan and has received the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Stegner Fellowship, a John and Renee Grisham Writers Residency, the Strauss Living Prize, and the 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. She is the historic winner—first woman and first Black American—of two National Book Awards for Fiction for Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) and Salvage the Bones (2011). She is also the author of the novel Where the Line Bleeds and the memoir Men We Reaped, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize and the Media for a Just Society Award. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Tulane University and lives in Mississippi. REVIEWS "Ward (Sing, Unburied, Sing) returns with the wrenching and beautifully told story of a young enslaved woman on a rice farm in the Carolinas...Throughout, Ward uses stark and striking language to describe Annis’s pain... Readers won’t be able to turn away." -- Publishers Weekly"...What gives this volume its stature and heft among other recent novels are the power, precision, and visionary flow of Ward’s writing, the way she makes the unimaginable horror, soul-crushing drudgery, and haphazard cruelties of the distant past vivid to her readers. Every time you think this novel is taking you places you’ve been before, Ward startles you with an image, a metaphor, a rhetorical surge that makes both Annis and her travails worth your attention. And admiration. Ward may not tell you anything new about slavery, but her language is saturated with terror and enchantment." -- Kirkus Reviews [H] Scribner Book Company / October 24, 2023 320 pages

Let Us Descend /// Jesmyn Ward /// pre

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai’s ghost won’t leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ’s family bakery. TJ’s not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said – and left unsaid – to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source. Spanning Los Angeles, Houston, and Osaka, Family Meal is a story about how the people who know us the longest can hurt us the most, but how they also set the standard for love. With his signature generosity and eye for food, sex, love, and the moments that make us the most human, Bryan Washington returns with a brilliant new novel. BIO Bryan Washington is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. He received the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award for his first book, Lot, which was also a finalist for the NBCC’s John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. He has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, BuzzFeed, Bon Appétit, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Houston. REVIEWS “Family Meal is filled with love—for the sensual pleasure of life, the places that we call home, the beauty of the people around us. This novel will break your heart twice over, with sadness, sure, but more unexpectedly, with joy. It takes a generous writer to show us the world in this way, and Bryan Washington is one of our best.” -- Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind “The way Bryan Washington renders his characters, even in private moments of spectacular, sabotaging abandon, is vivid, unflinching and deeply compassionate. Brimming with food, sex, joy, intimacy, hella specific jokes, and the broken tools that we inherit to save our lives, Family Meal is nourishment. An absolutely gorgeous book.” -- Mary H.K. Choi, author of Yolk“Food, family, and sex drive this intimate novel about the difficult search for true connections…. Washington brilliantly commits to his style and preoccupations in a novel about the often winding journey to family.” -- Kirkus (STARRED REVIEW)“Washington’s tender, melancholic latest (following Memorial) explores the complicated nature of grief and love…. Washington brings his tough but fragile characters to life with quietly powerful prose.” -- Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW) [H] Riverhead Books / October 10, 2023 320 pages

Family Meal /// Bryan Washington /// pre

Fletcher Dukes and Altovise Benson reunite after decades apart—and a mountain of secrets—in this debut exploring the repercussions of a single choice and how an enduring talisman challenges and holds a family together.On a routine trip to the Piggly Wiggly in Albany, Georgia, widower Fletcher Dukes smells a familiar perfume, then sees a tall woman the color of papershell pecans with a strawberry birthmark on the nape of her neck. He knows immediately that she is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Their bond, built on county fairs, sit-ins, and marches, once seemed a sure and forever thing. But their marriage plans were disrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent.Before Altovise fled the South, Fletcher gave her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks, an enslaved ancestor on the coast of South Carolina carved the first peach seed, a talisman that, ever since, each father has gifted his son on his thirteenth birthday.Giving one to Altovise initiated a break in tradition, irrevocably shaping the lives of generations of Dukeses. Recently, Fletcher has made do on his seven acres with his daughter Florida’s check-ins, his drop biscuits, and his faithful dog. But as he begins to reckon with long-ago choices, he finds he isn’t the only one burdened with unspoken truths.An indelible portrait of a family, The Peach Seed explores how kin pass down legacies of sorrow, joy, and strength. And it is a parable of how a glimmer of hope as small as a seed can ripple across generations. BIO Anita Gail Jones is a visual artist and writer, born and raised in Albany, Georgia. Her fine arts degree is from Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. In the nineties, writing and illustrating children's stories led Anita to oral-tradition storytelling. She worked in San Francisco Bay Area schools as an artist in residence and tailored storytelling programs for libraries, corporations, and private clients. REVIEWS Essence, "15 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read This Summer""An epic, enchanting debut." -- Lauren Puckett-Pope, Elle"The sweeping story of a Black family in the South focuses on resilience and love...Jones is always insightful about family dynamics. And it’s a pleasure to see older people as main characters in a novel, depicted fully and without condescension. Engaging characters keep a complex multigenerational plot moving to embody decades of Black history." -- Kirkus"Jones debuts with a layered saga of a Southern Black family that weaves stories of the slave trade and the 1960s civil rights movement....[she] manages to tie together the themes of ancestral heritage and the persistent power of love." -- Publishers Weekly"Anita Gail Jones weaves together personal histories and the legacies that came before us in an expansive story about family and hidden histories. The world in this debut novel feels so lived in. Readers are drawn in by gorgeous passages about landscapes that dance with all five senses." -- Debutiful"On the surface, The Peach Seed seems mostly about inheritance and tradition, but this engrossing novel is also about partnership in the Black community—historically and now: we are children of strong women and strong men. Inarguably, Black men take a beating in American society, but The Peach Seed reminds us that we often survive our scars. You will not want to put this engrossing story down, as Anita Gail Jones introduces a whole family of survivors, planted and deeply rooted in Albany, Georgia. The Peach Seed presents a family replete with intergenerational struggles, triumphs of compassion, and fine examples of Black male bravery, compassion, resilience, and persistence, as they love their women and children and as they demand as much manhood as they can muster for themselves. The Peach Seed is a surprising book, a refreshing story, and a novel that restores Black men to their place in the family, offering an alternative to the mythic, stereotypic matriarchy by acknowledging Black men where they stand." -- A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress and Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison [H] Henry Holt & Company / August 01, 2023 ﻿1.5" H x 9.3" L x 6.2" W (1.4 lbs) 448 pages

The Peach Seed /// Anita Gail Jones

A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub From the bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives. Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own. Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come. BIO Elizabeth Acevedo is the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High—which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal—and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion, and resides in Washington, DC with her loves. REVIEWS “Family Lore is a deeply Dominican book, full of raw emotional power. It is at once intimate and epic, one of the most resonant representations of a family and world like my own that I've ever read. There is so much to love about this wise, funny and original novel—and it’s a singular contribution to Dominican diasporic letters.” -- Naima Coster, New York Times bestselling author of What’s Mine and Yours “Elizabeth Acevedo's Family Lore is a sweeping multi-generational story of a family of women whose special powers have helped them overcome personal, familial, and historical challenges that both bond them together and at times threaten to pull them apart but ultimately navigate them into the full abrazos of love. Acevedo is in full command of her special powers as a storyteller of compassionate, capacious and lyrical imagination. Make room on your shelves, readers, for this strong new voice with an old soul and a deep well of understanding of who we wonderfully are for the brief time we are beings.” -- Julia Alvarez, author of Afterlife and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents 'Flor is throwing herself a wake and reminding us that ‘even a long life is too short.’ So while we are here ‘let's eat, and dance, and be alive.’ Acevedo has written unforgettable characters who breathe new life to how we grieve, age, take care of each other. Family Lore is a big-hearted novel, a wonderful debut!' -- Angie Cruz, author of How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water and Dominicana “Only Elizabeth Acevedo could make an epic feel so intimate, so perfectly crafted and tightly drawn. FAMILY LORE is a devastating exploration of the liveliness of the Marte women. No writer on earth transforms a page into a home with distinct emotional chambers like Acevedo, and her she does it with language that is equally lush and lacerating. This is how stories should be made.” -- Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division and Heavy [H] Ecco Press / August 01, 2023 ﻿1.29" H x 9.43" L x 6.36" W (1.17 lbs) 384 pages

Family Lore /// Elizabeth Acevedo

The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • Time • AARP • Town & Country • St. Louis Post-DispatchFrom James McBride, author of the bestselling Oprah’s Book Club pick Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, a novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep themIn 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as Deacon King Kong and as inventive as The Good Lord Bird. BIO James McBride is an accomplished musician and author of the National Book Award–winning The Good Lord Bird, the #1 bestselling American classic The Color of Water, and the bestsellers Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna. He is also the author of Kill ’Em and Leave, a James Brown biography. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2016, McBride is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. REVIEWS “McBride’s pages burst with life… This endlessly rich saga highlights the different ways in which people look out for one another.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The interlocking destinies of [McBride’s] characters make for tense, absorbing drama and, at times, warm, humane comedy. … If it’s possible for America to have a poet laureate, why can’t James McBride be its storyteller-in-chief?” -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)“Funny, tender, knockabout, gritty, and suspenseful, McBride’s microcosmic, socially critiquing, and empathic novel dynamically celebrates difference, kindness, ingenuity, and the force that compels us to move heaven and earth to help each other.” -- Booklist (starred review) “Heartfelt and engrossing… an ode to the power of community in the face of oppression.” -- Time Magazine“A stunning page turner… and an utterly captivating, compassionate story.” -- Real Simple “Powerful.” -- Town & Country “[McBride is] a masterful storyteller who always brings a deep well of humanity and humor to his exuberant, expansive tales.” -- LitHub“A compelling novel, compellingly written, and not to be missed…McBride takes a mash-up of plots and over a dozen main characters, each with his or her own history, and weaves them together seamlessly with humor, empathy, and a determined sense of justice. . .[He] ends the novel with so much poignancy and heartfelt sympathy for his characters that readers will be hard-pressed not to be moved.” -- Library Journal (starred review)“Vibrant. . .McBride’s pages burst with life. . .This endlessly rich saga highlights the different ways in which people look out for one another.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) [H] Riverhead Books / August 08, 2023 1.41" H x 9.28" L x 6.36" W (1.3 lbs) 400 pages

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store /// James McBride /// new

A rousing, beautifully observed, and tender-hearted debut poetry collection about identity, culture, home, and belonging—for fans of Jasmine Mans and Fatimah Asghar “We, children of plátanos, always gotta learn to play in everyone else’s backyard and somehow feel at home.” Poet and musician Melania Luisa Marte opens Plantains and Our Becoming by pointing out that Afro-Latina is not a word recognized by the dictionary. But the dictionary is far from a record of the truth. What does it mean, then, to tend to your own words and your own record—to build upon the legacies of your ancestors? In this imaginative, blistering poetry collection, Marte looks at the identities and histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti to celebrate and center the Black diasporic experience. Through the exploration of themes like self-love, nationalism, displacement, generational trauma, and ancestral knowledge, this collection uproots stereotypes while creating a new joyous vision for Black identity and personhood. BIO Melania Luisa Marte is a writer, poet, and musician from New York living between the Dominican Republic and Texas. Her viral poem “Afro-Latina” was featured by Instagram on their IG TV for National Poetry Month and has garnered over nine million views. Her work has also been featured by Ain’t I Latina, AfroPunk, The Root, Teen Vogue, Telemundo, Remezcla, PopSugar, and elsewhere. REVIEWS One of Bookish’s “Must Read Poetry Collections of 2023”Included in Ms. Magazine‘s “Best Poetry of the Last Year”One of We All Grow Latina’s “20 Books From Latine Authors to Keep an Eye Out for in 2023”Included in Zibby Mag’s “Poetry Collections for National Poetry Month” "Moving from New York to Texas to the Dominican Republic and to Haiti, this collection looks at the legacies of colonialism and racism but never shies away from highlighting the beauty—and joy—that comes from celebrating who you are and where you come from. PLANTAINS AND OUR BECOMING is “a full-throated war cry; both a request for anointment and the responding bendición” -- Elizabeth Acevedo, author of Family Lore “This collection is a full-throated war cry; both a request for anointment and the responding bendición. Marte writes like she’s got daggers between her teeth: yes, there is sharpness in every line, but her words remind us blades also cauterize, heal. Even these ancestral wounds.” -- Elizabeth Acevedo, the National Book Award winning author of The Poet X “Melania Luisa Marte’s Plantains and Our Becoming is a shape shifting work of magic. It is a siren song, a battle cry, an anthem for Afro-Latine centered acts of self-love and revolution. Each line offers us the sharpened blade of a machete to cut away what is rotten. To plant ourselves again. To cultivate our truest, most beautiful selves.”-- Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park“There is no voice like Melania Luisa Marte’s right now. I hesitate to say words like ‘necessary’ and ‘groundbreaking’ because it should simply be a given that Marte’s work is in people’s hands, headphones, bookshelves, and syllabi. Her thrilling collection Plantains and Our Becoming is a portrait of Black girlhood, an ode to daughters of the diaspora, and a lesson on an erased Dominican history. Marte’s prose is all at once prayer and captivating lecture; a song that will stay ringing in your ears and refuse to leave. I can’t shout about it enough.” -- Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You “The poems in this collection are an experience. One cannot just read these poems without standing right next to the speaker right from the beginning as they are making plátanos. These poems demand the reimagining of justice for Black women. Plantains and Our Becoming examines a lineage of reclamation and resistance in the face of racial injustice with freedom and joy at the helm.” -- Elisabet Velazquez, author of When We Make It [P] Tiny Reparations Press / August 22, 2023 160 pages

Plantains and Our Becoming: Poems /// Melania Luisa Marte /// new

One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Summer by The Washington Post • TIME Magazine • NPR • The Los Angeles Times • USA Today • Vulture • Lit Hub • Kirkus Reviews • CrimeReadsThe two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Harlem Shuffle continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory.It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It’s strictly the straight-and-narrow for him — until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated – and deadly.1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney’s endearingly violent partner in crime. It’s getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook – to their regret.1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole country is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. (“Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!”), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney’s tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted.Crook Manifesto is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time. BIO Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and The Colossus of New York. He is also a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. He lives in New York City. REVIEWS “Dazzling … a glorious and intricate anatomy of the heist, the con and the slow game … [Whitehead] uses the crime novel as a lens to investigate the mechanics of a singular neighborhood at a particular tipping point in time. He has it right: the music, the energy, the painful calculus of loss. Structured into three time periods — 1971, 1973 and finally the year of America’s bicentennial celebration, 1976 — “Crook Manifesto” gleefully detonates its satire upon this world while getting to the heart of the place and its people.” -- Walter Mosley, New York Times Book Review (cover)“Whitehead’s New York of the ‘70s is a fully realized universe down to the most meticulous details (Parts of “Crook Manifesto” would pair nicely with Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker”) … Crook Manifesto” and “Harlem Shuffle” also form a joint reminder, as if we still needed one, that crime fiction can be great literature. These books are as resonant and finely observed as anything Whitehead has written. They have the pulpy verve of Harlem’s crime fiction godfather, Chester Himes, combined with the literary heft of Whitehead’s more garlanded novels.” -- Los Angeles Times “[A] masterwork of stylish noir and social satire … Whitehead’s larger project propels us forward, probing the whipsaw of race and the ouroboros of virtue and vice.” -- Minneapolis Star-Tribune “A dazzling sequel to Harlem Shuffle … Two-time Pulitzer-winning author Whitehead shows no sign of resting on his laurels. Crook Manifesto continues the brilliantly realized sequence that began with Harlem Shuffle, intricately depicting cultural history and family drama with the compelling energy of a crime thriller and the sharp wit of social satire. Harlem itself is one of the lead characters, and there are echoes of other chroniclers of this burg such as James Baldwin and Chester Himes. In ambition and scope, in the way the intimate is so deftly weaved with the epic, one is also reminded of Balzac. Whitehead has embarked on a great comédie humaine of his own.” -- The Guardian “Fierce and glorious … Sentence by brilliant, funny sentence, a masterpiece”-- People [H] DoubleDay Books / July 18, 2023 1.4" H x 9.3" L x 6.4" W (1.35 lbs) 336 pages

Crook Manifesto: A Novel /// Colson Whitehead

"A gorgeous debut" (Lauren Groff) from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today's literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another. A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them. Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth, announcing the arrival of a bright new literary star. BIO Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, Joyland, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat is her first book. She lives in Northeast Florida. REVIEWS Shortlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 A Roxane Gay Audacious Book Club April Pick One of TIME’s “14 New Books You Should Read in February” One of Elle’s “57 Most Anticipated Books Of 2021” One of Entertainment Weekly’s “Best Books of February 2021” One of O, The Oprah Magazine’s “55 of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021” and “20 of the Best Books of February 2021 to Fall in Love With” One of Essence’s “21 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2021” One of Electric Literature’s “43 Books By Women of Color to Read in 2021” selected by RO Kwon One of Literary Hub’s “20 New Books to warm your cold, unfeeling heart” Named a Best Book of the Year by The Atlantic, TIME, Washington Independent Review of Books, Kirkus, Chicago Public Library, Library Journal, Literary Hub, Audible, Largehearted Boy, Entropy, Millions, and Tampa Bay Times “Electric… a tapestry of intimate moments punctuated by Moniz’s tight, uncompromising prose.” -- TIME “Mortality is the undercurrent in Dantiel W. Moniz’s electrifying debut story collection, Milk Blood Heat, but where there’s death there is the whir of life, too… Reading one of Moniz’s stories is like holding your breath underwater while letting the salt sting your fresh wounds. It’s exhilarating and shocking and even healing. The power in these stories rests in their veracity, vitality and vulnerability.” -- Washington Post “Life’s inflection points, mundane but universal, mark the Black and brown Floridians who populate these stories… But in Moniz’s collection, the ordinary experience of being female is laced with a kind of enchantment… Entire stories seem bathed in a warm radiance…One can glow with both love and rage.” -- New York Times “The stories in Moniz’s debut collection—many of which shine a multihued light on Black girlhood in Florida—are to not only be read but felt. Like Danielle Evans and Lauren Groff, Moniz is unafraid to expose the darkened corners of the Sunshine State, and of female desire.” -- O, The Oprah Magazine [H] Grove Press / February 02, 2021 0.9" H x 8.4" L x 5.9" W (0.74 lbs) 208 pages [P] Grove Press / February 08, 2022 0.8" H x 8.2" L x 5.4" W (0.45 lbs) 208 pages

Milk Blood Heat /// Dantiel W. Moniz

'I heard our grandmother asking what we were doing.'"Say something!" she demanded, threatening to tear out our tongues. Little did she know that one of us was holding her tongue in her hand.'Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.Heralded as a new masterpiece and the most important Brazilian novel of this century, this fascinating and gripping story about the lives of subsistence farmers in the Brazil's poorest region, three generations after the abolition of slavery in that country is at once fantastic and realist, covering themes of family, spirituality, slavery and its aftermath and political struggle. BIO Itamar Vieira Junior was born in Salvador, Bahia, in 1979. He holds a doctorate in Ethnic and African Studies. Before Crooked Plow, he published a collection of short stories entitled The Executioner's Prayer, which was nominated for Brazil's biggest literary award, the Jabuti. Crooked Plow won the prestigious 2018 LeYa Award in Portugal. REVIEWS "A leading voice among the Black authors who have jolted Brazil’s literary establishment in recent years with imaginative and searing works that have found commercial success and critical acclaim." -- New York Times "One of the great novels of the year..." -- João Céu e Silva, Diário de Notícias "A tour de force of injustice, tragedy, affection and human dignity reminiscent of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables or John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Vieira Júnior’s book garnered top literary prizes in Portugal and Brazil. Its author has drawn comparisons to Jorge Amado, the giant of Brazilian letters who introduced the magic and plight of Afro-Brazilians to the world." -- Americas Quarterly "Beautiful, powerful and moving, he presents us with great literature with a simplicity that torments." -- Pessoa Magazine "Vieira Junior conveys the girls' childhood confusion and wonder in hypnotic prose, and he brings the close-knit Água Negra to life. This heralds the arrival of a welcome voice." -- Publishers Weekly "Among the laudable feats Vieira Junior accomplishes in this novel is the way it gradually moves from a highly specific story to one with implications for a region's entire working class. A stirring, lived-in novel of struggles both personal and societal." -- starred review, Kirkus Reviews [P] Verso Fiction / June 27, 2023 0.9" H x 7.8" L x 5.0" W (0.5 lbs) 288 pages

Crooked Plow /// Itamar Vieira Júnior, translated by Johnny Lorenz /// new

An exhilarating new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from the award-winning, No.1 bestselling author of OPEN WATERDancing is the one thing that can solve Stephen's problems.At Church with his family, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise. With his band, making music speaking not just to their hardships, but their joys. Grooving with his best friend, so close their heads might touch. Dancing alone to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known. His youth, shame and sacrifice.Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades?Set over the course of three summers, from South London to Ghana and back again, SMALL WORLDS is a novel about the worlds we build for ourselves. The worlds we live, dance and love within. BIO Caleb Azumah Nelson is a twenty-nine-year old British-Ghanaian writer and photographer living in South East London. His first novel, Open Water, won the Costa First Novel Award and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, and was a number-one Times bestseller. It also won the Bad Form Book of the Year Award, a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, Waterstones Book of the Year, and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. He was selected as a National Book Foundation '5 under 35' honoree by Brit Bennett. REVIEWS "Small Worlds is an emotionally astute novel that cements this 29-year-old south London author as one of the UK's best." -- New Statesman "Caleb Azumah Nelson's stunning second novel confirms his status as a literary star" -- Observer"Beautiful, unforgettable and all-consuming" -- Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie"Small Worlds is a book for everyone . . . an uplifting symphony of a summer read" -- Times [H] Grove Press / July 18, 2023 ﻿ 1.2" H x 9.1" L x 5.9" W (0.97 lbs) 272 pages

Small Worlds /// Caleb Azumah Nelson

Two Black sisters growing up in small-town New England fight to protect their home, their bodies, and their dreams as the Civil Rights Movement sweeps the nation in this “magical, magnificent novel” (Marlon James) from “a startlingly fresh voice” (Jacqueline Woodson).The people of Salt Point could indeed be fearful about the world beyond themselves; most of them would be born and die without ever having gone more than twenty or thirty miles from houses that were crammed with generations of their families. . . . But something was shifting at the end of summer 1957.The Kindred sisters—Ezra and Cinthy—have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village perched high up on coastal bluffs.But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra’s best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way. And as the news from distant parts of the country fills with calls for freedom, equality, and justice for Black Americans, the white villagers of Salt Point begin to view the Kindreds and the Junketts as threats to their way of life. Amid escalating violence, prejudice, and fear, bold Ezra and watchful Cinthy must reach deep inside the wells of love they’ve built to commit great acts of heroism and grace on the path to survival.In luminous, richly descriptive writing, Promise celebrates one family’s story of resistance. It’s a book that will break your heart—and then rebuild it with courage, hope, and love. BIO Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet, visual artist, and novelist. She is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award. Griffiths is also a recipient of fellowships from many organizations, including Cave Canem Foundation, Kimbilio, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, and Yaddo. Her work has been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Tin House, and other publications. REVIEWS “Promise is forged in a crucible of irrational violence and darkness that paradoxically gives birth to luminous, resilient love. This is a novel so potent, written in such transcendent prose, one wonders if it’s secretly a magic spell. It’s a stunning achievement.” -- Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss“This is a magical, magnificent novel that amounts to a secret history of an America we think we know but never really knew, where girls reckon with the beauty and terror of girlhood, mortal Black bodies reckon with immortal Black souls, while America reckons with the terror of its beastly, bloody self. The result bowls us over with shock and grief, but eventually fills our hearts with awe and wonder.” -- Marlon James, author of Moon Witch, Spider King“Promise is a stunning exploration of the weight and triumph of legacy, of what it has cost Black Americans to make homes in a country where violence and terror pursue them, and of all of the things it can mean to be called home.” -- Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections“A beautifully rendered narrative and a startlingly fresh voice . . . I fell in love with the people between these pages. This is truly the first book in a long time where I had to force myself to stop reading.” -- Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone [H] Random House / July 11, 2023 1.19" H x 9.47" L x 6.43" W (1.21 lbs) 336 pages

Promise /// Rachel Eliza Griffiths

A groundbreaking debut collection portraying the lived experiences of Black Muslims grappling with faith, family, and freedom in America.In Temple Folk, Black Muslims contemplate the convictions of their race, religion, economics, politics, and sexuality in America. The ten stories in this collection contribute to the bounty of diverse narratives about Black life by intimately portraying the experiences of a community that resists the mainstream culture to which they are expected to accept and aspire to while functioning within the country in which they are born.In “Due North,” an obedient daughter struggles to understand why she’s haunted by the spirit of her recently deceased father. In “Who’s Down?” a father, after a brief affair with vegetarianism, conspires with his daughter to order him a double cheeseburger. In “Candy for Hanif” a mother’s routine trip to the store for her disabled son takes an unlikely turn when she reflects on a near-death experience. In “Woman in Niqab,” a daughter’s suspicion of her father’s infidelity prompts her to wear her hair in public. In “New Mexico,” a federal agent tasked with spying on a high-ranking member of the Nation of Islam grapples with his responsibilities closer to home.With an unflinching eye for the contradictions between what these characters profess to believe and what they do, Temple Folk accomplishes the rare feat of presenting moral failures with compassion, nuance and humor to remind us that while perfection is what many of us strive for, it’s the errors that make us human. BIO Aaliyah Bilal was born and raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She has degrees from Oberlin College and the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies. She’s published stories and essays with The Michigan Quarterly Review and The Rumpus. Temple Folk is her first short story collection. REVIEWS “Temple Folk is more than a special literary accomplishment, it is a gift of glorious songs. The people in the nation of Islam have not appeared very often in literature. Now, Aaliyah Bilal arrives with a splendid and grand collection of 10 stories that, with sensitivity and insight and skill, give us a world of people, our loved ones, and neighbors, who decided that life might be better in the nation. We have long needed these stories, these songs, and this gift should be praised from as many rooftops as possible.” -- Edward P. Jones, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World“Obviously a student of history, and even more so, a student of the human heart, Aaliyah Bilal lays bare the interior lives of Black Muslims in these ten extraordinary stories. Across decades, generations, and continents, Bilal's finely wrought and unforgettable characters grapple with religion, culture, family, desire, and most compellingly, themselves. Every story was an eye-opener for me. Bilal is a gifted storyteller, and Temple Folk is quite simply a masterpiece.” -- Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Life of Church Ladies“Aaliyah Bilal is a gifted storyteller who understands how to build a world that feels both particular in its contours and universal in the challenges, triumphs and yearnings of its characters. The stories that make up Temple Folk explore love, faith, loyalty and disillusionment while offering up gorgeous langauge and unforgettable imagery. Temple Folk feels like no collection I have read before and announces Bilal as a literary talent worth championing.” -- Angela Flournoy, Author of The Turner House“A beautiful and vivid collection of stories. Aaliyah Bilal is the truth. Grateful for her voice in the world.” -- Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author“Temple Folk is a remarkable debut that does many things at once. It opens the door to a people we barely know, yet opens our eyes to the struggles that make us all human. People surprise and they disappoint. They stumble spiritually and soar morally. They love with all they have and lose all they've got. Put between faith and family, duty and self, Temple folk live through all the ties that bind and break.” -- Marlon James, Winner of the 2015 Booker Prize [H] Simon & Schuster / July 4, 2023 ﻿1.5" H x 8.0" L x 5.8" W (0.75 lbs) 256 pages

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