Black History Month 2025

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...

"Deena Wood’s life has fallen apart in the aftermath of losing her beloved mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm. She needs what the Geechee people of coastal Georgia call a 'dayclean,' a fresh start. She returns to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia, to heal. But her return is anything but the respite she thought it might be. To make peace with all her loss, she often drives through the city. One day, she...

It's the last day of school at Cheshire Prep, Brooklyn's elite academy -- and Audre Mercy-Moore's life is a mess. Her dad cancelled her annual summer visit to his Malibu beach house. Now? She's stuck in a claustrophobic apartment with her mom, stepdad, and one-year-old sister (aka the Goblin Baby). Under these conditions, she'll never finish writing her self-help book -- i.e., the key to winning over Stanford's admissions board. Cut to Bash Henry!...

Sommy, a Nigerian woman comes to the United States for graduate school two weeks after her brother, Mezie, attempts suicide. Plagued by the guilt of leaving Mezie behind, Sommy struggles to fit into her new life as a student and an immigrant. Lonely and homesick, Sommy soon enters a complicated relationship with her boisterous Nigerian roommate, Bayo, a relationship that plummets into deceit when Sommy falls for Bryan, a biracial American, whose estranged...

"A dazzling, unforgettable novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system--a debut that announces a blazingly original voice. Kiara Johnson and her brother Marcus are barely scraping by in a squalid East Oakland apartment complex that calls itself, optimistically, the Regall-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while...

This is Viola Davis' story, in her own words, and spans her incredible, inspiring life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her present day. Hers is a story of overcoming, a true hero's journey. "In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and...

Toni Morrison - author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby - is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion, their dazzling language and their lyric and emotional force, combine the unassailable truths of experience and emotion with the vision of legend and imagination. Now, in her first work of fiction in six years, she gives us her most accomplished and spellbinding achievement. It is the story - set in post-Civil...

"One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the ever looming absence of her incarcerated father and the path we must take to both honor and overcome our origins. For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who...

"From Marlon James, author of the bestselling National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf, the second book in the Dark Star trilogy, his African Game of Thrones. In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened...

The autobiographical memoir of the first woman, African American, and South Asian American to become attorney general of the State of California, and the second black woman ever elected to the United States Senate. Harris discusses the impact that her family and community had on her life, and how she came to discover her own sense of self and purpose. "From one of America's most inspiring political leaders, a book about the core truths that unite...