Karen Murray

The Quincy Valley is a unique place with a distinct environment. In the beginning, not even the local Columbia River tribes could find a use for the sagebrush desert, home to jackrabbits, coyotes, and rattlesnakes, but by 1910, immigrants from more than 20 nations called it home. Today the technology of the 21st century knocks on its door. From the early days of dry-land farming, to the abundant orchards and crops nourished by the Grand Coulee Dam,...

Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I., is the sole survivor of a tragic family incident. With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of mixed attention her way. As she attempts to come to terms with an unfathomable past, she confronts her own identity as a biracial young woman in a world that...

"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...

"Since the Clinton era, shifts in media, politics, and pop culture have all redefined expectations of First Ladies, even as the boundaries set upon them have often remained anachronistic. With sharp insights and dozens of firsthand interviews with major players in the Biden, Obama, Trump, Bush, and Clinton orbits, including Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers traces the evolution of the role of the...

"Stunning for her daring originality, the author of Negroland gives us what she calls "a temperamental autobiography," comprised of visceral, intimate fragments that fuse criticism and memoir. Margo Jefferson constructs a nervous system with pieces of different lengths and tone, conjoining arts writing (poem, song, performance) with life writing (history, psychology). The book's structure is determined by signal moments of her life, those that trouble...

This modern classic is “a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood” in 1930s Harlem—with a foreword by James Baldwin (Publishers Weekly).
 
Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it’s both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family. The beloved “daddy” of...

Strong, sassy, always surprising-and titled after a Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" monologue by Tina Fey-Bitch Is the New Black is a deliciously addictive memoir-in-essays in which Helena Andrews goes from being the daughter of the town lesbian to a hot-shot political reporter… all while trying to answer the question, "can a strong, single, and successful black woman ever find love?" Fans of Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake) will...

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger comes a chapter book series about women who stood up, spoke up and rose up against the odds—including Oprah Winfrey!
In this chapter book biography by Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Award-winning author Renée Watson, readers learn about the amazing life of Oprah Winfrey—and how she persisted. 
 
When...

Includes a special introduction by USA TODAY bestselling author, Mia Sosa, author of The Worst Best Man and The Wedding Crasher!
It's the end of the world as they know it—or so they think...
When an international warning siren accidentally goes off, convincing everyone that a meteor shower may just be the end of life as they know it, six couples—friends, exes, crushes and rivals—must take shelter. Inhibitions...

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A shocking, groundbreaking oral history of the infamous Rikers jail complex and an unflinching portrait of injustice and resilience told by the people whose lives have been forever altered by it
 
“This mesmerizing and gut-wrenching book shows the brutal realities that tens of thousands of people have been forced to navigate, and survive, in America’s most notorious...