Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Maryland

Fiction

A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America. Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s precisely imagined debut explores burdened inheritances and extraordinary pursuits of belonging. Set in the near future, the eponymous novella, “My Monticello,” tells of a diverse group of Charlottesville neighbors fleeing violent white supremacists. Led by Da’Naisha, a young Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, they seek refuge in Jefferson’s historic plantation home in a desperate attempt to outlive the long-foretold racial and environmental unravelling within the nation. In “Control Negro,” hailed by Roxane Gay as “one hell of story,” a university professor devotes himself to the study of racism and the development of ACMs (average American Caucasian males) by clinically observing his own son from birth in order to “painstakingly mark the route of this Black child too, one whom I could prove was so strikingly decent and true that America could not find fault in him unless we as a nation had projected it there.” Johnson’s characters all seek out home as a place and an internal state, whether in the form of a Nigerian widower who immigrates to a meager existence in the city of Alexandria, finding himself adrift; a young mixed-race woman who adopts a new tongue and name to escape the landscapes of rural Virginia and her family; or a single mother who seeks salvation through “Buying a House Ahead of the Apocalypse.” United by these characters’ relentless struggles against reality and fate, My Monticello is a formidable book that bears witness to this country’s legacies and announces the arrival of a wildly original new voice in American fiction.

My Monticello

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Damon Young

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Connecticut

A Memoir in Essays

From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. It’s a condition that’s sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the “being straight” thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to “Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies.” And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white. From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

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Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

Illinois

Roxane Gay

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Michigan

A national bestseller from the “prolific and exceptionally insightful” (Globe and Mail) Roxane Gay,Difficult Women is a collection of stories of rare force that paints a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America. Difficult Women tells of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and, grown now, must negotiate the elder sister’s marriage. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. Astripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls’ fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay gives voice to a chorus of unforgettable women in a scintillating collection reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Anne Enright, and Miranda July.

Difficult Women

4118bb80-39b8-48ea-bd26-657b60ad16b5

Danzy Senna

Paperback edition, read only once, from a smoke free home 

California

A Novel

Look out for Danzy Senna's latest book, New People, on sale in August! Birdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the Civil Rights Movement in 1970s Boston. The sisters are so close that they speak their own language, yet Birdie, with her light skin and straight hair, is often mistaken for white, while Cole is dark enough to fit in with the other kids at school. Despite their differences, Cole is Birdie’s confidant, her protector, the mirror by which she understands herself. Then their parents’ marriage collapses. One night Birdie watches her father and his new girlfriend drive away with Cole. Soon Birdie and her mother are on the road as well, drifting across the country in search of a new home. But for Birdie, home will always be Cole. Haunted by the loss of her sister, she sets out a desperate search for the family that left her behind. The extraordinary national bestseller that launched Danzy Senna’s literary career, Caucasia is a modern classic, at once a powerful coming of age story and a groundbreaking work on identity and race in America.

Caucasia

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Maine

S. A. Cosby

See pictures for condition.  Loved by multiple people in its brief little life.

A New York Times Notable Books of 2020 Like Ocean’s Eleven meets Drive, with a Southern noir twist, S. A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland is a searing, operatic story of a man pushed to his limits by poverty, race, and his own former life of crime. “Sensationally good—new, fresh, real, authentic, twisty, with characters and dilemmas that will break your heart. More than recommended.” —Lee Child A husband, a father, a son, a business owner...And the best getaway driver east of the Mississippi. Beauregard “Bug” Montage is an honest mechanic, a loving husband, and a hard-working dad. Bug knows there’s no future in the man he used to be: known from the hills of North Carolina to the beaches of Florida as the best wheelman on the East Coast. He thought he'd left all that behind him, but as his carefully built new life begins to crumble, he finds himself drawn inexorably back into a world of blood and bullets. When a smooth-talking former associate comes calling with a can't-miss jewelry store heist, Bug feels he has no choice but to get back in the driver's seat. And Bug is at his best where the scent of gasoline mixes with the smell of fear. Haunted by the ghost of who he used to be and the father who disappeared when he needed him most, Bug must find a way to navigate this blacktop wasteland...or die trying.

Blacktop Wasteland

e87b8144-3332-4f51-bb15-3f092c543595-1

Mississippi

Ishmael Beah

Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

A human rights activist offers a firsthand account of war from the perspective of a former child soldier, detailing the violent civil war that wracked his native Sierra Leone and the government forces that transformed a gentle young boy into a killer as a member of the army.

A Long Way Gone

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Kei Miller

Colorado

"Ma Taffy may be blind but she sees everything. So when her great-nephew Kaia comes home from school in tears, what she senses sends a deep fear running through her. While they wait for his mama to come home from work, Ma Taffy recalls the story of the flying preacherman and a great thing that did not happen. A poor suburban sprawl in the Jamaican heartland, Augustown is a place where many things that should happen don't, and plenty of things that shouldn't happen do. For the story of Kaia leads back to another momentous day in Jamaican history, the birth of the Rastafari and the desire for a better life"--

Augustown

60b3c769-92a8-4616-8698-c1465f8aab82

New Jersey

Kashana Cauley

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Nevada

A Phenomenal Book Club Pick

"A great and engrossing read, Kashana humanizes a way of life that is often made fun of and makes the reader understand why someone would go to such great lengths to prepare for the future, so much so she almost sold me on those Life Preserver soy bars!" --Trevor Noah

A single Black lawyer puts her career and personal moral code at risk when she moves in with her coffee entrepreneur boyfriend and his doomsday-prepping roommates in a novel that's packed with tension, curiosity, humor, and wit from a writer with serious comedy credentials

In the wake of her parents' death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life--success--until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling guns and training for a doomsday that's maybe just around the corner. 

For readers of Victor LaValle's The Changeling, Paul Beatty's The Sellout, and Zakiya Harris's The Other Black Girl, The Survivalists is a darkly humorous novel from a smart and relevant new literary voice that's packed with tension, curiosity and wit, and unafraid to ask the questions most relevant to a new generation of Americans: Does it make sense to climb the corporate ladder? What exactly are the politics of gun ownership? And in a world where it's nearly impossible for young people to earn enough money to afford stable housing, what does it take in order to survive?

The Survivalists

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Wahida Clark

Thug #3

Thug Matrimony

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The Sequel to Hot Boyz 

Hot Girlz: A Novel

Nekesa Afia

Minnesota

A Harlem Renaissance Mystery

Louise spends her days working at Maggie's Cafe and her nights at the Zodiac, Manhattan's hottest speakeasy. When a girl turns up dead in front of the cafe, Louise is forced to confront something she's been trying to ignore - several local black girls have been murdered over the past few weeks. After Louise's night job gets her arrested, she's given an ultimatum: She can either help solve the case or let a judge make an example of her.

Dead Dead Girls

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Phoebe Robinson

Ilana Glazer

This book is absolutely hilarious and on target! Once read, non-smoker.
Dog lover’s home. 

2 Dope Queens star Phoebe Robinson is ready to share everything she's experienced in the hope that, if you can laugh at her topsy-turvy life, you can laugh at your own. Written in her trademark unfiltered, witty style, Robinson's latest essay collection is a call to arms. She tackles a wide range of topics, such as intersectional feminism, beauty standards, and toxic masculinity. A candid perspective for a generation that has had the rug pulled out from under it too many times to count.

Everything's Trash, but It's Okay

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Nebraska

Washington

Murderville #2

Murderville 2: The Epidemic

Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys is Colson Whitehead's follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning bestseller The Underground Railroad, in which he dramatises another strand of United States history, this time through the story of two boys sentenced to a stretch in a hellish reform school in Jim-Crow-era Florida.

The Nickel Boys

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Moses Ose Utomi

Wisconsin

An elite female fighter must reenter the competition to protect her found family of younger sisters in this scintillating young adult fantasy inspired by West African culture, perfect for fans of The Gilded Ones and Creed.

Eat. Dance. Fight.

This is the life of the girls who compete in the Isle's elite, all-female fighting sport of Bowing. But it isn't really Dirt's life anymore. At sixteen, she is old and has retired from competition. Instead, she spends her days coaching the younger sisters of the Mud Fam and dreading her fast-approaching birthday, when she'll have to leave her sisters to fulfill whatever destiny the Gods choose for her.

Dirt's young sisters are coming along nicely, and the Mud Fam is sure to win the upcoming South God Bow tournament, which is crucial: the tiny Fam needs the new recruits that come with victory. Then an attack from a powerful rival leaves the Mud without their top Bower, and Dirt is the only one who can compete in the tournament. But Dirt is old, out of shape, and afraid. She has never wanted to be a leader. Victory seems impossible--yet defeat would mean the end of her beloved Fam. And no way is Dirt going to let that happen.

Daughters of Oduma

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Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

My Monticello

Damon Young

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

My Monticello

Roxane Gay

Difficult Women

Danzy Senna

Caucasia

Roxane Gay

Difficult Women

S. A. Cosby

Blacktop Wasteland

S. A. Cosby

Blacktop Wasteland

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson

My Monticello

Ishmael Beah

A Long Way Gone

Kei Miller

Augustown

S. A. Cosby

Blacktop Wasteland

Kashana Cauley

The Survivalists

S. A. Cosby

Blacktop Wasteland

Wahida Clark

Thug Matrimony

Marissa Monteilh

Hot Girlz: A Novel

Nekesa Afia

Dead Dead Girls

Phoebe Robinson; Ilana Glazer

Everything's Trash, but It's Okay

S. A. Cosby

Blacktop Wasteland

Kashana Cauley

The Survivalists

Ashley & JaQuavis

Murderville 2: The Epidemic

Colson Whitehead

The Nickel Boys

Roxane Gay

Difficult Women

Moses Ose Utomi

Daughters of Oduma