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 Brief History of Seven Killings /// Marlon James

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“A compelling story of how the transformative events of history weigh on individual lives and relationships.” - Barack ObamaThe Nobel Prize–nominated Kenyan writer’s best-known novel, featuring an introduction by Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak GurnahSet in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952–1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested. BIO Ngugi wa Thiong'o is an award-winning novelist, playwright, and essayist from Kenya whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. He lives in Irvine, California, where he is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. REVIEWS “One of the greatest writers of our time.” -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Guardian“His novels . . . have been deservedly canonized by the iconic [Penguin Classics] series.” --The Wall Street Journal [P] Penguin Group / June 05, 2012 ﻿0.8" H x 7.6" L x 5.1" W (0.45 lbs) 272 pages

A Grain of Wheat /// Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, introduction by Abdulrazak Gurnah, edited by Chinua Achebe

The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction​ • A sweeping and beautifully rendered exploration of home and yearning, following the fracturing of a family upon the demise of its patriarch“Each character here is richly and deeply drawn…This is a novel that encourages us to stand in life’s burning doorways, and to think long before we walk away or walk through.”—New York TimesIn the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, consuming Grenfell Tower and many of the lives within it. Across town, an earlier spark has caught fire. A cigarette left burning in an ashtray. A table strewn with post-it reminders and old newspapers. And one Cornelius Winston Pitt—estranged husband, complicated dad, and Pitt family patriarch—takes his final breaths alone.These twin tragedies open Diana Evans’s A House for Alice, an aching portrait of a family of women shaken by loss and searching for closure. At the novel’s center is Alice herself, the Pitt matriarch who, after fifty years in England, now longs to live out her final years in her homeland of Nigeria. Her three daughters are torn on the issue of whether she stays or goes, and while youngest sibling Melissa also grapples with the embers of her own failed relationship, the Pitt family’s foundational pillars—of trust, love, and cultural identity—begin to crack.Intimately drawn and set against a fraught political backdrop, yet equally full of hope, humor, and humanity, A House for Alice traces the scars of grief and betrayal across generations and uncovers the secrets we keep from those closest to us. BIO Diana Evans is the author of the novels 26a, The Wonder and Ordinary People. She has received nominations for the Whitbread First Novel, the Guardian First Book and the Commonwealth Best First Book awards and was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers. Ordinary People won the 2019 South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and also received a nomination for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction. Her journalism appears in among others Time magazine, the Guardian, Vogue, and the Financial Times. She lives in London. REVIEWS A Most Anticipated Book: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Good Morning America •“Each character here is richly and deeply drawn, with histories and personalities so fully realized that it’s a pleasure to get to know them…This is a novel that encourages us to stand in life’s burning doorways, and to think long before we walk away or walk through.” -- New York Times“A beautiful, deep exploration of home and fractured families” -- Good Morning America“Twin domestic tragedies entwine in this richly loving and fraught novel. The 2017 Grenfell Towers fire in London looms as Diana Evans juxtaposes this disaster with the death of a patriarch whose loss complicates the actions of his wife, Alice, who longs to return at last to her homeland, Nigeria.” -- Boston Globe“The shifting sands of relationships, time, and place frame a vibrant new novel from an award-winning British writer.Broad in range, vivid in detail, alight often with eloquent language, Evans’ fourth novel, set among a Black community in London, takes time to reveal itself. Sprawling but always engaging, the novel’s cast is filled with rounded individuals, their problems and options as Black, middle-class Londoners showcased at work and play and contemplation, with humor and empathy.” -- Kirkus Review (starred review) “All is conjured with Evans’s keen eye for human behavior… Her prose is distinguished by its lively, lyrical energy, by its seemingly effortless expansiveness, and by masterful turns of phrase” -- Guardian “A warm but devastating narrative, dealing with the fallout of the Grenfell tragedy… Like any Evans novel, it is unputdownable” -- Harper’s Bazaar “Evans…has an exquisite turn of phrase…The people on the page, and the problems they face, are real and raw" -- Times UK [H] Pantheon Books / September 12, 2023 1.6" H x 9.3" L x 6.1" W (1.35 lbs) 352 pages

A House for Alice /// Diana Evans

“Steady-handed and gut-punching. I’m in awe.”—NoViolet Bulawayo An Oprah Daily Most Anticipated Book of 2024 In ten vivid, evocative stories set in contemporary Nigeria, Uche Okonkwo’s extraordinary debut asks: why are the people and places we hold closest so often the ones that drive us to madness? A teenage girl from a poor family is dazzled by her rich, vivacious friend, but as the friend’s behavior grows unstable and dangerous, she must decide whether to cover for her or risk telling the truth to get her the help she needs. A young woman and her mother bask in the envy of their neighbors when the woman receives an offer of marriage from the family of a doctor living in Belgium—though when the offer fails to materialize, that envy threatens to turn vicious, pitting them both against their community. And a lonely daughter finds herself wandering a village in eastern Nigeria in an ill-fated quest, struggling to come to terms with her mother’s mental illness. Across ten stories, Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness unravels the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, best friends, siblings, and more, marking the arrival of an extraordinary new talent in fiction. BIO Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir, among others. A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. Okonkwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln REVIEWS "This debut short-story collection features 10 stories set in present-day Nigeria, all concerned with madness—both the literal madness of mental illness as well as the unruliness of outsize emotions like envy, shame, and desire." -- Oprah Daily, A Most Anticipated Book of 2024"Okonkwo has a Chekhovian eye for the tangle of internal motivations and assumptions that steer her characters. . . .Readers will be eager for more of Okonkwo’s artful writing." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review"Surprising, illuminating, and deeply human." -- Booklist"Vivid. . . . In addition to striking a perfect balance between humor and heartbreak, A Kind of Madness shows incredible wiseness on the complexity and at times maddening nature of loving our family, our friends, and our home.” -- Chicago Review of Books, A Best Book of April"Amazingly written characters in unforgettable settings. Okonkwo’s writing is transformative". -- Debutiful, A Best Book of April [P] Tin House Books / April 16, 2024 0.64" H x 8.52" L x 5.57" W (0.53 lbs) 224 pages

<div class="book-short-description" data-mce-fragment="1">
“Steady-handed and gut-punching. I’m in awe.”—NoViolet Bulawayo
An Oprah Daily Most Anticipated Book of 2024
In ten vivid, evocative stories set in contemporary Nigeria, Uche Okonkwo’s extraordinary debut asks: why are the people and places we hold closest so often the ones that drive us to madness?
</div>
A teenage girl from a poor family is dazzled by her rich, vivacious friend, but as the friend’s behavior grows unstable and dangerous, she must decide whether to cover for her or risk telling the truth to get her the help she needs. A young woman and her mother bask in the envy of their neighbors when the woman receives an offer of marriage from the family of a doctor living in Belgium—though when the offer fails to materialize, that envy threatens to turn vicious, pitting them both against their community. And a lonely daughter finds herself wandering a village in eastern Nigeria in an ill-fated quest, struggling to come to terms with her mother’s mental illness.
Across ten stories, Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness unravels the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, best friends, siblings, and more, marking the arrival of an extraordinary new talent in fiction.
BIO
Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir, among others. A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. Okonkwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
REVIEWS
"This debut short-story collection features 10 stories set in present-day Nigeria, all concerned with madness—both the literal madness of mental illness as well as the unruliness of outsize emotions like envy, shame, and desire." -- Oprah Daily, A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 "Okonkwo has a Chekhovian eye for the tangle of internal motivations and assumptions that steer her characters. . . .Readers will be eager for more of Okonkwo’s artful writing." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "Surprising, illuminating, and deeply human." -- Booklist "Vivid. . . . In addition to striking a perfect balance between humor and heartbreak, A Kind of Madness shows incredible wiseness on the complexity and at times maddening nature of loving our family, our friends, and our home.” -- Chicago Review of Books, A Best Book of April "Amazingly written characters in unforgettable settings. Okonkwo’s writing is transformative". -- Debutiful, A Best Book of April
[P]  Tin House Books  /  April 16, 2024
0.64" H x 8.52" L x 5.57" W (0.53 lbs) 224 pages

A Kind of Madness: Stories /// Uche Okonkwo /// new

Tyree Daye’s a little bump in the earth is an act of invention and remembrance. Through sprawling poems, the town of Youngsville, North Carolina, where Daye’s family has lived for the last 200 years, is reclaimed as the “Ritual House.” Here, “every cousin aunt uncle ghost” is welcome. Daye invokes real and imagined people, the ancestral dead, land, snakes, and chickens, to create a black town on a hill. Including dreams, letters, revised rental agreements, and “a little museum in the herein-&-after,” where collaged images appear beside documents from Daye’s ancestors—census records, marriage licenses, and WWII Draft Registration cards—the collection asks if the past can be a portal to the future, the present a catalyst for the past. a little bump in the earth explores what it means to love someone, someplace, even as it changes, dies right in front of your eyes. Poem by poem, Daye is honoring the people of Youngsville and “bringing back the dead.” BIO Tyree Daye is a poet from Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the author of two poetry collections, including River Hymns, the 2017 APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner. Daye is a 2017 Ruth Lilly Finalist and Cave Canem fellow. Daye’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Nashville Review. Daye won the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship, 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence at UC Santa Barbara and is a 2019 Kate Tufts Finalist. Daye most recently was awarded a 2019 Whiting Award and a 2019 Ragin Rubin Award winner. [P] Copper Canyon Press / April 02, 2024

a little bump in the earth /// Tyree Daye /// new

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way. Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked. BIO Tia Williams is an American novelist and editor. She has published six books and is best known for The Accidental Diva, The Perfect Find, and Seven Days in June. She is also a long-time fashion editor and the current editorial director for the Estée Lauder Companies. REVIEWS If this cover doesn’t raise your temperature a few degrees, the story will. Grab a fan before reading this one, because it really heats up.” -- Good Housekeeping A hugely satisfying romance that is electrifying and alive. -- KirkusWhat’s on its face is a delightfully steamy read is a story layered with nuance that gracefully examines thornier topics of parenting in the modern age, life with chronic pain, and Black identity. Through it all, Williams’ clever and witty writing will leave you clamoring to be part of Mercy’s world. -- Reader's DigestThrough this gripping love story, Williams reckons with family histories and shows the power in rewriting our origin stories. Readers will feel as attached to these characters as Eva and Shane are to each other. -- BookPageWilliams doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of human experience, and her characters are fully formed and believable as a result. This is a winning romance. -- Publishers WeeklyWilliams proves once again that there is much more to romance novels than meet-cutes and other reliable tropes. -- BooklistWith funny, snappy writing and a strong eye for detail, Williams builds a compelling, glamorous Black literary world for the protagonists to inhabit. The book balances a second-chance romance with themes of motherhood, childhood trauma, and life with chronic pain. -- Library JournalWilliams’ writing is zippy and fun to read, but her characters are also complicated individuals, making their love feel authentic. -- The Week [H] Grand Central Publishing / February 06, 2024 1.06" H x 9.14" L x 6.33" W (1.2 lbs) 352 pages

Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing. Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her. When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers. One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.   Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.  
BIO
Tia Williams is an American novelist and editor. She has published six books and is best known for The Accidental Diva, The Perfect Find, and Seven Days in June. She is also a long-time fashion editor and the current editorial director for the Estée Lauder Companies.
REVIEWS
If this cover doesn’t raise your temperature a few degrees, the story will. Grab a fan before reading this one, because it really heats up.” -- Good Housekeeping 
A hugely satisfying romance that is electrifying and alive. -- Kirkus What’s on its face is a delightfully steamy read is a story layered with nuance that gracefully examines thornier topics of parenting in the modern age, life with chronic pain, and Black identity. Through it all, Williams’ clever and witty writing will leave you clamoring to be part of Mercy’s world. -- Reader's Digest Through this gripping love story, Williams reckons with family histories and shows the power in rewriting our origin stories. Readers will feel as attached to these characters as Eva and Shane are to each other. -- BookPage Williams doesn’t shy away from the darker aspects of human experience, and her characters are fully formed and believable as a result. This is a winning romance. -- Publishers Weekly Williams proves once again that there is much more to romance novels than meet-cutes and other reliable tropes. -- Booklist With funny, snappy writing and a strong eye for detail, Williams builds a compelling, glamorous Black literary world for the protagonists to inhabit. The book balances a second-chance romance with themes of motherhood, childhood trauma, and life with chronic pain.   -- Library Journal Williams’ writing is zippy and fun to read, but her characters are also complicated individuals, making their love feel authentic. -- The Week
[H]  Grand Central Publishing  /  February 06, 2024
1.06" H x 9.14" L x 6.33" W (1.2 lbs) 352 pages

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde: A Novel /// Tia Williams

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

-- This book will ship on or soon after its release date: June 25, 2024. -- In a breathtaking saga spanning the final three decades of the Great Migration - from the Jim Crow south in rural midcentury Mississippi through the transformative 1970s - a tenacious single mother and culinary genius builds an unprecedented empire. But the one dream she can’t stop chasing may cost her everything…Readers of Terry McMillan, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, ReShonda Tate, and Sadeqa Johnson will be captivated by this powerful story of mothers and daughters, against-all-odds success, generational trauma, and redefining home.Money is security. Always. Margo Dupree has lived by that rule since childhood, when her father’s death plunged her and her mother into poverty. Marriage brought only disillusionment and struggle. But it also gave Margo the determination to migrate north in search of a better life for herself and her young daughter, Lana.The north, however, isn’t the panacea she expected, and Margo finds herself contending with the all-too-familiar obstacles of racism and prejudice, not to mention the new stresses of urban living. But things change once she realizes that what was once her greatest shame is now her greatest asset—the skills she learned from her mother’s job as a cook. Using her tasty recipes, personality, and relentless hustle, Margo begins to build a successful restaurant chain. Yet despite her ever-more desperate efforts, she can't earn her heart’s deepest desire: Lana’s forgiveness for her early absence.As Lana becomes a beautiful young woman with an increasingly mercenary temperament, Margo wonders if she knows her daughter at all—and if she can save her from the bitter and frighteningly dangerous mistakes that may shatter both of their worlds . . . BIO Phyllis R. Dixon is the acclaimed author of Intermission, Forty Acres, and Down Home Blues, which was shortlisted for the Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List by the Texas Library Association. She also is a contributor to the New Tri-State Defender book review column and to Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she is a former independent bookstore owner, previously worked for the U.S. Treasury Department, and currently serves on several nonprofit boards. She currently lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and can be found online at PhyllisRDixon.com. [P] Dafina Books / June 25, 2024 0.81 lbs 320 pages

<h4 style="text-align: center;">-- This book will ship on or soon after its release date: June 25, 2024. -- </h4>
In a breathtaking saga spanning the final three decades of the Great Migration - from the Jim Crow south in rural midcentury Mississippi through the transformative 1970s - a tenacious single mother and culinary genius builds an unprecedented empire. But the one dream she can’t stop chasing may cost her everything… Readers of Terry McMillan, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, ReShonda Tate, and Sadeqa Johnson will be captivated by this powerful story of mothers and daughters, against-all-odds success, generational trauma, and redefining home. Money is security. Always. Margo Dupree has lived by that rule since childhood, when her father’s death plunged her and her mother into poverty. Marriage brought only disillusionment and struggle. But it also gave Margo the determination to migrate north in search of a better life for herself and her young daughter, Lana. The north, however, isn’t the panacea she expected, and Margo finds herself contending with the all-too-familiar obstacles of racism and prejudice, not to mention the new stresses of urban living. But things change once she realizes that what was once her greatest shame is now her greatest asset—the skills she learned from her mother’s job as a cook. Using her tasty recipes, personality, and relentless hustle, Margo begins to build a successful restaurant chain. Yet despite her ever-more desperate efforts, she can't earn her heart’s deepest desire: Lana’s forgiveness for her early absence. As Lana becomes a beautiful young woman with an increasingly mercenary temperament, Margo wonders if she knows her daughter at all—and if she can save her from the bitter and frighteningly dangerous mistakes that may shatter both of their worlds . . .
BIO
Phyllis R. Dixon is the acclaimed author of Intermission, Forty Acres, and Down Home Blues, which was shortlisted for the Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List by the Texas Library Association. She also is a contributor to the New Tri-State Defender book review column and to Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she is a former independent bookstore owner, previously worked for the U.S. Treasury Department, and currently serves on several nonprofit boards. She currently lives in Memphis, Tennessee, and can be found online at PhyllisRDixon.com.
[P]  Dafina Books  /  June 25, 2024
0.81 lbs 320 pages

A Taste for More /// Phyllis R. Dixon /// pre

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

“A vibrant and moving debut that takes to heart our deferred dreams and the value of remaining hopeful.”—Diane Marie Brown, author of Black Candle WomenHow much of their lineage is one family willing to unearth in order to participate in the nation’s first federal reparations program?Every American waits with bated breath to see whether or not the country’s first female president will pass the Forgiveness Act. The bill would allow Black families to claim up to $175,000 if they can prove they are the descendants of slaves, and for ambitious single mother Willie Revel the bill could be a long-awaited form of redemption. A decade ago, Willie gave up her burgeoning journalism career to help run her father’s struggling construction company in Philadelphia and she has reluctantly put family first, without being able to forget who she might have become. Now she’s back living with her parents and her young daughter while trying to keep her family from going into bankruptcy. Could the Forgiveness Act uncover her forgotten roots while also helping save their beloved home and her father’s life’s work?In order to qualify, she must first prove that the Revels are descended from slaves, but the rest of the family isn’t as eager to dig up the past. Her mother is adopted, her father doesn’t trust the government and believes working with a morally corrupt employer is the better way to save their business, and her daughter is just trying to make it through the fifth grade at her elite private school without attracting unwanted attention. It’s up to Willie to verify their ancestry and save her family—but as she delves into their history, Willie begins to learn just how complicated family and forgiveness can be.With powerful insight and moving prose, Acts of Forgiveness asks how history shapes who we become and considers the weight of success when it is achieved despite incredible odds—and ultimately what leaving behind a legacy truly means. BIO Maura Cheeks has published writing in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Tin House, among others. In 2019, she was awarded a masthead reporting residency with The Atlantic where she produced the feature-length article that would later inspire the idea for this book. Acts of Forgiveness is her first novel. REVIEWS “Acts of Forgiveness is a vibrant and moving debut that takes to heart our deferred dreams and the value of remaining hopeful. Cheeks’s layered and tender story allows us to witness a family’s journey as they plant seeds, dig up roots, and bloom, all while they contend with injustices and fight for redemption in the world around them.” -- Diane Marie Brown, author of Black Candle Women “In Acts of Forgiveness, Maura Cheeks extends humanity, depth, hope, and complexity to a part of the American experience that too often gets flattened into talking points. This book is a testament to the power of great fiction to lead us to a better understanding of the truth. A generous and empathetic study of burden and inheritance, consequence and regret, this book and its characters are going to live with me for a long time.” -- R. Eric Thomas, bestselling author of Congratulations, The Best Is Over! “Acts of Forgiveness is a striking debut that asks pressing and urgent questions about reckoning with this nation’s history, and what it offers by way of answers is incredibly moving. Cheeks’s ability to render a painful past, an unfixed present, and a hopeful future through the Revels’ hopes and fears is astonishing. This novel grips with intellect and heart.” --Cleyvis Natera, author of Neruda on the Park “Acts of Forgiveness is the rare novel that lays out a hypothetical public policy and its attendant bureaucracy, weaving a story with an imaginative yet realistic exploration of what reparations might look like—what might be missed and what might be achieved. But above all, it is a story about family, with all the challenge, ambiguity, interconnection, obligation, and love the term carries. . . . A generous, thoughtful, and thought-provoking novel about inheritance in all its forms.” -- Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State “Engrossing . . . [Maura] Cheeks seamlessly threads the themes of resentment, forgiveness, and legacy through the multilayered narrative. Readers will be moved.” -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Cheeks’ debut novel seeks to explore the question of ‘whether forgiveness could be political, and, if so, could it last.’ . . . A freshly told, complex family drama with an intriguing premise.” -- Kirkus Reviews “Complex family relationship dynamics and hidden histories are elegantly examined in Cheeks’ debut family saga. . . . Cheeks imbues her characters with depth and emotion and tackles the personal and the political with skillful, expressive writing, and the Revel family story is engrossing.” --Booklist [H] Ballantine Books / February 13, 2024 0.93" H x 8.58" L x 5.82" W (0.92 lbs) 320 pages

Acts of Forgiveness: A Novel /// Maura Cheeks /// new

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

Welcome to the Dark.We are all familiar with tropes of the horror genre: slasher and victims, demon and the possessed. Bloody screams, haunted visions, and the peddler of wares we aren't sure we can trust. In this young adult horror anthology, fans of Jordan Peele, Lovecraft Country, and Horror Noire will get a little bit of everything they love—and a lot of what they fear—through a twisted blend of horror lenses, from the thoughtful to the terrifying.From haunted, hungry Victorian mansions, temporal monster–infested asylums, and ravaging zombie apocalypses, to southern gothic hoodoo practitioners and cursed patriarchs in search of Black Excellence, All These Sunken Souls features the chilling creations of acclaimed bestsellers and hot new talents. - - - - -ContributorsKalynn Bayron @KalynnBayronAshia Monet @AshiaMonetLiselle Sambury @LiselleSamburySami Ellis @themoosefJoel Rochester @fictionalfatesJoelle Wellington @joelle_wellingBrent C. Lambert @BrentCLambertDonyae Coles @okoknoRyan Douglass @ryandouglasswCirce Moskowitz @circemoskowitz BIO Circe Moskowitz (editor) is a fiction writer with a penchant for the macabre. She is a cocreator of the forthcoming graphic novel Good Mourning and a contributor in the critically acclaimed anthology Reclaim the Stars edited by Zoraida Córdova. REVIEWS ﻿"Each selection features fresh twists on familiar paranormal fare...Carefully constructed characters and worlds ruminate on myriad Black experiences while providing spine-tingling, escapist stories for fans of simultaneously gruesome and pensive scares." -- Publishers Weekly Starred Review"Circe Moskowitz has assembled a skilled set of authors who fully deliver on sublimely written, terrifying narratives of the macabre. More than that, this collection is profoundly important. It represents an essential intervention into inclusive fiction and imaginative world-building. We are all better for our engagement with these unforgettable voices." --Robin R. Means Coleman, PhD, author of Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present and coauthor of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar "Fans of Stephen King and Jordan Peele will be eager to dig into this modernized take on age-old scary stories." -- Kirkus Reviews“A magnificently chilling collection that ranges from the gothic to the gory, from hospital hallways to haunted houses. Take my advice and don't read it after the sun goes down.” -- Alix E. Harrow, New York Times bestselling author of Starling House“All These Sunken Souls breathes monstrous new life into the withered, desiccated husks of the familiar horror tropes. Each story is a gleeful reinvention for readers young and old alike, offering an ambitious and horrifying menagerie that shows the full breadth of what the horror genre is capable of.” -- Trevor Henderson, horror artist, illustrator, and creator of Siren Head [H] Amberjack Publishing / October 17, 2023 ﻿0.8" H x 9.22" L x 6.35" W (1.21 lbs) 256 pages

All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology /// edited by Circe Moskowitz

A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia.The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom” (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends). Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives.Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own. BIO Ashton Lattimore is an award-winning journalist and a former lawyer. She is the editor-in-chief atPrism, a nonprofit news outlet by and for communities of color, and her nonfiction writing has also appeared inThe Washington Post, Slate,CNN, andEssence. Lattimore is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Columbia Journalism School. She grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband and their two sons.All We Were Promised is her first novel. REVIEWS "Against the backdrop of untold history, Ashton Lattimore spins a beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom. Disparate and deeply real, Charlotte, Nell, and Evie struggle to fully trust one another, but ultimately discover that together they may be stronger than everything their turbulent world casts against them.” -- Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends “A compelling tale of three Black women caught between the promises and threats of a supposedly free, pre–Civil War Philadelphia.” -- Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake“Masterfully brings the era to life and kept me turning pages. A triumphant debut!” -- Martha Hall Kelly, author of Lilac Girls“As beautifully written as it is historically sound, and ripe with the overwhelming struggle to right America’s greatest wrong: slavery.” -- Sadeqa Johnson, author of The House of Eve“A stunning debut . . . This riveting story will enthrall you with its promises kept and broken, love lost and found, and paths carved forward with despair and hope.” --Adriana Trigiani, author ofThe Good Left Undone“With insight and empathy, this absorbing novel transports us to the turbulent streets of 1830s Philadelphia, where three Black women navigate the dangers of the city as well as their own fraught relationships.” -- Catherine Kerrison, author ofJefferson’s Daughters [H] Ballantine Books / April 02, 2024 0.94" H x 9.49" L x 6.5" W (1.28 lbs) 368 pages

A housemaid with a dangerous family secret conspires with a wealthy young abolitionist to help an enslaved girl escape, in volatile pre-Civil War Philadelphia. The rebel . . . the socialite . . . and the fugitive. Together, they will risk everything for one another in this “beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom” (Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends).
Philadelphia, 1837. After Charlotte escaped from the crumbling White Oaks plantation down South, she’d expected freedom to feel different from her former life as an enslaved housemaid. After all, Philadelphia is supposed to be the birthplace of American liberty. Instead, she’s locked away playing servant to her white-passing father, as they both attempt to hide their identities from slavecatchers who would destroy their new lives. Longing to break away, Charlotte befriends Nell, a budding abolitionist from one of Philadelphia’s wealthiest Black families. Just as Charlotte starts to envision a future, a familiar face from her past reappears: Evie, her friend from White Oaks, has been brought to the city by the plantation mistress, and she’s desperate to escape. But as Charlotte and Nell conspire to rescue her, in a city engulfed by race riots and attacks on abolitionists, they soon discover that fighting for Evie’s freedom may cost them their own.
BIO
Ashton Lattimore is an award-winning journalist and a former lawyer. She is the editor-in-chief atPrism, a nonprofit news outlet by and for communities of color, and her nonfiction writing has also appeared inThe Washington Post, Slate,CNN, andEssence. Lattimore is a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School, and Columbia Journalism School. She grew up in New Jersey, and now lives in suburban Philadelphia with her husband and their two sons.All We Were Promised is her first novel.
REVIEWS
"Against the backdrop of untold history, Ashton Lattimore spins a beguiling story of friendship, deception, and women crossing boundaries in the name of freedom. Disparate and deeply real, Charlotte, Nell, and Evie struggle to fully trust one another, but ultimately discover that together they may be stronger than everything their turbulent world casts against them.” -- Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Lost Friends
“A compelling tale of three Black women caught between the promises and threats of a supposedly free, pre–Civil War Philadelphia.” -- Charmaine Wilkerson, author of Black Cake “Masterfully brings the era to life and kept me turning pages. A triumphant debut!” -- Martha Hall Kelly, author of Lilac Girls “As beautifully written as it is historically sound, and ripe with the overwhelming struggle to right America’s greatest wrong: slavery.” -- Sadeqa Johnson, author of The House of Eve “A stunning debut . . . This riveting story will enthrall you with its promises kept and broken, love lost and found, and paths carved forward with despair and hope.” --Adriana Trigiani, author ofThe Good Left Undone “With insight and empathy, this absorbing novel transports us to the turbulent streets of 1830s Philadelphia, where three Black women navigate the dangers of the city as well as their own fraught relationships.” -- Catherine Kerrison, author ofJefferson’s Daughters
[H] Ballantine Books / April 02, 2024
0.94" H x 9.49" L x 6.5" W (1.28 lbs) 368 pages

All We Were Promised: A Novel /// Ashton Lattimore /// new

In the vein of America’s First Daughter, Piper Huguley’s historical novel delves into the remarkable friendship of Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, the daughters of educator Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt. At the turn of the twentieth century, in a time of great change, two women—separated by societal status and culture but bound by their expected roles as the daughters of famed statesmen—forged a lifelong friendship. Portia Washington’s father Booker T. Washington was formerly enslaved and spent his life championing the empowerment of Black Americans through his school, known popularly as Tuskegee Institute, as well as his political connections. Dedicated to her father’s values, Portia contributed by teaching and performing spirituals and classical music. But a marriage to a controlling and jealous husband made fulfilling her dreams much more difficult. When Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency, his eldest daughter Alice Roosevelt joined him in the White House. To try to win her father’s approval, she eagerly jumped in to help him succeed, but Alice’s political savvy and nonconformist behavior alienated as well as intrigued his opponents and allies. When she married a congressman, she carved out her own agendas and continued espousing women’s rights and progressive causes. Brought together in the wake of their fathers’ friendship, these bright and fascinating women helped each other struggle through marriages, pregnancies, and political upheaval, supporting each other throughout their lives. A provocative historical novel and revealing portrait, Piper Huguley’s American Daughters vividly brings to life two passionate and vital women who nurtured a friendship that transcended politics and race over a century ago. BIO Piper Huguley is the author ofBy Her Own Designas well as the Home to Milford College and the Migrations of the Heart series. She is a multiple-time Golden Heart finalist. Piper blogs about the history behind her novels on her website. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and son. [P] William Morrow & Company / April 02, 2024 1.0" H x 7.8" L x 5.2" W (0.6 lbs) 368 pages

In the vein of America’s First Daughter, Piper Huguley’s historical novel delves into the remarkable friendship of Portia Washington and Alice Roosevelt, the daughters of educator Booker T. Washington and President Teddy Roosevelt.
At the turn of the twentieth century, in a time of great change, two women—separated by societal status and culture but bound by their expected roles as the daughters of famed statesmen—forged a lifelong friendship. 
Portia Washington’s father Booker T. Washington was formerly enslaved and spent his life championing the empowerment of Black Americans through his school, known popularly as Tuskegee Institute, as well as his political connections. Dedicated to her father’s values, Portia contributed by teaching and performing spirituals and classical music. But a marriage to a controlling and jealous husband made fulfilling her dreams much more difficult. 
When Theodore Roosevelt assumed the presidency, his eldest daughter Alice Roosevelt joined him in the White House. To try to win her father’s approval, she eagerly jumped in to help him succeed, but Alice’s political savvy and nonconformist behavior alienated as well as intrigued his opponents and allies. When she married a congressman, she carved out her own agendas and continued espousing women’s rights and progressive causes. 
Brought together in the wake of their fathers’ friendship, these bright and fascinating women helped each other struggle through marriages, pregnancies, and political upheaval, supporting each other throughout their lives.  
A provocative historical novel and revealing portrait, Piper Huguley’s American Daughters vividly brings to life two passionate and vital women who nurtured a friendship that transcended politics and race over a century ago. 
BIO
Piper Huguley is the author ofBy Her Own Designas well as the Home to Milford College and the Migrations of the Heart series. She is a multiple-time Golden Heart finalist. Piper blogs about the history behind her novels on her website. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and son.
[P]  William Morrow &amp; Company  /  April 02, 2024
1.0" H x 7.8" L x 5.2" W (0.6 lbs) 368 pages

American Daughters /// Piper Huguley /// new

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is artist on the brink of an exciting career. They are settling into the routine of their life together, when they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together. This stirring love story is a deeply insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward- with hope and pain- into the future. BIO New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage. Published in 2018, An American Marriage is an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and also appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list as well as his year-end roundup. The novel was awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly known as the Orange Prize), Aspen Words Prize and an NAACP Image Award. It has been published in two dozen countries. Jones, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, has also been a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University. REVIEWS “It’s among Tayari’s many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words." -- Oprah Winfrey “Tayari Jones is blessed with vision to see through to the surprising and devastating truths at the heart of ordinary lives, strength to wrest those truths free, and a gift of language to lay it all out, compelling and clear. That has been true from her very first book, but with An American Marriage that vision, that strength and that truth-telling voice have found a new level of artistry and power.” -- Michael Chabon, author of Moonglow: A Novel “I love An American Marriage and I’m so excited for this book to be in the world. Tayari’s novel is timely, thoughtful, and beautifully written. Reading it, I found myself angry as hell, laughing out loud, choking up and cheering. A gem of a book.” -- Jacqueline Woodson, author of Brown Girl Dreaming “Tayari Jones is a great storyteller. An American Marriage holds the reader from first page to last, with her compassionate observation, her clear-eyed insight and her beautifully written and complex characters. Jones understands love and loss and writes with passion and precision about the forces that move us all from one to another.” -- Amy Bloom, bestselling author of Lucky Us “An American Marriage asks hard questions about injustice and betrayal, and answers them with a heartbreaking and genuinely suspenseful love story in which nobody’s wrong and everybody’s wounded. Tayari Jones has written a complex and important novel about people trapped in a tragic situation, struggling to reconcile their responsibilities and desires.” -- Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers “Tayari Jones’ American Marriage is a stunning epic love story filled with breathtaking twists and turns, while bursting with realized and unrealized dreams. Skillfully crafted and beautifully written, American Marriage is an exquisite, timely, and powerful novel that feels both urgent and indispensable.” -- Edwidge Danticat, author of Breath, Eyes, Memory [H] Algonquin Books / February 06, 2018 1.0" H x 9.1" L x 6.3" W (1.16 lbs) 336 pages [P] Algonquin Books / February 05, 2019 0.8" H x 8.2" L x 5.4" W (0.6 lbs) 336 pages

An American Marriage: A Novel /// Tayari Jones

In the follow-up to One-Shot Harry, fearless crime photographer and occasional private eye Harry Ingram finds himself in the LAPD’s crosshairs after capturing damning evidence of police brutality.An atmospheric dive into a city on the brink that’s brimming with remarkable historical detail, Ash Dark as Night is perfect for fans of Walter Mosley and James Ellroy.Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene, including images of the police as they unleash batons, dogs, and water hoses on civilians. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost—until Ingram’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. The photo makes front-page news.A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita’s mother, who wants Ingram’s help tracking down her business associate Moses “Mose” Tolbert, last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash, and clandestine agendas—all the while grappling with his newfound fame, which puts him in the sightlines of LAPD’s secretive intelligence division.Ash Dark as Night is a nail-biting ride-along through midcentury Los Angeles with a crime fiction legend in the driver’s seat. BIO Gary Phillips is the author of the Ivan Monk mysteries,Violent SpringandPerdition USA. He has also worked as a security guard, printer, a shade tree mechanic (rebuilding a ?58 Ford Fairlane with his father), a labor union organizer, a radio talk show host, a foundation staffer, and a community activist for over 22 years. He lives in the wilds of Los Angeles with his wife Gilda Haas, and their children Miles and Chelsea. REVIEWS﻿ “Outstanding . . . Phillips folds real historical figures, including TV journalist Louis Lomax, and events into a complex narrative of shifting alliances that captures the urgency and volatility of the mid-’60s. The results rank with the best of Walter Mosley in the canon of Los Angeles noir.” -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“Like Walter Mosley, his obvious model, Phillips is less interested in telling a story than evoking a world—and what a world!” -- Kirkus Reviews“Hardboiled, gritty, and fresh, Phillips’s latest is for fans of action/detective stories.” -- Library Journal [H] Soho Crime / April 02, 2024 ﻿1.18" H x 8.43" L x 5.59" W (1.05 lbs) 312 pages

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In the follow-up to One-Shot Harry, fearless crime photographer and occasional private eye Harry Ingram finds himself in the LAPD’s crosshairs after capturing damning evidence of police brutality. An atmospheric dive into a city on the brink that’s brimming with remarkable historical detail, Ash Dark as Night is perfect for fans of Walter Mosley and James Ellroy. Los Angeles, August 1965. Anger and pent-up frustrations boil over in the Watts neighborhood after a traffic stop of two Black motorists. As the Watts riots explode, crime photographer Harry Ingram snaps photos at the scene, including images of the police as they unleash batons, dogs, and water hoses on civilians. When he captures the image of an unarmed activist being shot down by the cops, he winds up in the hospital, beaten, his camera missing. Proof of the unjust killing seems lost—until Ingram’s girlfriend, Anita Claire, retrieves the hidden film in a daring rescue. The photo makes front-page news. A recuperating Ingram is approached by Betty Payton, a comrade of Anita’s mother, who wants Ingram’s help tracking down her business associate Moses “Mose” Tolbert, last seen during the riots. Ingram follows the investigation down a rabbit hole of burglary rings, bank robberies, looted cash, and clandestine agendas—all the while grappling with his newfound fame, which puts him in the sightlines of LAPD’s secretive intelligence division. Ash Dark as Night is a nail-biting ride-along through midcentury Los Angeles with a crime fiction legend in the driver’s seat.
BIO
Gary Phillips is the author of the Ivan Monk mysteries,Violent SpringandPerdition USA. He has also worked as a security guard, printer, a shade tree mechanic (rebuilding a ?58 Ford Fairlane with his father), a labor union organizer, a radio talk show host, a foundation staffer, and a community activist for over 22 years. He lives in the wilds of Los Angeles with his wife Gilda Haas, and their children Miles and Chelsea.
REVIEWS﻿
“Outstanding . . . Phillips folds real historical figures, including TV journalist Louis Lomax, and events into a complex narrative of shifting alliances that captures the urgency and volatility of the mid-’60s. The results rank with the best of Walter Mosley in the canon of Los Angeles noir.” -- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review “Like Walter Mosley, his obvious model, Phillips is less interested in telling a story than evoking a world—and what a world!” -- Kirkus Reviews “Hardboiled, gritty, and fresh, Phillips’s latest is for fans of action/detective stories.” -- Library Journal
[H]  Soho Crime  /  April 02, 2024
﻿1.18" H x 8.43" L x 5.59" W (1.05 lbs) 312 pages
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Ash Dark as Night /// Gary Phillips /// 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 1.1" H x 8.5" L x 5.7" W (1.0 lbs) 320 pages

Let Us Descend /// Jesmyn Ward

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 [TV Tie-in Edition P] Ballantine Books / October 17, 2023 1.02" H x 7.95" L x 5.12" W (0.65 lbs) 416 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

TV Tie-in Edition (Paperback)

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 YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.“Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages.”—The GuardianA cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid. Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull. BIO Jordan Peele is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker, known for his film and television work in the comedy and horror genres. Peele started his career in sketch comedy before transitioning his career as a writer and director of psychological horror and satirical films. REVIEWS “Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages.” -- The Guardian “[An] electrifying anthology . . . These tales are all both gruesomely imaginative and firmly rooted in the realities of anti-Black racism and brutality—and there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. This is essential reading for any horror fan.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review [H] Random House / Random House 1.3" H x 9.3" L x 6.0" W (1.4 lbs) 400 pages

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation. “Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages.”—The Guardian A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid.   Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.
BIO
Jordan Peele is an American actor, comedian, and filmmaker, known for his film and television work in the comedy and horror genres. Peele started his career in sketch comedy before transitioning his career as a writer and director of psychological horror and satirical films. 
REVIEWS
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<section class="overview" data-mce-fragment="1">“[An] electrifying anthology . . . These tales are all both gruesomely imaginative and firmly rooted in the realities of anti-Black racism and brutality—and there isn’t a weak one in the bunch. This is essential reading for any horror fan.” -- Publishers Weekly, starred review</section>
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Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror /// Introduction by Jordan Peele Edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams Contributions by N. K. Jemisin, Rebecca Roanhorse, Tananarive Due and Nnedi Okorafor

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

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

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

Two sisters are trapped on opposite sides of reality in this entrancing and deeply moving debut novel that weaves together a contemporary narrative with a parallel fantasy world. One year ago, a tragic car accident killed 22-year-old Laine’s parents and left her 18-year-old sister, Alyssa, paralyzed and nonverbal. Now—instead of studying animal nutrition or competing as one of the few equestrians of color—Laine is struggling with predatory banks, unscrupulous health care organizations, and rude customers at the coffee shop where she works. That’s why when Lake Forest Adult Day Center offers to take care of Alyssa, free of charge, Laine is relieved.Alyssa isn't relieved, though. After all, in her mind, there was never a car accident. Instead, she and her parents—the king and queen of Mirendal—were attacked one year ago in the forest, her parents kidnapped while she was cursed, and now must spend her days in Lake Forest's Home for Changels—a temple caring for mortals such as herself. Perhaps there, she could meet other changels who show her how to embrace her new life.However, there is a dark prince at Lake Forest, one who has taken a peculiar interest in not only Alyssa but her sister as well. And while Laine struggles to make ends meet on an everyday basis, Alyssa finds herself leading a battle that threatens to destroy not only her and her sister but their entire kingdom. BIO Khalia Moreau is a Brooklyn-based doctor and aspiring forensic pathologist who loves writing twists and turns. When she’s not in the hospital or doing something book-related, you can ﬁnd her watching anime or K-dramas while snuggling up with her cats. [P] Forever / November 07, 2023 0.68" H x 8.05" L x 5.3" W (0.59 lbs) 336 pages

The Princess of Thornwood Drive /// Khalia Moreau

Detroit ex-cop August Snow puts his life on the line to protect a friend from modern-day Templars sworn to protect the name of the Catholic church at all costs.Father Michael Grabowski, a Franciscan priest who has tended the spiritual needs of Detroit’s Mexicantown for forty years, has suddenly retired. August Snow, who has known the priest his whole life, finds the circumstances troubling—especially in light of the recent suspicious suicide of another local priest. What dark history is Father Grabowski hiding?The situation takes a turn for the deadly with the appearance at the Detroit diocese of a mysterious priest and combat vet calling himself Francis Dominioni Petra. The man comes from the Vatican, and as his armored guard circles closer and closer to Father Grabowski and his friends, August wants to know why. A terrible crime has been committed in the name of faith—but who is seeking justice, and who is trying to bury the truth and any of its witnesses? August grapples with his own ideas about his faith and his chosen family in this action-packed fourth installment in the Hammett Prize–winning series. BIO Stephen Mack Jones is a published poet, award-winning playwright and winner of the Kresge Arts in Detroit Literary Fellowship. Stephen has received many accolades for his August Snow crime/thriller series. August Snow won the Nero Award, and he has been shortlisted for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and a finalist for the Shamus Award as well as the Strand Critics Award. August Snow was named a Michigan Notable Book by the Library of Michigan. He received that honor again for Dead of Winter. In 2018, the International Association of Crime Writers presented Stephen with the prestigious Hammett Prize for literary excellence in the field of crime writing. He currently lives in the suburbs of Detroit. REVIEWS “The arrival of a new August Snow is a true gift. Clever, witty, and packed with danger and fun, Deus X is a brilliant thriller. His latest proves why Stephen Mack Jones has fast become one of our best living detective writers.” -- Ace Atkins, New York Times bestselling author of the Robert B. Parker Spenser novels and The Heathens“Stephen Mack Jones’s Deus X is a finely crafted mystery; a slow burn that crackles with suspense and intrigue, as ex-Detroit cop turned PI, August Snow, unravels depraved secrets desperate to stay hidden and learns the lengths some will go to punish those who profess to be holy. With Deus X, Stephen Mack Jones further solidifies himself as an author at the top of his game and the August Snow series is worthy of all the praise.” -- Aaron Philip Clark, author of Under Color of Law and Blue Like Me“A welcome breath of fresh air. [Jones’s] willingness to slide in zingers about the politics and attitudes of the present infuses his books with relevance… August himself is a bit of a superman – he’s kind, but he’s also stylish; violent but also vulnerable. He’s a classic private eye character for the present day.” -- The Oakland Press“Ripping… Jones never lets his foot off the gas, and he brings Snow’s Detroit to vivid life, populating the city with memorable characters and wringing atmosphere from its crime-steeped history. This one’s a blast for newcomers and series fans alike.” -- Publishers Weekly [H] Soho Crime / November 07, 2023 ﻿1.3" H x 8.4" L x 5.6" W (1.2 lbs) 360 pages

Deus X /// Stephen Mack Jones

The long-awaited sequel to No Gods, No Monsters from award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull, We Are the Crisis sees humans and monsters clash as civil rights collide with preternatural forces. Three years after the Monster Massacre, members of Rebecca’s old wolf pack have begun to go missing without a trace. The world has undergone many changes in the years since monsters came out of the shadows. An anti-monster group known as the Black Hand has started to organize across the United States. In response, pro-monster organizations have been growing in numbers and militancy. Targeted killings of suspected monsters and their allies, monsters spirited away in the dead of night, and the beginnings of pro-monster legislation are all signs of a cosmic shift on the horizon. Is there any hope for lasting peace? Or are these events just precursors to a devastating monster-human war? Meanwhile, beneath it all, two ancient orders escalate their mysterious conflict, revealing dangerous secrets about the gods and the very origins of magic in the universe … BIO Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting. REVIEWS “We Are the Crisis is the best kind of sequel. The kind that takes everything you loved about the first book and amplifies it, deepening the shadows and sharpening the edges. Here, vampires and werewolves, shapeshifters and monsters, gods and entities we might not have true names for, mingle with humanity in a multiverse riven with hidden wars, secret terrors, and open conflict. In that harsh landscape, Turnbull turns our minds to the things that can hold the universe together: love, friendship, compassion, cooperation, and resistance, even in the face of death and defeat. This book is a masterful feat of bold, original, and utterly compelling storytelling.” -- Maria Haskins, author and translator“Many have wondered what magic would do to our world, and Cadwell Turnbull’s vision in We Are the Crisis brings a level of realism, empathy, love, and terror that will leave readers breathless. His narrative feats are only made more impressive when you understand how hard it is to write a book this engaging, this readable, while actively asking the reader to trust you at every page. But Turnbull never loses focus on the beating, human heart at the center of this book of monsters in crisis. It is that clarity of purpose, that keen insight as sharp as claws, that causes his star to burn and ascend ever higher. I’ll read anything Cadwell Turnbull writes.” -- Martin Cahill, Ignyte-nominated writer and reviewer“Cadwell Turnbull has written a hurricane of a novel, a swift and sprawling storm system of intrigue, horror, and wonder. Few books have captured the human stakes of being inside momentous social change like We Are the Crisis. In the great tradition of speculative fiction exploring social division and solidarity, from Butler and Le Guin to the X-Men, the Convergence Saga is utterly, powerfully singular.” -- Theodore McCombs, author of Uranians“In Turnbull’s universe, monsters are real, and the world is still reeling and dealing with the revelation…Characters both old and new continue to drive the action and emotion in this time-sliding tale as the tension builds to another heart-stopping ending…Turnbull continues to use his deft prose to tie themes of hate, social change, and backlash into an enthralling fantasy series.” -- Library Journal (starred review) [H] Blackstone Publishing / November 07, 2023 ﻿1.3" H x 8.5" L x 5.7" W (1.45 lbs) 338 pages

We Are the Crisis /// Cadwell Turnbull

A polyphonic new entry in Multiverse—a literary series written and curated by the neurodivergent—JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies beautifully extends the vision of his debut book and album, The Clearing, a “lyrical celebration of and inquiry into the intersections of blackness, music, and disabled speech” (Claudia Rankine). Aster of Ceremonies asks what rites we need now and how poetry, astir in the asters, can help them along. What is the relationship between fleeing and feeling? How can the voices of those who came before—and the stutters that leaven those voices—carry into our present moment, mingling with our own? When Ellis writes, “Bring me the stolen will / Bring me the stolen well,” his voice is a conduit, his “me” is many. Through the grateful invocations of ancestors—Hannah, Mariah, Kit, Jan, and others—and their songs, he rewrites history, creating a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue to take, their freedom. By weaving a chorus of voices past and present, Ellis counters the attack of “all masters of all vessels” and replaces it with a family of flowers. He models how—as with his brilliant transduction of escaped slave advertisements—we might proclaim lost ownership over literature and history. “Bring me to the well,” he chants, implores, channels. “Bring me to me.” In this bringing, in this singing, he proclaims our collective belonging to shared worlds where we can gather and heal. BIO JJJJJerome Ellis is the author of Aster of Ceremonies. JJJJJerome was born in 1989 to Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants. JJJJJerome lives in Tidewater, Virginia with their wife, ecologist-poet Luísa Black Ellis. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house! REVIEWS “JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies blows my mind, and blows the lids off of any preconceptions about what poetry can make possible. With each movement, innovation, insight, and deepening—with each page—we are invited into ceremony: into a greenhouse of gratitude, repetition, remembering, and music. Ellis expertly rearranges sound, perspective, ecology, and history into a priceless song. '[H]owever you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement.'" -- Ama Codjoe, author of Bluest Nude “Say her name! We chant at the vigil. Say their names! We insist in honor of our ancestors. But what if we remember the trouble of the name, the limitation of the name, the fact that we don't know the names of so many of our ancestors, only their indexes of service, their reference of capture? Not to mention the contingency of saying itself in the chasm of history and in the diversity of our vocal flow, for example in the sacrament of the stutter. In Aster of Ceremonies, JJJJJerome Ellis shows how an involuntary stoppage can become a baptism, an infinite offering. Accompanying our formerly enslaved and sometimes speechless, our fleeing and sometimes stuttering ancestors, Ellis acknowledges how the surrender, the space where the voices we would raise in the services of liberation, instead ‘fall to their knees,’ opening space for interspecies eldership, fugitive kinship. Breath. Love. This book is a ceremony we have needed for centuries and an education towards the infinite ceremonies to come. JJJJJerome, we honor the holiness of your speech and of your whole being. We thank all the Plant Elders for creating the oxygen you breathe.” -- Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Undrowned “If I want to say that I no longer know the difference between fluency and dysfluency, it’s not to deny the difficult facts of impediment and impatience; it is, rather, to acknowledge an achievement of such path-breaking, ground-turning force that it bears the genuinely radical possibility of not knowing but feeling the difference, and of feeling difference in general and in all its generativity. As JJJJJerome Ellis enlarges and distills the very substance of language, black poetry and black poetics come into their own by exploding.” -- Fred Moten, author of In the Break “Aster of Ceremonies is a ministry of fearlessness, uncaged. Aster, a term Ellis brilliantly rips from the antebellum term Master, represents the unapologetic grit embedded throughout this astounding collection. Ellis unites dysfluency, black performance, and ecology to make visible the identities of black enslaved ancestors and individuals who stutter. We are lyrically transformed in a linguistic garden: emboldened to sing the names of black activists, inspirited to rearrange progress: pronouncing / announcing ‘gro’ from violent terms like Negro, and driven to pay homage to the earth that fertilizes our faith. JJJJJerome Ellis is truly a poetic cultivator of Black Truth.” -- Delicia Daniels, author of The Language We Cry In "This is what poetry should be. Always. JJJJJerome Ellis brings us back to the fine elements of lyric and line. This tale is one that the ancestors most certainly re-hearse and sing to us when we are sleeping." -- Sharon P. Holland, author of an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life [P] Milkweed Editions / October 24, 2023 0.4" H x 8.9" L x 6.8" W (0.65 lbs) 144 pages

Aster of Ceremonies: Poems /// JJJJJerome Ellis

Four-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts a glorious tale of identity, resistance, magic and myth.All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities Duology, which began with The City We Became and concludes with The World We Make, is a masterpiece of speculative fiction from one of the most important writers of her generation. BIO N. K. Jemisin is the first author in the genre’s history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, all for her Broken Earth trilogy. Her work has also won the Nebula, Locus, and Goodreads Choice Awards. She was a reviewer for the New York Times Book Review, and she has been an instructor for the Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. In her spare time she is a gamer and gardener, and she is also single-handedly responsible for saving the world from KING Ozzymandias, her dangerously intelligent ginger cat, and his phenomenally destructive sidekick Magpie. REVIEWS "Jemisin is one of the most highly decorated writers in fantasy and science fiction today." -- New York Times/Ezra Klein Show "Jemisin molds real world events from the past few years with magic and myth into this fantastical page-turner. If The City We Became is a love letter to New York City, then The World We Make is a love song." -- USA Today "The kind of book you lose an entire day to...and emerge shaken and dazzled on the other end. The writing is clear and visceral and intense. It’s some of the most brilliant, unapologetic speculative fantasy I’ve read in years." -- Washington Post "Hopeful and enthralling, The World We Make is more evidence of [Jemisin's] ferocious talent." -- Esquire [H] Orbit / November 01, 2022 1.4" H x 9.3" L x 6.1" W (1.28 lbs) 368 pages [P] Orbit / October 24, 2023 0.85" H x 9.15" L x 6.11" W (0.93 lbs) 400 pages

The World We Make: A Novel /// N. K. Jemisin

Basking in Singapore’s nonstop sunshine, Dara, Amaka, and Lillian are living the glamorous expat dream—until a mysterious (not to mention handsome) new arrival infiltrates their tight-knit community and ruins everything: "Wanderlust-inducing" (Lola Akinmade Åkerström, international bestselling author). A Today Show #ReadWithJenna Book Club Pick“Dazzling . . . I loved this story about friendship, who we lean on, female ambition, and what defines us.” — Jenna Bush Hager The Lion City has gone by many names and is famous for many things—its decadent street food, its world-class shopping, its lush gardens that burst with tropical blooms. But paradise is always hiding a snake. For Dara, a workaholic lawyer from the UK, Singapore is opportunity. Every day, brokering deals for her firm’s wealthy clientele, she gets closer to her ultimate goal: making partner. For Amaka, a sharp-tongued banker from Nigeria, Singapore is extravagance. Gucci, Prada, Hermès—she loves nothing more than to luxuriate in the major department stores that call her name on Orchard Road. And for Lillian, a former pianist turned “trailing spouse” from the U.S., Singapore is reinvention. In a stunning apartment with 360° views, the island seems to glitter as far as the eye can see. But complications are looming in the form of an enigmatic stranger, whose presence exposes cracks in Singapore’s beguiling façade. Dara’s ambitions mean she has no life outside the firm, and her insecurities are threatening to derail the promotion she’s spent the last six years striving for. Amaka is desperate to escape the chaos she left behind at home and hiding a spiraling shopping addiction that’s endangering her very sense of self. And while Lillian’s life may be the envy of outsiders, a new obsession is imperiling everything—and everyone—around her. In The Sun Sets in Singapore, Kehinde Fadipe captures the richness of this metropolis through the eyes of three tenacious women, who are about to learn that unfinished history can follow you anywhere, no matter how far you run from home. BIO Kehinde Fadipe is a Royal Academy of Dramatic Art trained actress with stage and screen credits including Misfits (E4), Of Mary (Lesata Productions), and Ruined (Almeida Theatre). She began her writing career in the Royal Court Theatre's Young Writer's Program while studying English at UCL and has previously written and produced a short film, Spirit Children, starring Pippa Bennett Warner and Jenny Jules, which was screened in two international short film festivals. The Sun Sets in Singapore is her first novel. She continues to write both fiction and screenplays. REVIEWS "Charming, sweet, funny, and emotional . . . The opportunity to experience something completely new makes The Sun Sets in Singapore worth picking up and discussing at your own book club." -- Associated Press "Unlike anything I’ve ever read. Slick, agile, and utterly engrossing, this spectacular debut features a set of protagonists so rarely portrayed: Black women expats." -- Taiye Selasi, Author of Ghana Must Go "In The Sun Sets in Singapore, Kehinde Fadipe expertly weaves the stories of three Nigerian expats seeking to write their futures in the luxe, moneyed world of Singapore, only to have their lives disrupted by the arrival of a handsome newcomer. The interloper's impact is both unexpected and rewarding, deepening our understanding of this trio of remarkable women as they learn to confront the scars of their pasts and reexamine what truly matters to them. A compelling story of ambition, identity, and friendship, this dynamic debut novel is a must-read for every book club." -- Kirthana Ramisetti, author of GMA Book Club pick Dava Shastri's Last Day [H] Grand Central Publishing / October 31, 2023 ﻿0.97" H x 9.11" L x 6.31" W (1.2 lbs) 352 pages

The Sun Sets in Singapore /// Kehinde Fadipe

New to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he’s landed in a creaking, stuffy apartment with two roommates: a loping giant who hardly leaves his room, and a weight-obsessed neurotic who keeps no fewer than forty-seven lamps throughout the house, blazing at all hours.Unwilling to accept this fate, Slide—a barber with an opaque past—embarks on a quest for the perfect apartment, pinballing through the sprawling, madcap city of Polis and its endless procession of neighborhoods. As he bounces from foldout couch to disaster-relief tent, falling in with some tough types, Slide begins to realize that he’s going to have to scratch and claw just to claim a place for himself in this world—let alone a place with in-unit laundry.An exuberant, fantastical odyssey, Pay As You Go wonders if what we’re searching for is ever really out there. Its pages—surreal, biting, and teeming with life—announce the startling talents of Eskor David Johnson, who knows that all any of us really want is a place to rest our head. BIO Eskor David Johnson is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and the United States. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, and McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. A graduate of Harvard University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was the recipient of the Richard Yates Short Story Prize, the Maytag Fellowship and the Teaching-Writing Fellowship, he currently lives in New York City. REVIEWS Both lampooning city life and confessing love for it, this story is a display of prodigious storytelling talent. It rushes by with the creative adrenaline of a one-man show; it hums with an infectious joy. […] Told in a raucous vaudeville style that blends gorgeous lyrical descriptions with madcap farce, Pay As You Go is a magnetic novel.” ﻿-- Foreword Reviews, starred review“A madcap odyssey through the hellscape that is the metropolis of the near future. […] Like Dante, Slide wanders in circles, soaking in weirdness, tragedies, and occasional flashes of beauty. And like Joyce, Johnson builds a world that, for all its improbabilities, is recognizable. […] An inventive, beautifully written debut that will leave readers wanting more.” -- Kirkus, starred review“Johnson’s unbridled debut runs in circles of accelerating grandiosity and lunacy.” -- Publishers Weekly“A brilliantly surreal and vivid feat of imagination.” -- Literary Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2023, Part Two“Eskor David Johnson’s Pay As You Go dramatizes the important question of what is home as Slide maneuvers life’s obstacles and searches for a place to live. Johnson writes with the fierce intensity of Ralph Ellison and delivers a prodigious and compelling novel with an unforgettable story. Eskor David Johnson is an extraordinary writer.” -- Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed“Pay As You Go is an exuberant, maximalist delight.” -- Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog“A wondrous mock epic, dreamlike yet jaunty, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a long time. […] Johnson’s gift for pure invention is downright García Márquezian, and Polis is his rambunctious Macondo, a place readers will want to visit again and again.” -- Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams [H] McSweeney's / October 24, 2023 ﻿2.7" H x 7.9" L x 6.1" W (1.85 lbs)

Pay As You Go /// Eskor David Johnson

A Good Morning America Buzz Pick! As seen in Vulture, Essence, Good Morning America, The Independent, Goodreads, PureWow, and many more! "A sexy, surprising, searing debut about love, loss, desire, and the many dimensions of Black womanhood."—Deesha Philyaw, 2020 National Book Award Finalist & award-winning author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies An arresting debut for anyone looking for insight into what it means to be a Black woman in the world. Three Black women are linked in unexpected ways to the same influential white man in Stockholm as they build their new lives in the most open society run by the most private people. Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the U.S. to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi's move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life. A chance meeting with Jonny in business class en route to the U.S. propels former model-turned-flight-attendant Brittany-Rae Johnson into a life of wealth, luxury, and privilege—a life she's not sure she wants—as the object of his unhealthy obsession. And refugee Muna Saheed, who lost her entire family, finds a job cleaning the toilets at Jonny's office as she works to establish her residency in Sweden and, more importantly, seeks connection and a place she can call home. Told through the perspectives of each of the three women, In Every Mirror She's Black is a fast-paced, richly nuanced yet accessible contemporary novel that touches on important social issues of racism, classism, fetishization, and tokenism, and what it means to be a Black woman navigating a white-dominated society. BIO Lolá Ákínmáde Åkerström is a Nigerian photographer, speaker, travel storyteller and an international author whose books are published in 18 languages. She is based in Stockholm, Sweden. She is the current editor-in-chief for Slow Travel Stockholm. REVIEWS "In Every Mirror She's Black is a wise and complicated exploration of the lives of three Black women in America and Sweden. Lola Akinmade Åkerström offers a sharply written story with messy, deeply moving characters, raising brutal questions and steering clear of easy answers. A book that will stick with you long after you've turned the last page." -- Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Daisy Jones & The Six and Malibu Rising "In Every Mirror She's Black highlights the struggles of three women fighting to assimilate into a society that ignores their worth. These characters will pull at your heartstrings. Lola writes with a contemporary flair, highlighting the layered subtleties of the Black woman's plight. In Every Mirror She's Black will stay with readers for a long time." -- Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of bestselling novels Here Comes the Sun and Patsy "In her debut novel, Lola Akinmade Akerstrom has given us a story that is at once enjoyable and disturbing as it explores the painful price millions of women around the world pay for walking around with black skin." -- Imbolo Mbue, New York Times bestselling author of Behold the Dreamers [H] Sourcebooks Landmark / September 07, 2021 1.4" H x 9.4" L x 6.4" W (1.35 lbs) 416 pages [P] Sourcebooks Landmark / June 07, 2022 1.3" H x 8.2" L x 5.5" W (0.84 lbs) 432 pages

In Every Mirror She's Black: A Novel /// Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström

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

In this knock-out collection, Major Jackson savors the complexity between perception and reality, the body and desire, accountability and judgment. Inspired by Albert Camus’s seminal Myth of Sisyphus, Major Jackson’s fifth volume subtly configures the poet as “absurd hero” and plunges headfirst into a search for stable ground in an unstable world. We follow Jackson’s restless, vulnerable speaker as he ponders creation in the face of meaninglessness, chronicles an increasingly technological world and the difficulty of social and political unity, probes a failed marriage, and grieves his lost mother with a stunning, lucid lyricism. The arc of a man emerges; he bravely confronts his past, including his betrayals and his mistakes, and questions who he is as a father, as a husband, as a son, and as a poet. With intense musicality and verve, The Absurd Man also faces outward, finding refuge in intellectual and sensuous passions. At once melancholic and jubilant, Jackson considers the journey of humanity, with all its foibles, as a sacred pattern of discovery reconciled by art and the imagination. 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. REVIEWS Poems in Major Jackson’s The Absurd Man are fashioned from masks and personae, impersonations and thrown voices. How ironic then that this fifth and most daring book yet sings deeply, solemn and vulnerable, a blues for our times. One of the root meanings of the word absurd is ‘out of tune.’ To be out of tune with these years of American absurdity, Jackson’s adroit lyrics resonate through a kind of fission, the collision of selves and personal histories yielding a most genuine ore. These poems face the music of their own making. -- Gregory Pardlo, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Digest At the end of his richly introspective and engagingly vulnerable collection, The Absurd Man, Major Jackson, referring to his double self, also a character in the collection, observes wryly, ‘Tragically, he believes he can mend his wounds with his poetry.’ And in this everything hopeful, elegant, daring, and unsettlingly absurd about The Absurd Man is spoken. Jackson embraces the existential absurdity of this ‘tragedy’ and yet, in doing so, he gives us poems that dare to challenge hopelessness with language. -- Kwame Dawes, author of City of Bones No American poet wears his genius as lightly as Jackson, whose poems here reach new heights of companionable style. -- John Freeman, LitHub Erudite...Moments of startling linguistic play interrupt Jackson's elegant semiformal style... [The Absurd Man] bring[s] us back to an existential truth that only poetry's fierce tenderness can offer. -- Sandra Simonds, New York Times Book Review Jackson's eye is laser-sharp and wry...Throughout the book, [his] weaving of mythology and literary references serve as context for confrontations with personal ghosts. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) [H] W. W. Norton & Company / February 25, 2020 0.6" H x 8.6" L x 6.3" W (0.6 lbs) 112 pages [P] W. W. Norton & Company / August 24, 2021 0.34" H x 8.31" L x 6.22" W (0.27 lbs) 112 pages

The Absurd Man: Poems /// Major Jackson

A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.Gracetown, FloridaJune 1950Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel. BIO Tananarive Due is an American Book Award and NAACP Image Award­–winning author, who was an executive producer on Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror for Shudder and teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA. She and her husband, science fiction author Steven Barnes, cowrote the graphic novel The Keeper and an episode for Season 2 of The Twilight Zone for Paramount Plus and Monkeypaw Productions. Due is the author of several novels and two short story collections, Ghost Summer: Stories and The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. She is also coauthor of a civil rights memoir, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due). Learn more at TananariveDue.com. REVIEWS “The writing here is spectacular; the pacing, engrossing; the setting, heartbreaking but honest; and the characters are given a nuance and depth rarely seen… A masterpiece of fiction.” -- Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW“With fully realized characters and well-placed twists, Due ratchets up the tension until the final, extraordinary showdown.” -- Booklist, STARRED REVIEW“A vividly realized page-turner, which is at once an ingenious ghost story, a white-knuckle adventure, and an illuminating if infuriating look back at a shameful period in American jurisprudence.” -- Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW“Her fiction is always powerful, and The Reformatory promises to be her most moving — and horrifying — tale yet.” -- Vulture“One of the greatest living horror writers.... Sure to be as powerful as it is haunting.” -- CrimeReads“Due knocks it out of the park every damn time.” -- Book Rio [H] Gallery/Saga Press / October 31, 2023 ﻿1.7" H x 9.1" L x 6.0" W (1.63 lbs) 576 pages

The Reformatory: A Novel /// Tananarive Due

From Lola Akinmade Åkerström, international bestselling author of In Every Mirror She’s Black, comes the highly anticipated second novel, focusing on the lives of three Black women as they fight their own personal struggles in one of the most egalitarian societies, Sweden. Can a career woman truly have it all? Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she’s the most selfish woman he has ever met for asking him to give up his life in Sweden and move to the US for her own comfort. Will Kemi be forced to stay if she wants to keep him while chipping away at her hard-earned career? As things begin to sour and challenge her relationship with Tobias, someone else moves back into the picture. Can having it all be a gilded cage? Looking into divorce in Sweden isn’t what former model-turned-flight attendant Brittany-Rae von Lundin anticipated. Only jointly owned assets are split evenly between couples. Brittany gave up her career and came with nothing into Jonny’s kingdom. Having had a child with him, her greatest fear for Maya includes being cut off from the resources she’s become accustomed to. With a man obsessed with a ghost, trying to get away isn’t going to be easy. And the deeper she digs into his past, the darker the secrets she unravels. Can you run from your past to have it all? After fleeing her home through a client to seek a new life in Sweden, Yasmiin finds love in the arms of Yagiz Çelik while carving out her own small corner. But as someone from her past forces Yasmiin to become a caretaker before she’s ready, she now must confront and move beyond her teenage history, while following her dreams of becoming a makeup artist. Everything Is Not Enough follows the loosely intertwined and messy lives of Kemi, Brittany, and Yasmiin as they interrogate themes of place, prejudice, and patriarchy in Europe, proving—yet again—that Lola Akinmade Åkerström is the next great voice of nuanced contemporary women’s fiction. BIO ﻿Nigerian-American and based in Sweden, Lola Ákínmádé Åkerström is an award-winning author, speaker, and photographer. Her work has appeared in National Geographic, BBC, CNN, The Guardian, Sunday Times Travel, The Telegraph, New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Slate, Travel Channel, Adventure Magazine, Lonely Planet, amongst others. In addition to contributing to several books, she is the author of the following books: 2018 Lowell Thomas Award winner for best travel book, Due North, bestselling Lagom: Swedish Secret of Living Well, available in 18 foreign language editions, and internationally-acclaimed In Every Mirror She's Black. She has been recognized with multiple awards for her work, including being named a 2022 Hasselblad Heroine and receiving the 2018 Travel Photographer of the Year Bill Muster Award. She was honored with a MIPAD 100 (Most Influential People of African Descent) Award within media and culture in 2018. She contributed to National Geographic's Image Collection. She is based in Stockholm and tweets at @LolaAkinmade. REVIEWS ﻿'Lola Akinmade Akerstrom weaves a complex tapestry of three women through her deft storytelling and absorbing prose. These rich characters' lives are complicated, messy and heartbreakingly real as they struggle with love, family, and identity in a world that consistently thwarts women's ambitions. Their passions, desires, and vulnerability will stay with readers long after they finish this fascinating page-turner.' -- Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, bestselling authors of You Were Always Mine 'Everything is Not Enough is a heart-racer of a sequel. The passions, regrets, and vulnerabilities of Black women ignite each smartly crafted page. A very satisfying read!' -- Deesha Philyaw, award-winning author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies “Compulsively readable, Everything is Not Enough is a worthy successor to Akerstrom's debut. It was profoundly comforting to see Akerstrom's women wade into their power, claiming their space in a world that gives them very little room to be. Akerstrom is a master at shading the gaps between power and love. This book filled me up like food. Everything about it is absolutely enough.” -- Chika Unigwe, award-winning author 'Everything is Not Enough presents a fascinating and complex kaleidoscope of women's lives in Sweden, asking crucial questions around career, love, family, and the definition of success. There are no easy answers in this book—the characters are real, subtle and surprising and you root for them the whole way through.' -- Kathy Wang, author of Impostor Syndrome 'Incendiary, emotionally devastating, absolutely wonderful.' -- Onyi Nwabineli, author of Someday, Maybe [H] William Morrow & Company / October 24, 2023 1.3" H x 9.1" L x 6.1" W (1.1 lbs) 400 pages

Everything Is Not Enough: A Novel /// Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström

Named a BEST BOOK OF 2021 by the New York Times, NPR, the New York Public Library, Audible, Tor.com, Book Riot, Library Journal, and Kirkus! Longlisted for the 2022 PEN Open Book Award “Riveting…[A] tender, ferocious book.”—New York Times “Beautifully fantastical.”—NPR “Masterful.”—Chicago Tribune One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother has been shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it. As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend’s trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters. At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark? The world will soon find out. BIO Cadwell Turnbull is the award-winning author of The Lesson and No Gods, No Monsters. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. His novel The Lesson won the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. The novel was also shortlisted for the VCU Cabell Award and longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Awards. His novel No Gods, No Monsters is the winner of a Lambda Award, and a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Turnbull grew up on St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. REVIEWS Winner of the Lammy Award for LGBTQ Speculative Fiction A New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year in Science Fiction & Fantasy A New York Public Library Staff Pick for 2021 One of Kirkus Reviews Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2021 A Library Journal Pick of Best Books of 2021 in Science Fiction & Fantasy A Chicago Tribune Pick of Best Fall Books A Harper’s Bazaar Pick of Best Halloween Reads A Chicago Public Library Staff Pick of the Month A Crime Reads Pick of Best Paperback Releases of Fall An NY Press News Pick of Best SFF Books for Summer A New York Times Book Review pick of Best Books Now in Paperback A Forbes Pick of the 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2021, according to Independent Bookstores “An intricate sequence of moving, intimate character portraits… The depth and care with which Turnbull inhabits each character is riveting; despite an expansive cast spread over wide terrain, I never felt lost or confused. His attention to location detail is considered and clear: The story shifts from Massachusetts to St. Thomas to Virginia with confident ease, carried by beautiful, conversational prose that’s startlingly punctuated by reminders of who’s narrating the stories—and how…I can appreciate how thorough a grounding Turnbull has given this sprawling first act…Let yourselves sink into this tender, ferocious book like hands into piano keys, or teeth into flesh.” -- New York Times “This harrowing and lyrical novel combines elements of urban fantasy with biting social commentary.” -- Buzzfeed “The Lesson was a perfect debut, and this is a perfect second novel. Big and bold and ambitious, packed with everything we need right now: more heart, more monsters, more cooperative solidarity economies.” -- Sam J. Miller, Nebula Award–winning author of Blackfish City and The Blade Between “No Gods, No Monsters is a haunting tale of the monsters that live among us, and those who despise them. Through a series of diverse, rich, and beautifully written voices, Turnbull deftly weaves together a story of supernatural beings, otherworldly entities, magic, and quantum physics, superimposed onto the social and political challenges of our mundane world. Throughout, we are forced to dwell not only our own humanity, but question who exactly are the monsters we fear? Once I started this novel I could not put it down. You won’t be able to either.” -- P. Djèlí Clark, author of Ring Shout [H] Blackstone Publishing / September 07, 2021 1.5" H x 8.3" L x 5.9" W (1.55 lbs) 387 pages [P] Blackstone Publishing / September 06, 2022 1.0" H x 8.8" L x 5.7" W (1.04 lbs) 384 pages

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