Black History Month 2025

During Jim Crow America, there was only one place Black Americans could safely refuel their vehicles along what would eventually become iconic Route 66. But more than just a place to refuel, it was a place to fill up the soul, build community, and find strength. For two sisters, the Threatt Filling Station became the safe haven they needed after escaping the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

"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...

"Iris Greene used to be a woman with a plan. But all of that changed after she met the love of her life at twenty-four, got pregnant and married... and then became a widow and a single mother all within the span of a year and a half. Now, after years of hustling, Iris is the director of partnerships at a beauty company and mother to spunky five-year-old Calla. Despite her busy life, she still can't help but feel lonely. She just needs to catch her...

A passionate vice principal and a guarded science teacher compete for a grand prize, only to realize their budding relationship might be the real jackpot. Brianna Rogers has been told a time (or six) she needs to stop jumping into things head first. But when the principal rescinds his approval for a library upgrade, deciding to spend the money on a football field instead, she sees red. Literally. Brianna throws her hat in the ring and joins a team...

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...

"Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need -- tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger -- an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to...

Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into this world in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by a Black nurse who declares,"Lord Jesus, if that ain't the blackest little baby born this side of heaven." Later, her schoolmates chant "Tar Baby." What they do not understand, she eventually proves: she is the ancestors' promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanian atrocities that have held them all in a place of torment. This includes her grandfather Benjamin Lee,...

"In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry, freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm, hoping through an unexpected friendship to stanch their grief. Prentiss and Landry, meanwhile, plan to save money for the journey north and a chance to reunite with their mother,...

"In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past -- a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with...

"Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and...