It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she’d worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy in the controversial movie Gone With the Wind was going to be life-changing. Or so she thought.

In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family. Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her. Then an enemy's iron bullet kills her mother, Venus's life implodes. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother's killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge.

The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going. Someone like Hubert Wiggins, the most eligible man in Lexington, Alabama - and the son of its most revered preacher. Proper and prosperous, Hubert is glad to finally have a wife, even one with Maggie's background. For Hubert has a secret he desperately needs to stay hidden. And Maggie's unexpected charm, elegance, and religious devotion makes her the perfect partner in lies....

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love—even where they’re not supposed to.

Sisters Margaret and Evelyn Justice have grown up in the prosperous Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma—also known as Black Wall Street. In Greenwood, the Justice sisters had it all—movie theaters and entertainment venues, beauty shops and clothing stores, high-profile businesses like law offices, medical clinics, and banks. While Evelyn aspires to head off to the East Coast to study fashion design, recent college grad Margaret plans to settle in Greenwood, teaching at the local high school and eventually raising a family.

The Black household is swiftly deteriorating. Frustrated and angry at her prosperous preacher husband's obvious infidelities, Tanya cannot believe the man she once loved has been replaced by this pathological liar obsessed with material wealth.

When summoned to Georgetown, South Carolina, sisters Mariah Clark and Sabrina Holland both assume their ailing grandfather's health has gotten worse. Neither expects their grandmother's undeniable request—save the family restaurant. Mariah is at a crossroad in her life. After being dumped by her husband and forced to walk away from their diner that she helped rescue from bankruptcy, bitter feelings consume her. Even though the restaurant has been in the family for eighty-six years, giving her all to another struggling business isn't something she wants to do.

Named “Ketanji Onyika,” meaning “Lovely One,” based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams.

The Day God Saw Me as Black is a genre-defying, cultural critique of white supremacy in the Black Pentecostal religious experience through the lenses of race, gender, sexual expression, and class analyses. A narrative that weaves between critique and meditation, decolonization and reconciliation, the theoretical and the deeply personal, The Day God Saw Me as Black is an imagining of what could be if we stopped denying ourselves — and each other — full liberation.

Thirty years ago, Amelia Vaux Tanner and her husband built a house high on the bluffs, a cottage they named Chateau Laveau. For decades, “Ama” played host to American presidents, Wall Street titans, and cultural icons. But her favorite guests have always been her three “goddaughters”: Esperanza “Perry” Soto, a beautiful, talented Afro-Latina lawyer with Ama’s strong, yet guarded personality; Olivia Jones, a gifted Wall Street analyst with Ama’s brilliant, logical mind; and Billie Hayden, a gifted marine biologist and rule-breaker with Ama’s courageous free spirit.

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart, that's exactly what they get.

As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery. Secrets from Jacob's tumultuous relationship with Isaac's mother and the shame he carries from the dissolution of their family. Tragedies that informed Jacob's role as a father and his reaction to Isaac's being gay.

Award-winning author Denny S. Bryce and USA Today bestselling author Eliza Knight collaborate on a brilliant novel that uncovers the boundary-breaking, genuine friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe.

Twenty-four months ago: Neon gets chased by a dog all around the parking lot of a church. Not his finest moment. And definitely one he would have loved to forget if it weren’t for the dog’s owner: Aria. Dressed in sweats, a t-shirt, hair in a ponytail. Aria. Way more than fine. Twenty-four weeks ago: Neon’s dad insists on talking to him about tenderness and intimacy. Neon and Aria are definitely in love, and while they haven’t taken that next big step…yet, they’ve starting talking about…that.

Rain soaks Tessa Scott as she runs from her car to the old vine-covered property she has been called to survey. She’s too busy to accept a new job, but doing this favor for the grandmother of her childhood sweetheart delays a painful decision she must make about her controlling boyfriend. When Tessa finds a tattered journal carefully hidden inside the house’s ancient fireplace, the tragic story of how Ona was ripped from her mother’s arms to live and work in the palatial Mount Vernon, and the heart-shattering betrayal that led her to risk her life and run, has Tessa spellbound.

Three friends from small-town Pennsylvania set out to conquer Denali, North America's highest peak, but only two come down alive. On the mountain, their grand adventure unravels into a harrowing tale of survival, betrayal, and the haunting consequences of ambition pushed too far. For fans of Into Thin Air, Touching the Void, and 127 Hours, Denali has a full cast, jaw-dropping twists, and immersive sound design that will transport you to one of the most extreme environments on earth.

Two little girls stand with their heads bowed in my living room. I’m told they’re my granddaughters. Daisy is nine, and Alice seven. Daisy is the spitting image of her mother. This is the first time I’ve met them since my daughter and I fell out after she married that waste of space, Vince. They’ve come to live with me because their mother — my daughter — was murdered. In her own home while they slept close by. I think Vince killed her. But the police can’t prove it. I’ve always known he was no good. He treated my daughter like dirt. I said he’d cheat on her — but she wouldn’t listen.

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.

Who is Audrey Hoedemaker? It's a question her sister Maureen has heard more times than she can count, and she doesn't know what the short answer would be. Little sister, troubled teen, backpacker, musical theatre coach, con artist, childcare worker. Murderer. A tragic, traumatic childhood casts a long shadow on the Hoedemaker sisters. Maureen has worked hard to move beyond the violence of the past and build a good, honest life for herself. Audrey, however, just can't seem to do the same, careening from one state of chaos to another.

Lucas knows the perfect night entails just three things: video games, wine, and pad thai. Peanuts are a must! Other people? Not so much. Why complicate things when he’s happy alone? Then one day the apartment board, a vexing trio of authority, rings his doorbell. And Lucas’s solitude takes a startling hike. They demand to see his frying pan. Someone left one next to the recycling room overnight, and instead of removing the errant object, as Lucas suggests, they insist on finding the guilty party. But their plan backfires. Colossally.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television "family."

You think you know the truth about the people you love. But one discovery can change everything.... Eight-year-old Billy goes missing one day, out flying his kite with his sister Rose. Two days later he is found dead. Sixteen years on, Rose still blames herself for Billy's death. How could she have failed to protect her little brother? Rose has never fully recovered from the trauma, and one of the few people she trusts is her neighbour Ronnie, who she has known all her life.

Johnnie Rico never really intended to join up—and definitely not the infantry. But now that he’s in the thick of it, trying to get through combat training harder than anything he could have imagined, he knows everyone in his unit is one bad move away from buying the farm in the interstellar war the Terran Federation is waging against the Arachnids. Because everyone in the Mobile Infantry fights. And if the training doesn’t kill you, the Bugs are more than ready to finish the job.

As Charly struggles to recover from her brain injury, she begins to realize that the events of that fateful night are trapped in the damaged right side of her brain. Now, she must put the jigsaw pieces together to discover the identity of the man who tried to kill her...before he finishes the job he started.

As the days grow shorter and the temperature drops, Halloween approaches. Come, brave listener, pull up a chair, and spend some time with master storyteller Stephen Fry as he tells us some of his favourite ghost stories of all time, in truly terrifying spatial audio. From the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow to the tortured spirits of M.R. James, from Edgar Allan Poe’s terrifying tale of a doppelganger to Charlotte Riddell’s Open Door that should definitely stay shut, join Stephen as he tells you some truly terrifying tales.

Sisters Margaret and Evelyn Justice have grown up in the prosperous Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma—also known as Black Wall Street. In Greenwood, the Justice sisters had it all—movie theaters and entertainment venues, beauty shops and clothing stores, high-profile businesses like law offices, medical clinics, and banks. While Evelyn aspires to head off to the East Coast to study fashion design, recent college grad Margaret plans to settle in Greenwood, teaching at the local high school and eventually raising a family.

Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years, due to a mysterious estrangement inherited from her mother. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.

Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia’s Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza’s happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza’s world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act.

When ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shattered pieces of a centuries-old jar, life as Ebby knew it shattered as well. The crime was never solved—and because the Freemans were one of the only Black families in a particularly well-to-do enclave of New England—the case has had an enduring, voyeuristic pull for the public. The last thing the Freemans want is another media frenzy splashing their family across the papers, but when Ebby's high profile romance falls apart, that's exactly what they get.

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar. Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”

Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.

In 1943, when a frail old white woman shows up in Red Clay, Alabama, at the home of a Black former slave—on the morning following his funeral—his family hardly knows what to expect after she utters the words “… a lifetime ago, my family owned yours.” Adelaide Parker has a story to tell—one of ambition, betrayal, violence, and redemption—that shaped both the fate of her family and that of the late Felix H. Parker. But there are gaps in her knowledge, and she’s come to Red Clay seeking answers from a family with whom she shares a name and a history that neither knows in full.

Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina, from the plantation where she was born, she is free, newly married, and ready to follow her dreams. As the demands of life pull Josephine’s attention away, it becomes increasingly difficult for her to pursue her real estate aspirations. She finds herself immersed in deepening her marriage, mothering her daughters, and being a dutiful daughter and granddaughter.

The Radio City Rockettes are as American as baseball, hot dogs, and the Fourth of July. Their legendary synchronized leg kicks, precise lines, and megawatt smiles have charmed audiences for a century. But there is a hidden side to this illustrious national institution. Like Gelsey Kirkland’s iconic Dancing on My Grave, Becoming Spectacular allows us to walk in Jones’ tap shoes—beautiful and glittering, yet painful and binding. Bringing into focus the wounded life of a trailblazer, this searing memoir is also a triumphant celebration of a spirit who refused to be counted out.

Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong’s question, “What did I do to be so Black and blue?” In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world’s favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey.

When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she's pregnant with a child she isn't sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a person who is half-Black, half-white—yet feels neither—is amplified. Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus in the 1980s, only to realize they'd come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily. Years later, Evelyn's mother-in-law, Violet, moves in.

For fans of Trust and North Woods, a daring novel that spans 100 years of American history, from the early days of cinema to the rise of NFTs, about parents and children, the drive to create even in times of crisis, and the inheritance of grand western dreams.

Sarah Toomey is a successful young black lawyer, lovely but straitlaced–and afraid that she is losing her mind. Since the death of her mother, a force she can neither understand nor control is manipulating her memory and driving her to unexplained acts of violence and destruction. At the same time, Sarah is swept up in a highly charged relationship with a work colleague that portends a danger of its own. As she moves through her privileged life in New York, Sarah comes to learn how her past—her haunted history—is intertwined with America’s.

Jordan Sable, a prosperous undertaker turned political boss, has controlled the Black vote in St. Louis for decades. Sara, his equally formidable wife, runs the renowned funeral establishment that put the Sable name on the map. Together they have pushed through obstacles in order to create a legacy for their children. When tragedy bursts their carefully constructed empire of dignity and safety, the family rallies around an unconventional solution. But at what cost?