#hardcover #fiction #bipoc #contemporary #love #romance #romcom #teen 

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Pennsylvania

Perfect for fans of Netflix's Never Have I Ever and You Should See Me in a Crown, this hilarious and heartfelt #ownvoices rom-com from rising star Debbie Rigaud is pure Black girl joy. It's senior year, and Simone Thibodeaux is ready to shake things up. Until now, her life has been sealed in a boy-proof container, thanks to her strict Haitian immigrant parents, who enforce no-dating rules and send Simone to an all-girls high school. As for prom? Simone is allowed to go on one condition: Her parents will select her date (a boy from a nice Haitian immigrant family, obviously). Simone is desperate to avoid the humiliation of the setup -- especially since she's crushing on a boy she knows her parents wouldn't approve of. It's time to take action. So Simone and her fellow late-bloomer friends make a Senior Year Bucket List of all the things they haven't had a chance to do. Like: sneaking out of the house, skipping class (gasp!), and oh yeah -- choosing their own prom dates. But as the list takes on a life of its own, things get much more complicated than Simone expected. She'll have to discover which rules are worth breaking, and which might save her from heartbreak.

Simone Breaks All the Rules

33864fe4-a01b-40b7-86e1-d2f8786d6865-1

Tahereh Mafi

New York

From the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Shatter Me series comes a powerful, heartrending contemporary novel about fear, first love, and the devastating impact of prejudice. It’s 2002, a year after 9/11. It’s an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped. Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She’s tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments—even the physical violence—she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she’s built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother. But then she meets Ocean James. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her—they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds—and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down.

A Very Large Expanse of Sea

633eef53-cd97-41b3-af49-bda2b57e4ae4-1

Brandy Colbert

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Indiana

A Stonewall Book Award Winner! "Little and Lion is beautifully insightful, honest, and compassionate. Brandy's ability to find larger meaning in small moments is nothing short of dazzling."-Nicola Yoon, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything A stunning novel on love, identity, loss, and redemption. When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she's isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (as well as her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support. But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new...the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel's disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself--or worse.

Little and Lion

57a1409f-7b82-41db-bc4a-bebae2547d46-1

Kekla Magoon

Vermont

From the Coretta Scott King and Printz Honor-winning author of How It Went Down, Light It Up, and Revolution In Our Time comes a moving contemporary YA novel about the bonds between a group of teens whose lives have been upended by tragedy.

Fifteen-year-old Kermit Sanders knows grief and its all-encompassing shadows. After losing his beloved older sister in a tragic car accident, nothing quite punctures through the feelings of loss. Everywhere Kermit goes, he is reminded of her.

But then Kermit finds a mysterious invitation in his locker, signed anonymously with "-1." He has no idea what he's in for, but he shows up to find out. Dubbed the "Minus-One Club," a group of his schoolmates has banded together as a form of moral support. The members have just one thing in common--they have all suffered the tragic loss of someone they loved.

The usual dividing lines between high school classes and cliques don't apply inside the Minus-One Club, and Kermit's secret crush, the handsome and happy-go-lucky Matt (and only out gay student at school), is also a part of the group. Slowly, Matt's positive headstrong approach to life helps relieve Kermit of his constant despair.

But as Kermit grows closer to Matt, the light of his new life begins to show the cracks beneath the surface. When Matt puts himself in danger by avoiding his feelings, Kermit must find the strength to not only lift himself back up but to help the rest of the group from falling apart.

"This evocative exploration of grief, sexual identity, and personal spirituality will be a boon to any teen grappling with these issues." -Horn Book

"Magoon tells an emotionally complex narrative that emphasizes the importance of the roles loved ones play in individual lives and the ways one can be forever changed when they're gone." - Publisher's Weekly

"In award-winning author Kekla Magoon's superbly written coming-of-age novel, a teenager tries to navigate life after the death of his sister . . . Magoon thoughtfully includes themes relating to depression, suicide, identity and religious expression as she compassionately builds Kermit's complicated, sensitive inner life and depicts the various ways people might respond to the loss of a loved one." -Shelf Awareness starred review

The Minus-One Club

8fc6baf2-7d75-4544-b699-33c39749434b-1

Sarah M. Broom

Minnesota

A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.

The Yellow House

2243921a-f34a-464b-821c-2dec2d46bb3b-1

#hardcover #nonfiction #theyellowhouse #neworleans #africanamerican #bipoc #heartfelt #memoir 

David Yoon

From the bestselling author of Frankly in Love comes a contemporary YA rom-com where a case of mistaken identity kicks off a string of (fake) events that just may lead to (real) love.

Super Fake Love Song

c6ed186a-aa9b-4e8d-b67d-84f37c77b656-1

#hardcover #fiction #youngadult #bipoc #ya #botm #juvenilefiction #bookofthemonth 

Tennessee

This is the highly anticipated second novel by Angie Thomas, the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling, award-winning The Hate U Give. Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least get some streams on her mixtape. As the daughter of an underground rap legend who died right before he hit big, Bri’s got massive shoes to fill. But when her mom unexpectedly loses her job, food banks and shut-off notices become as much a part of her life as beats and rhymes. With bills piling up and homelessness staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it—she has to make it. On the Come Up is Angie Thomas’s homage to hip hop, the art that sparked her passion for storytelling and continues to inspire her to this day. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; of the struggle to become who you are, and not who everyone expects you to be; and of the desperate realities of poor and working class black families. Brilliant, insightful, full of heart, this novel is another modern classic from one of the most influential literary voices of a generation.

On the Come Up

18522423-06a9-48a1-81d3-31abbca692db-1

Sylvia Acevedo

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Ohio

My Journey from Girl Scout to Rocket Scientist

The inspiring memoir for young readers about a Latina rocket scientist whose early life was transformed by joining the Girl Scouts and who currently serves as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.



A meningitis outbreak in their underprivileged neighborhood left Sylvia Acevedo's family forever altered. As she struggled in the aftermath of loss, young Sylvia's life transformed when she joined the Brownies. The Girl Scouts taught her how to take control of her world and nourished her love of numbers and science.

     With new confidence, Sylvia navigated shifting cultural expectations at school and at home, forging her own trail to become one of the first Latinx to graduate with a master's in engineering from Stanford University and going on to become a rocket scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

     Simultaneously available in Spanish!

Path to the Stars

0d6f773f-2403-4703-bdd5-5b319c285a85-1

California

Remembrance...It's a rumor, a whisper passed in the fields and veiled behind sheets of laundry. A hidden stop on the underground road to freedom, a safe haven protected by more than secrecy...if you can make it there. Ohio, present day. A refugee struggling to rebuild her life in America after the devastating Haitian earthquake is suddenly, inexplicably bound to a mysterious old woman who is not at all what she seems. Haiti, 1791, on the brink of revolution. When the slave Abigail is forced from her children to take her mistress to safety, she discovers New Orleans has its own powers.1857 New Orleans--a city of unrest: Following tragedy, house girl Margot is sold just before her 18th birthday and her promised freedom. Desperate, she escapes and chases a whisper.... Remembrance.

Remembrance

aad7204f-24f8-4339-92b2-b0ae68eba230-1

Matt Mendez

Louisiana

"There are moments when a story shakes you...Barely Missing Everything is one of those stories, and Mendez, a gifted storyteller with a distinct voice, is sure to bring a quake to the literary landscape." --Jason Reynolds, New York Times bestselling author of Long Way Down

In the tradition of Jason Reynolds and Matt de la Peña, this heartbreaking, no-holds-barred debut novel told from three points of view explores how difficult it is to make it in life when you--your life, brown lives--don't matter.

Juan has plans. He's going to get out of El Paso, Texas, on a basketball scholarship and make something of himself--or at least find something better than his mom Fabi's cruddy apartment, her string of loser boyfriends, and a dead dad. Basketball is going to be his ticket out, his ticket up. He just needs to make it happen.

His best friend JD has plans, too. He's going to be a filmmaker one day, like Quinten Tarantino or Guillermo del Toro (NOT Steven Spielberg). He's got a camera and he's got passion--what else could he need?

Fabi doesn't have a plan anymore. When you get pregnant at sixteen and have been stuck bartending to make ends meet for the past seventeen years, you realize plans don't always pan out, and that there some things you just can't plan for...

Like Juan's run-in with the police, like a sprained ankle, and a tanking math grade that will likely ruin his chance at a scholarship. Like JD causing the implosion of his family. Like letters from a man named Mando on death row. Like finding out this man could be the father your mother said was dead.

Soon Juan and JD are embarking on a Thelma and Louise­-like road trip to visit Mando. Juan will finally meet his dad, JD has a perfect subject for his documentary, and Fabi is desperate to stop them. But, as we already know, there are some things you just can't plan for...

Barely Missing Everything

d44dd568-4c2f-490c-b01c-b6c165e4cda6-1

Claribel A. Ortega

Arizona

Coco meets Stranger Things with a hint of Ghostbusters in this action-packed supernatural fantasy. For Lucely Luna, ghosts are more than just the family business. Shortly before Halloween, Lucely and her best friend, Syd, cast a spell that accidentally awakens malicious spirits, wreaking havoc throughout St. Augustine. Together, they must join forces with Syd's witch grandmother, Babette, and her tubby tabby, Chunk, to fight the haunting head-on and reverse the curse to save the town and Lucely's firefly spirits before it's too late. With the family dynamics of Coco and action-packed adventure of Ghostbusters, Claribel A. Ortega delivers both a thrillingly spooky and delightfully sweet debut novel.

Ghost Squad

313c6243-c3ce-4a2e-b748-1e47fd81fdb4-1

#paperback #puertorico #puertoricans #familyfiction #mentalhealth #Hispanic #bipoc

New Jersey

One boy's search for his father leads him to Puerto Rico in this moving middle-grade novel, for fans of Ghost and See You in the Cosmos. Marcus Vega is six feet tall, 180 pounds, and the owner of a premature mustache. When you look like this and you're only in the eighth grade, you're both a threat and a target. After a fight at school leaves Marcus facing suspension, Marcus's mom decides it's time for a change of environment. She takes Marcus and his younger brother to Puerto Rico to spend a week with relatives they don't remember or have never met. But Marcus can't focus knowing that his father--who walked out of their lives ten years ago--is somewhere on the island. So begins Marcus's incredible journey, a series of misadventures that take him all over Puerto Rico in search of his elusive namesake. Marcus doesn't know if he'll ever find his father, but what he ultimately discovers changes his life. And he even learns a bit of Spanish along the way.

Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish

6648aed9-f50f-4848-ba6e-bbbd07c7f011-1

#hardcover #youngadult #bipoc #fiction #sff #ya #fantasy 📚 

Kentucky

"Taj has escaped Kos, but Queen Karima will go to any means necessary--including using the most deadly magic--to track him down"--

Crown of Thunder

99e4b25c-db44-470d-8144-27ee0544ab98-1

Elisabeth Thomas

A Novel

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free--but acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years, summers included, completely removed from the outside world. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige. Among this year's incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline, only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. But the House's strange protocols soon make this refuge feel increasingly like a gilded prison.

Catherine House

58f13a8a-4063-471a-8a78-68e73054f770-1

Kiyash Monsef

New Hampshire

A New York Times bestseller!

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them meets Neil Gaiman in this thrilling novel about an Iranian American girl who discovers that her father was secretly a veterinarian to mythical creatures--and that she must take up his mantle, despite the many dangers.

Once was, once wasn't.

So began the stories Marjan's father told her as a little girl--fables like the story of the girl who sprung a unicorn from a hunter's snare, or the nomad boy who rescued a baby shirdal. Tales of extraordinary beasts that filled her with curiosity and wonder.

But Marjan's not a little girl anymore. In the wake of her father's sudden death, she is trying to hold it all together: her schoolwork, friendships, and keeping her dad's shoestring veterinary practice from going under. Then, one day, she receives a visitor who reveals something stunning: Marjan's father was no ordinary veterinarian. The creatures out of the stories he told her were real--and he traveled the world to care for them. And now that he's gone, she must take his place.

Marjan steps into a secret world hidden in plain sight, where mythical creatures are bought and sold, treasured and trapped. She finds friends she never knew she needed--a charming British boy who grew up with a griffon, a runaway witch seeking magic and home--while trying to hide her double life from her old friends and classmates.

The deeper Marjan gets into treating these animals, the closer she comes to finding who killed her father--and to a shocking truth that will reawaken her sense of wonder and put humans and beasts in the gravest of danger.

Once There Was

9bca6ed1-32b6-4f64-82e3-c29b7e80c68f-1

Minnesota Humanities Commission Staff

An Anthology of Multicultural American Writing

Contains short stories and poems by such authors as Louise Erdrich, Nicholasa Mohr, Nikki Giovanni, and Maxine Hong Kingston. "This anthology brings together the vivid stories and poems of Native American, Hispanic American, African American, and Asian American writers. It was created by Minnesota teachers, for teachers and students in Minnesota high schools. They were assisted in their work by scholars, writers, the staff of the Minnesota Humanities Commission, and the officers of the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English ..."

Braided Lives

7ec8047b-fbf9-4f43-aa7c-14ae47dad267-0

Ibi Zoboi

✨ Synopsis and details in the photos. ✨

Washington

American Street

404411b1-2089-454c-b76f-afdbc217f027-1

Leesa Cross-Smith

Georgia

"Having grown up the privileged daughter of artists, Vincent has a life that is lovely in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the streets of Paris and teaching at the modern art museum; she has a vibrant group of friends; and shes even caught the eye of a young, charismatic man named Loup. But Vincent is also in Paris to escape a painful betrayal: her Irish husband, Cillian, has published a bestselling book divulging secrets about his past and their marriage, including the fact that when he was a teenager, he may have had a child with another young Black woman back in Dublin--before his family moved to California and never returned. Now estranged, Vincent has agreed to see Cillian again at their sons wedding the following summer, but Loup introduces new complications. Soon they begin an intense affair, and somewhere between dinners made together, nights spent talking and smoking cigarettes in the moonlight, hazy evenings in nightclubs where Loups band plays, caf©s, museums, and long, starry walks by the Seine, Vincent feels herself loosening, blossoming. Filled with playlists, travel journal entries, and excerpts from Cillians novel, Half-Blown Rose traverses Paris, train rides, liminal spaces, and the messy complexities of relationships. As Cillian does all he can to win her back and with their sons wedding quickly approaching, Vincent must decide what she wants... and who she will be."--

Half-Blown Rose

873ca3f1-fc99-4c9a-a494-5154f334cb4e-1

#fiction #romance #beachread  #love #theweddingdate #chicklit #African-American #Berkley  #bipoc 

"The next charming romance by The New York Timesbestselling author of The Proposal. Maddie and Theo have two things in common: 1. Alexa is their best friend 2. They hate each other After an "oops, we made a mistake" night together, neither one can stop thinking about the other. With Alexa's wedding rapidly approaching, Maddie and Theo both share bridal party responsibilities that require more interaction with each other than they're comfortable with. Underneath the sharp barbs they toss at each other is a simmering attraction that won't fade. It builds until they find themselves sneaking off together to release some tension when Alexa isn't looking. But as with any engagement with a nemesis, there are unspoken rules that must be abided by. First and foremost, don't fall in love"--

The Wedding Party

2be58f49-131c-4f71-8b16-8389fb6ad7bd-1

Hillary Jordan

The International Bestseller Now a major motion picture from Netflix, directed by Dee Rees, nominated in four categories for the Academy Awards. In Jordan's prize-winning debut, prejudice takes many forms, both subtle and brutal. It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm—a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not—charming, handsome, and haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, has come home with the shine of a war hero. But no matter his bravery in defense of his country, he is still considered less than a man in the Jim Crow South. It is the unlikely friendship of these brothers-in-arms that drives this powerful novel to its inexorable conclusion. The men and women of each family relate their versions of events and we are drawn into their lives as they become players in a tragedy on the grandest scale. As Barbara Kingsolver says of Hillary Jordan, "Her characters walked straight out of 1940s Mississippi and into the part of my brain where sympathy and anger and love reside, leaving my heart racing. They are with me still."

Mudbound

142924c7-b2ec-42af-8bbe-47b99d361e61

America Ferrera

Natalie Baszile

Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom

All the Women in My Family Sing is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity andbuild bridges to heal the brokenness in today's turbulent world.Sixty-nine authors -- African American, Asian American, Chicana, Native American, Cameroonian, South African, Korean, LGBTQI -- lend their voices to broaden cross-cultural understanding and to build bridges to each other's histories and daily experiences of life.America Ferrera's essay is from her powerful speech at the Women's March in Washington D.C.;Natalie Baszile writes about her travels to Louisiana to research Queen Sugar and finding the "painful truths" her father experienced in the "belly of segregation;"Porochista Khakpour tells us what it is like to fly across America under the Muslim travel ban;Lalita Tademy writes about her transition from top executive at Sun Microsystems to NY Times bestselling author.This anthology is monumental and timely as human rights and justice are being challenged around the world. It is a watershed title, not only written, but produced entirely by women of color, including the publishing, editing, process management, book cover design, and promotions. Our vision is to empower underrepresented voices and to impact the world of publishing in America -- particularly important in a time when 80% of people who work in publishing self-identify as white (as found recently in a study by Lee & Low Books, and reported on NPR).

All the Women in My Family Sing

d59c12e3-337d-400e-a42a-2eaae1a3b1c7-1

#hardcover #fiction #bookofmonth #africanamericanwomen #bipoc #botm #contemporary #contemporay 

Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Americanah in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her. With “fresh and honest” (Jojo Moyes) prose, Queenie is a remarkably relatable exploration of what it means to be a modern woman searching for meaning in today’s world.

Queenie

08fc9274-354c-4a0e-86c5-e554469aeb6a-1

#hardcover #fiction #youngadult #bipoc #ya #juvenilefiction #bookofthemonth #angiethomas

Browse by categories

Save this search

Debbie Rigaud

Simone Breaks All the Rules

Tahereh Mafi

A Very Large Expanse of Sea

Brandy Colbert

Little and Lion

Kekla Magoon

The Minus-One Club

Sarah M. Broom

The Yellow House

Sarah M. Broom

The Yellow House

David Yoon

Super Fake Love Song

Angie Thomas

On the Come Up

Sylvia Acevedo

Path to the Stars

Rita Woods

Remembrance

Matt Mendez

Barely Missing Everything

Claribel A. Ortega

Ghost Squad

Pablo Cartaya

Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish

Tochi Onyebuchi

Crown of Thunder

Elisabeth Thomas

Catherine House

Kiyash Monsef

Once There Was

Minnesota Humanities Commission Staff

Braided Lives

Ibi Zoboi

American Street

Leesa Cross-Smith

Half-Blown Rose

Jasmine Guillory

The Wedding Party

Hillary Jordan

Mudbound

America Ferrera; Natalie Baszile

All the Women in My Family Sing

Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie

Angie Thomas

On the Come Up