joy of va

The only things in Jersey Kincaid's world that she has time for are keeping her grades up so that she doesn't lose her scholarship to South Texas University, playing the bass in her band, The Prototype, and satisfying her coffee addiction. Oh, and the occasional random hook-up she indulges in to pass the time. Love? Eh, not so much. Save that crap for a Katherine Heigl or Natalie Portman movie. That's why when Jersey meets Isaiah "Zay" Broussard, with his soulful gray eyes, quick wit, and easy charm, she's determined to remain aloof.

It’s 1984, and life has changed beyond recognition. Airstrip One, formerly known as Great Britain, is a place where Big Brother is always watching, and nobody can hide. Except, perhaps, for Winston Smith. Whilst working at the Ministry of Truth, rewriting history, he secretly dreams of freedom. And in a world where love and sex are forbidden, where it’s hard to distinguish between friend and foe, he meets Julia and O’Brien and vows to rebel.

When Zélie seized the royal palace that fateful night, she thought her battles had come to an end. The monarchy had finally fallen. The maji had risen again. Zélie never expected to find herself locked in a cage and trapped on a foreign ship. Now warriors with iron skulls traffic her and her people across the seas, far from their homeland. Then everything changes when Zélie meets King Baldyr, her true captor, the ruler of the Skulls, and the man who has ravaged entire civilizations to find her.

“Naz...” I began in a soft and meek voice. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “Yes, baby...” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “If this is true...will you ever...disappear?” I asked, somewhat fearful of his response. I was still skeptical to admit the facts, but deep down inside, I knew that what he was saying was true. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ “I don’t know the answer to that, Jett,” he said dubiously. “But I do know that no matter what happens, my love for you will last longer than a lifetime,” he confessed. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Hearing that ...

This is a tale of murder. Or maybe that’s not quite true. At its heart, it’s a love story, isn’t it? Lana Farrar is a reclusive ex-movie star and one of the most famous women in the world. Every year, she invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island.

Orphaned at birth, Oliver Twist is born into the grimmest of 19th century English workhouses with a life of grinding poverty ahead of him. But the boy is a fighter and after being evicted from the workhouse for asking for 'more' and surviving a stint as an undertaker’s assistant, he walks many miles to London and finds a whole new life with a gang of young pickpockets led by the Artful Dodger and their guardian Fagin.

Whether weaving family life and history into dark fiction or writing speculative Afrofuturism, American Book Award winner and Essence best-selling author Tananarive Due’s work is both riveting and enlightening. In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by otherness. Featuring an award-winning novella and 15 stories, Ghost Summer: Stories is sure to haunt and delight.

A name–a definition–that was never supposed to be triumph, but a condemnation. A reminder of a certain place in the world–of a responsibility to the other living beings in the ecosystem. As second-in-command of the Predators MC, Tatiana Tate is well-versed in both the expectations and reality of sustaining her way of life. In the wake of a tragedy that shook the whole organization, she’s had no issues stepping into power beside her lifelong friend–her brother.

In this evocative short piece, Candace worries that her mother, Annie, has reached an emotional breaking point. When her best friend loses her battle with cancer, Annie is acting in uncharacteristic ways, seemingly less concerned than ever about what her friends and neighbors think of her - a troubling development in her daughter’s eyes. But while Candace may think she knows her mother better than anyone, something deeper lingers beneath the surface, and times of hardship have a way of bringing us closer together than ever.

Joan Morgan offers a provocative and powerful look into the life of the modern Black woman: a complex world in which feminists often have not-so-clandestine affairs with the most sexist of men, where women who treasure their independence frequently prefer men who pick up the tab, and where the deluge of babymothers and babyfathers reminds Black women who long for marriage that traditional nuclear families are a reality for less than 40 percent of the population.