Below we have chosen twelve titles that we are excited to feature for Black History Month. Six are new hardcover adult novels; one is fiction for young adults; and four are paperbacks: reprints of books we loved from 2022 and a couple of Penguin Classics editions that reissue important Black writers. Many time periods and subjects are represented in these beautifully written books, and much food for thought!
Featured Books
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The Ballad of Perilous Graves
By Alex Jennings
Published by Orbit
Hardcover
New Orleans is viewed through a fantastic lens in a lyrical novel stuffed with zombies, jazz and a magical Black culture. For readers looking for the next N.K. Jemisin.
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Black Empire
By George S. Schuyler
Published by Mint Editions
Paperback
Afrofuturism by a controversial Harlem Renaissance writer about a Black scientist determined to save the world from racism, this newly republished work began as a serial in the Pittsburgh Courier in the 30s.
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Decent People
By De’Shawn Charles Winslow
Published by Bloomsbury USA
Hardcover
The highly anticipated follow-up from The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize winner revisits West Mills, North Carolina through a racial crime that threatens to destroy the Black community.
Join us on February 8th for our event featuring Winslow in conversation with Garth Greenwell.
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Moonrise Over New Jessup
By Jamila Minnicks
Published by Algonquin Books
Hardcover
Winner of the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, this provocative first novel examines desegregation through a family in 1950s Alabama.
Join us on February 16th for our event featuring Minnicks in conversation with Robert Jones, Jr.
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My Darkest Prayer
By S. A. Cosby
Published by Flatiron Books
Paperback
Catch up with S. A. Cosby’s (Razorblade Tears) reissued first novel set partially around a Black funeral home (autobiographically inspired) which introduced this prize-winning Southern noir crime writer.
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Night Wherever We Go
By Tracey Rose Peyton
Published by HarperCollins
Hardcover
A six-woman revolt against their slave owners on a Texas plantation gives this powerful debut echoes of both Toews’s Women Talking and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
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Promise Boys
By Nick Brooks
Published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers
Young Adult Hardcover
A prep school murder investigation imperils three students who must find the real killer, before the system that hastens to accuse these Black and Latinx teenagers destroys their futures in this suspenseful YA novel.
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Right By My Side
By David Haynes
Published by Penguin Publishing Group
Paperback
This coming-of-age novel set in 1980s St. Louis in a middle-class community gives The Catcher in the Rye a run for its money.
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The Survivalists
By Kashana Cauley
Published by Catapult
Hardcover
An ambitious corporate lawyer rethinks her dating habits and her future when she becomes involved with a group of survivalists preparing for world’s end in this irresistible comic novel.
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The Violin Conspiracy
By Brendan Slocumb
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Paperback
The author’s passion for classical music and the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie informs the plot of his debut mystery about a young man in North Carolina striving to become a musician.
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Wade in the Water
By Nyani Nkrumah
Published by HarperCollins
Hardcover
Mississippi in the 1980s is the setting for an emotionally potent story of the friendship between a young black girl and a white woman who comes to their small town.
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What Napoleon Could Not Do
By DK Nnuro
Published by Penguin Publishing Group
Hardcover
Nnuro’s debut considers immigration through a Ghanaian-born brother and sister, who realize their dream to live in the U.S. and experience the two sides, good and bad, of the American dream.
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