From unapologetically heart-wrenching to hopefully optimistic, this list encompasses all of the difficult, awkward topics and conversations that people need to be having. After the political and social unrest of the last year, people search for clarity and answers, some of which can be found in the pages of literature. These new releases explore the stories of the formerly silent who want their voices to be heard. Listen, read and learn.
Click the titles to request a copy of the book from our collection or purchase from Amazon.
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Based on the author’s real-life experiences working in the overwhelmingly white book publishing industry, Nella Rogers is doing her best to achieve at Wagner, but her Blackness seems to keep getting in the way. Well…that’s how she sees it, until another Black woman joins the team and menacing anonymous notes start appearing on her desk. That’s just the opening salvo in a novel with an unforgettable plot laced with bitingly funny dialogue and lots of terribly awkward office meetings.
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Inspired by the destruction of Confederate monuments in his native New Orleans, a poet takes to the road, plotting a journey that winds into the past, from Monticello to New York City to Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison, drilling deep into the bedrock of our racist past.
Kin by Shawna Kay Rodenberg
From the opening pages of this singularly American memoir, author Shawna Kay Rodenberg enchants the reader with her tale of life amid a cult, and the sharp divide between her kinfolk in Kentucky’s Appalachia and everyone else in the country. This super-smart, gorgeously gritty debut smashes stereotypes and has a similar can’t-take-your-eyes-off-it appeal as Tara Westover’s Educated.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Over the course of her most recent blockbuster novels—including The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones and the Six—Reid has developed a knack for portraying the pleasures and perils of fame. Set over the course of one day and night, her juicy latest centers on four adult siblings, the tabloid-frequenting offspring of a largely absent rockstar father, as they throw an epic end-of-summer rager. It’s like The O.C.meets Almost Famous, and you’re guaranteed to see more than one person reading it on the beach this year.
The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris
The Civil War is winding down and President Lincoln has issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which means enslaved brothers Landry and Prentiss can at last leave the plantation on which they’ve spent their lives. And yet danger lurks everywhere around them in Confederate Georgia, even after they are given shelter and employment by an eccentric white couple from the North. This stunning debut novel probes the limits of freedom in a society where ingrained prejudice and inequality remain the law of the land.
The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America by Carol Anderson
Don’t bring a knife to a gunfight, bring a Constitutional scholar. The author of the award-winning White Rage targets the Second Amendment in all its moral and legal travesties. From James Madison’s capitulation to a slavery-obsessed Patrick Henry, right up to last year’s bloody rampage in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Anderson strikes the perfect balance between righteous wrath and intellectual rigor.
Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti
A young Cameroonian-American talent blazes across our literary firmament with a genre-bending, in-your-face collection. The stakes are high for Nkweti’s characters—scammers, soothsayers, and detectives among them—as they navigate child trafficking, murder-suicides, and even romantic love. Keep an eye on this writer.
Rock the Boat by Beck Dorey-Stein
Thirtyish Manhattanite Kate Campbell thinks her long-term boyfriend is about to propose, but sadly for her, what he’s proposing is the end of their relationship. If that’s not humiliating enough, it’s his apartment, and he sends her packing. Who among us hasn’t feared that moment when our lives implode and our parents pick us up and take us back to Jersey to live with them? This funny, searching, and wholly delightful novel is the perfect summer beach read for anyone who craves a smart story with a happy ending.
Skye Falling by Mia McKenzie
The best Black and queer rom-com you haven’t read yet is activist and author Mia McKenzie’s second novel, Skye Falling. Skye was broke and 26 when she donated her eggs for cash. By the time she’s 40, Skye owns her own travel agency based in her native West Philly, which makes it easy for her to hop on a plane at the first sign of any serious, committed relationship. When 12-year-old Vicki tracks her down to reveal that she’s Skye’s grown-up egg, Skye has to decide if she can bear the love and responsibility she’s begun to feel—not just for Vicki, but for her co-parent, Faye, who’s not only fierce and fine but also a legendary former rapper.
Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen
Galchen is a sorcerer—a conjurer of the weird and wonderful. In this bewitching novel, set in early 17th century Germany during the plague years, we meet Katharina, an illiterate widow renowned for her herbal remedies and her prominent children. Katharina faces persecution and death when a deranged woman accuses her of poisoning her. The tale has lessons for our own time about the power of fear and superstition to foment evil. But Galchen’s playful, poetic sentences uplift and transport, like fairy tale magic.
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