Whispers of Shadow & Flame is the incredible second book in the historical fantasy Earthsinger Chronicles by L. Penelope.The Mantle that separates the kingdoms of Elsira and Lagrimar is about to fall. And life will drastically change for both kingdoms.Born with a deadly magic she cannot control, Kyara is forced to become an assassin. Known as the Poison Flame in the kingdom of Lagrimar, she is notorious and lethal, but secretly see...

Ntozake Shange’s most beloved novel, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, is the story of three “colored girls,” three sisters and their mama from Charleston, South Carolina. Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother, gone north to college and living with other artists in Los Angeles, trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories, and her dreams. Cypress, the dancer, leaves home to find new ways of moving and easing the contractions of her soul. Indig...

Why had she ever promised to do something so crazy?After winning her bid at the bachelor auction, Sabine Blakeman vows she will never do another embarrassing favor for a friend. This is especially true for favors that involve spending large sums of money and buying men whose last names she doesn't even know.In twenty bachelors, Sabine expected to find several Davids, Mikes, or Johns. But what were the odds of two Todds? And now what is she going to do on a very exp...

Born in the mid-nineteenth century, Sophie Lyons was a master thief, con artist, blackmailer, and smuggler. Much of her success as a criminal was due to the fact that she was fearless, reckless, sharp, and cunning—everything a woman of her time was not supposed to be. As a young child, Sophie’s parents forced her to steal when she showed a talent for pickpocketing. Strong-willed and smart, she blossomed into a beautiful teenager who caught the eye of many men in the underworld of New York ...

Lily Palmer flees with her daughter to take refuge on her uncle's farm in Louisiana. Here she finds herself in a world struggling with the after effects of the Civil War. For the first time, she is confronted with her own careless assumptions about race as she learns to appreciate the humanity of everyone around her. Threatening the fragile peace she achieves, her love for Alistair Whiteaker collides with her own dark past, shattering all hope for a new life.Alistair Whiteaker retu...

Shortlisted for a Doctorow Award in Innovative Fiction"Momma set me on the jukebox."So begins the personal story of Denise (Sweetie) Wooten, set between a post–civil rights era New York City and a growing but stale rural Alabama. We are thrust in the midst of a family longing for normalcy, but instead struggling with illness and all that comes with it—denial, anger, misunderstanding, and love. As cultures clash, we see the family through a child's eyes and ...

The internationally bestselling author of Summer of '42 delivers a darkly comic love story.Tiger is a nineteen-year-old runaway who comes to the big city to start anew. There she meets Luther, a quirky con artist with charm to burn. Together they pull small scams and petty crimes on the populace of New York in the 1970s, making their money and falling in love. But a con artist is a con artist seven days a week, and soon Ti...

A Charleston belle with slavery on her conscience. A slave with rebellion in her heart. In South Carolina in 1858, no friendship could be more dangerous.Caro Jarvie's father, who owns her, loves her and educates her. He raises her for a life she can never have—as a wealthy planter's daughter. When he dies, he can't protect her, and she is cast back into slavery. But she can't forget her father's promise. As she grieves for him, she yearns for freedom.Emily ...

A groundbreaking history of the movement for equal rights that courageously battled racist laws and institutions, north and south, in the decades before the Civil War.The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states, claiming the authority to maintain the domestic peace, enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling their boundaries and restricted the rights to t...

In Black Utopias Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as a way of exploring alternative states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Musical, literary, and mystic practices become utopian enclaves in which Black people engage in modes of creative worldmaking. Brown explores the lives and work of Black women mystics Sojourner Truth and Rebecca Cox Jackson, musicians Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra, and the work of speculative fiction writers Samuel Delany and Octavia But...

From award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Ibi Zoboi and artist Juanita Londoño, this lyrical celebration of the first day of school across every continent explores what going back to school looks like for children in countries around the world!How do children around the world spend their first day of school?Some eat warm akara for breakfast in Nigeria, while others unwrap lunches of kluski in Poland. In China, they practice intricate ch...

Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the twentieth century.Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis De Veaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Sherley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived ex...