A darkly funny and heartfelt debut novel about what it means to grow up young and black on the south side of Chicago when it feels like your choices are slim to none. Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. When...

Born to a white Danish mother and a Black American father, Helga Crane has long struggled to carve a path for herself amid the racial segregation of the early twentieth century. As a teacher at an all-Black boarding school in the South, Helga quickly becomes unsettled by the way the school measures excellence based on proximity to whiteness. Journeying to Chicago, Harlem, and Copenhagen, she attempts to thrive free from the constraints of category--mother...

"Ghanaian-American Angela Appiah has checked off all the boxes for the "Perfect Immigrant Daughter." Enroll in an elite medical school; Snag a suitable lawyer/doctor/engineer boyfriend; Surround self with a gaggle of successful and/or loyal friends. But then it quickly all falls apart: her boyfriend dumps her, she bombs the most important exam of her medical career, and her best friend pulls away. And her parents, whose approval seems to hinge on...

"For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer. "Toya Wolfe is a storyteller of the highest order. Last Summer on State Street is a stunning debut."--Rebecca Makkai, New York Times bestselling author of The Great Believers Even when we lose it all, we find the strength to rebuild. Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens...

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls' trip to Vegas to celebrate. She's a straight-A, work-through-the-summer, certified high achiever. she is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn't know ... until she does exactly that. This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father's plans for her life has Grace wondering...

A young fashion designer discovers a world of ambition, rivalry, and romance in this debut novel by the star of Bravo's Real Housewives of Atlanta.

Fresh out of college, Sasha Wellington's got her career as a fashion designer and entrepreneur all planned out. When fate points her to Atlanta, she sets out to make her dreams come true . . .

Before she knows it, Sasha's befriended by two rival BFFs. First there's Norman,

...

The year is 1889.

Set in a small Louisiana parish, deep in the segregated South, Rootwork follows school-age sisters, Betty, Ann, and Pee Wee during one life-changing summer when the three of them head off to stay with their hoodoo-practicing aunt, Theodora, a powerful woman feared by the local townspeople. She teaches the girls the secrets of her craft, like how to make "hot foot powder" and how to whip

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In this “captivating saga” of the post-Reconstruction era, a black female journalist blazes her own trail—“unforgettable; gripping; an instant classic” (Elle).
 
Ivoe Williams, the precocious daughter of a Muslim cook and a metalsmith from central-east Texas, discovers a lifelong obsession with journalism when she steals a newspaper from her mother’s white employer. Living in the segregated...

Sixteen-year-old Elwyn Parker is a member of the austere community of Christian believers at the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters, a devout and sincere piano prodigy who learns too late that the saintly girl he has had a crush on all his life is inexplicably pregnant and soon to be wed. Then the beautiful forty-two-year-old widow, Sister Morrisohn, in the midst of the confused emotions of her grieving, ends up in Elwyn's arms. Despite...

A young girl growing up in modern-day Nigeria is forced into silence by the adults around her after her charming but troubled cousin forces her into a shameful and secretive situation.