Cherise Boothe

In five years, Jesmyn Ward lost five young men in her life to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the bad luck that can follow people who live in poverty, particularly black men. But why? As she began to write about living through all the dying, Jesmyn realized the truth -- and it took her breath away. Her brother and her friends all died because of who they were and where they were from, because they lived with a history of racism and economic struggle....

"A new edition of this award-winning modern classic, with new introduction, excerpt, and discussion guide Pakersfield, Georgia, 1958: Thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn is the sixth of ten fatherless siblings. She is the darkest-skinned among them and therefore the ugliest in her mother, Rozelle's, estimation, but she's also the brightest. Rozelle--beautiful, charismatic, and light-skinned--exercises a violent hold over her children. Fearing abandonment,...

Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
The Sensual Seductress, video vixen Paisley Lawrence, and The Prince of Praise, gospel singer Warren Cobb—what an unlikely pair! The media is in a frenzy, and so is Warren's wife, when the two are involved in a near fatal car accident. While the gossipmongers are speculating on what Paisley and Warren were doing together, Paisley is busy wondering who is stalking her and why.
All hell...

Follows Viola as she survives brutality in war-torn Sudan, makes a perilous journey, lives as a refugee in Egypt, and finally reaches Portland, Maine, where her quest for freedom and security is hampered by memories of past horrors and the traditions her mother and other Sudanese adults hold dear. Includes historical facts and a map of Sudan.

As rehearsals begin for the ballet version of Peter Pan, the teenaged members of an Ohio dance troupe lose their focus when one of their own goes missing.

"National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew,"...

"Don't be alarmed - that dizzy pleasurable sensation you're experiencing is just your brain slowly exploding from all the wild magnificent worldbuilding in Nicky Drayden's Escaping Exodus. I loved these characters and this story, and so will you."

 - Sam J. Miller, Nebula-Award-winning author of The Art of Starving and Blackfish City

The Compton Crook award–winning author of The

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Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

"The Matrix meets an Afro-futuristic retelling of Persephone set in a science fiction underworld of aliens, refugees, and genetic engineering in Jennifer Marie Brissett's Destroyer of Light. Having destroyed Earth, the alien conquerors resettle the remains of humanity on the planet of Eleusis. In the three habitable areas of the planet--Day, Dusk, and Night--the haves and have nots, criminals and dissidents, and former alien conquerors irrevocably...

Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw was famous, privileged-- and she an Eloko, a person who is gifted with a song that woos anyone who hears it. Everyone loved her-- until she was cast as the awful person who exposed Tavia's secret siren powers. Now she's being dragged by the media. No one understands her side: not her boyfriend, not her friends, nor her Eloko community. She head to the Southwest, determined to make a comeback. When a new, flourishing...