List

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Washington Post, People, Time

“A beautiful tale.” —Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Twenty-four Seconds from Now

The New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby returns with an epic, multi-generational novel that illuminates the legacy of slavery and the power of romantic love.

Harlem, 2019. Ardelia and Oliver are hosting their engagement party. As the guests get ready to leave, he hands her a love letter on a yellowing, crumbling piece of paper . . .

Natchez, 1865. Discharged from the Union Army as a free man after the war’s end, Harrison returns to Mississippi to reunite with the woman he loves, Tirzah. Upon his arrival at the Freedmen’s Bureau, though, he catches the eye of a woman working there, who’s determined to thwart his efforts to find his beloved. After tragedy strikes, Harrison resigns himself to a life with her. 

Meanwhile in Louisiana, the newly free Tirzah is teaching at a freedmen’s school, and discovers an advertisement in the local paper looking for her. Though she knows Harrison must have placed it, and longs to find him, the risks of fleeing are too great, and Tirzah chooses the life of seeming security right in front of her.

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 the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.

When Ardelia meets Oliver, she finds his family’s history is as full of secrets and omissions as her own. Could their connection be a cosmic reconciliation satisfying the unfulfilled desires of their ancestors, or will the weight of the past, present and future tear them apart?

Sweeping, textured, and meticulously researched, Zeal is both a story of how one generation’s choices reverberate through the years and an indelible portrait of an enduring love.

'S. A. Cosby's novels always hit the grand slam of crime fiction' MICHAEL CONNELLY
'Cosby sends a shiver down the spine' DAILY MAIL
'A pulsating saga of family secrets and double and triple-crossing' THE TIMES, THE BEST THRILLERS OF 2025

A son returning home. A dangerous debt. Secrets about to ignite . . . and a family consumed by flames.

Roman Carruthers left the smoke and fire of his family's crematory business behind in his hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia. He is enjoying a life of shallow excess as a financial adviser in Atlanta until he gets a call from his sister, Neveah, telling him their father is in a coma after a hit-and-run accident.

When Roman goes home, he learns the accident may not be what it seems. His brother, Dante, is deeply in debt to dangerous, ruthless criminals. And Roman is willing to do anything to protect his family. Anything.

A financial whiz with a head for numbers and a talent for making his clients rich, Roman must use all his skills to try to save his family while dealing with a shadow that has haunted them all for twenty years: the disappearance of their mother when Roman and his siblings were teenagers. It's a mystery that Neveah, who has sacrificed so much of her life to hold her family together, is determined to solve once and for all.

As fate and chance and heartache ignite their lives, the Carruthers family must pull together to survive or see their lives turn to ash. Because, as their father counseled them from birth, nothing lasts forever. Everything burns.

'A pulsating thriller' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'Builds to an explosive finale' DAILY EXPRESS
'American crime fiction has found its future and his name is S.A. Cosby' DENNIS LEHANE
'Dazzlingly bold and brutal, yet still manages to break your heart' CRIME MONTHLY


Praise for S. A. Cosby:

'Sensationally good' LEE CHILD
'Exhilarating' STEPHEN KING
'Stunning. Can't remember the last time I read such a powerful crime novel' MARK BILLINGHAM
'S. A. Cosby is a welcome, refreshing new voice in crime literature' DENNIS LEHANE
'Every once in a while a writer comes along with an incredible voice...add S. A. Cosby to that list' STEVE CAVANAGH
'Elegant, fierce storytelling at its absolute best.' DAILY MAIL

A LIBRARY READS PICK

From the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of Lakewood and The Women Could Fly, a dazzling novel about two brilliant sisters and what happens to their undeniable bond when a mysterious and possibly perilous new world beckons.

On an ordinary summer morning, the world is changed by the appearance of seven mysterious doors that seemingly lead to another world. People are, of course, mesmerized and intrigued: A new dimension filled with beauty and resources beckons them to step into an adventure. But, perhaps inevitably, people soon learn that what looks like paradise may very well be filled with danger.

Ayanna and Olivia, two Black midwestern teens—and twin sisters—have different ideas of what may lie in the world beyond. But will their personal bond endure such wanton exploration? And when one of them goes missing, will the other find solace on her own? And will she uncover the circumstances of what truly happened to her once constant companion and best friend?

Megan Giddings brings her customarily brilliant and eye-opening powers of storytelling to give us a narrative that dazzles the senses and bewitches the mind. Meet Me at the Crossroads is an unforgettable novel about faith, love, and family from one of today’s most exciting and surprising young writers.

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A prescient new thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Avery Keene series, by nationally renowned author and leader Stacey Abrams, Coded Justice follows Avery down a dark rabbit hole into the breathtaking—and dangerously evolving—world of AI in the medical industry.

Former Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is back . . . trying to put the past behind her at a prestigious high-end law firm in Washington, D.C. Head down and focused on a new life, Avery is now working as an internal investigator when a high-profile client seeks her out. Camasca Enterprises has a big problem and a short runway. The tech company has developed a new integrated AI system poised to revolutionize the medical industry. To prove its potential, Camasca’s charismatic founder, retired Major Rafe Diaz, has picked a complicated target: delivering cutting-edge health care to his fellow veterans. The potential is staggering, but their prototype has been plagued by a series of disturbing anomalies—culminating in the mysterious death of a beloved Camasca engineer.

Avery and her colleagues, Jared, Ling, and Noah, are brought into the secretive company to investigate from the inside out. At the epicenter of a burgeoning, controversial industry, and with billions of dollars on the line, their task is simple: to determine whether Camasca’s technical troubles and rising body count reveal something sinister at work. In Coded Justice, Stacey Abrams’s storytelling prowess is on full display—a deft combination of riveting twists and vibrant characters set against the fascinating landscape of the capabilities of artificial intelligence . . . and the moral boundaries that govern it. Coded Justice is Abrams’s most entertaining novel to date.

WINNER OF THE 2025 WHITING AWARD FOR FICTION

PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD FINALIST • ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE LONGLIST

As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice.

Able God works for low pay at a four-star hotel where he must flash his “toothpaste-white smile” for wealthy guests. When not tending to the hotel’s overprivileged clientele, he muses over self-help books and draws life lessons from the game of chess.

But Able’s ordinary life is upended when an early morning room service order leads him to interfere with Akudo, a sex worker involved with a powerful but dangerous hotel guest. Suddenly caught in a web of violence, guilt, and fear, Able must run to save himself—a journey that takes him into the desert with a group of drug-addled migrants, headed by a charismatic religious leader calling himself Ben Ten. The travelers’ dream of reaching Europe—and a new life—is shattered when they fall prey to human traffickers, suffer starvation, and find themselves on the precipice of death, fighting for their lives and their freedom.

As Able God moves into the treacherous unknown, his consciousness becomes focused on survival and the foundations of his beliefs—his ideas about betterment and salvation—are forever altered. Suspenseful, incisive, and illuminating, The Road to the Salt Sea is a story of family, fate, religion, survival, the failures of the Nigerian class system, and what often happens to those who seek their fortunes elsewhere.

The extraordinary story of Jessie Redmon Fauset whose exhilarating world of friends, rivals, and passions all combined to create the magic that was the Harlem Renaissance, written by Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Personal Librarian.

In 1919, as civil and social unrest grips the country, there is a little corner of America, a place called Harlem where something special is stirring. Here, the New Negro is rising and Black pride is evident everywhere…in music, theatre, fashion and the arts. And there on stage in the center of this renaissance is Jessie Redmon Fauset, the new literary editor of the preeminent Negro magazine The Crisis.

W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder and editor of The Crisis, has charged her with discovering young writers whose words will change the world. Jessie attacks the challenge with fervor, quickly finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives, the writers become notable and magazine subscriptions soar. Every Negro writer in the country wants their work published in the magazine now known for its groundbreaking poetry and short stories. 

Jessie’s rising star is shining bright….but her relationship with W.E.B. could jeopardize all that she’s built. The man, considered by most to be the leader of Black America, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Their torrid and tumultuous affair is complicated by a secret desire that Jessie harbors — to someday, herself, become the editor of the magazine, a position that only W.E.B. Du Bois has held.

In the face of overwhelming sexism and racism, Jessie must balance her drive with her desires. However, as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.

THE INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Recommended by New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • Rolling Stone • Los Angeles Times • Reader's Digest • and more!

“This one has it all.” — George R.R. Martin • “As delicious as it is disorienting.” — Zakiya Dalila Harris • “Suspenseful, timely, and heartfelt.” — People • “Mind-bending.” — New York Times Book Review

In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt contemporary fiction drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.

The future of storytelling is here.

Disabled, disinclined to marry, and more interested in writing than a lucrative career in medicine or law, Zelu has always felt like the outcast of her large Nigerian family. Then her life is upended when, in the middle of her sister’s lavish Caribbean wedding, she’s unceremoniously fired from her university job and, to add insult to injury, her novel is rejected by yet another publisher. With her career and dreams crushed in one fell swoop, she decides to write something just for herself. What comes out is nothing like the quiet, literary novels that have so far peppered her unremarkable career. It’s a far-future epic of stunning Afrofuturism where androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization. She calls it Rusted Robots.

When Zelu finds the courage to share her strange novel, she does not realize she is about to embark on a life-altering journey—one that will catapult her into literary stardom, but also perhaps obliterate everything her book was meant to be. From Chicago to Lagos to the far reaches of space, Zelu’s novel will change the future not only for humanity, but for the robots who come next.

A book-within-a-book that blends the line between writing and being written, Death of the Author is a masterpiece of metafiction that manages to combine the razor-sharp commentary of Yellowface with the heartfelt humanity of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Surprisingly funny, deeply poignant, and endlessly discussable, this is at once the tale of a woman on the margins risking everything to be heard and a testament to the power of storytelling to shape the world as we know it. 

“An ambitious, inventive tribute to the power of storytelling itself.” — Nikki Erlick, New York Times bestselling author of The Measure

“A deeply felt dazzle. A blaze. It is true deep to the bones.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The House of Broken Angels

"There’s more vivid imagination in a page of Nnedi Okorafor’s work than in whole volumes." — Ursula K. Le Guin

From the two-time Emmy Award–winning producer and host of the Black and Published podcast comes a sweeping multi-generational epic following seven generations of Dupree women as they navigate love, loss, and the unyielding ties of family in the tradition of Homegoing and The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois.

It’s 1995, and fourteen-year-old Tati is determined to uncover the identity of her father. But her mother, Nadia, keeps her secrets close, while her grandmother Gladys remains silent about the family’s past, including why she left Land’s End, Alabama, in 1953. As Tati digs deeper, she uncovers a legacy of family secrets, where every generation of Dupree women has posed more questions than answers.

From Jubi in 1917, whose attempt to pass for white ends when she gives birth to Ruby; to Ruby’s fiery lust for Sampson in 1934 that leads to a baby of her own; to the night in 1980 that changed Nadia’s future forever, the Dupree women carry the weight of their heritage. Bound by a mysterious malediction that means they will only give birth to daughters, the Dupree women confront a legacy of pain, resilience, and survival that began with an enslaved ancestor who risked everything for freedom.

The Seven Daughters of Dupree masterfully weaves together themes of generational trauma, Black women’s resilience, and unbreakable familial bonds. Echoing the literary power of The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis, Nikesha Elise Williams delivers a feminist literary fiction that explores the ripple effects of actions, secrets, and love through seven generations of Black women.

In this “achingly beautiful debut” (The Boston Globe), a young Black gay man, estranged from his father, must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex.

“A beautiful, clear-eyed portrait of love in the face of religious and familial betrayal.”—Elle

“This novel is less the arrival of a major talent and more the confirmation of one we should all already be reading. Don’t miss it.”—them

A THEM AND ELLE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

“I got tired of running away from what I should’ve been running toward.”

The venerated Reverend Doctor John Freeman did not raise his son, Davis, to be touched by any man, let alone a white man. He did not raise his son to whisper that man’s name with tenderness.

But on the eve of his wedding, all Davis can think about is how beautiful he wants to look when he meets his beloved Everett at the altar. Never mind that his mother, who died decades before, and his father, whose anger drove Davis to flee their home in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, for a freer life in New York City, won’t be there to walk him down the aisle. All Davis needs to be happy in this life is Everett, his new family, and his burgeoning career as an acclaimed violist.

When Davis learns during the wedding reception that his father has been in a terrible car accident, years of childhood trauma and unspoken emotion resurface. Davis must revisit everything that went wrong between them, risking his fledgling marriage along the way. 

In resplendent prose, Denne Michele Norris’s When the Harvest Comes reveals the pain of inheritance and the heroic power of love, reminding us that, in the end, we are more than the men who came before us.

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • As the Civil War looms, a young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost in this “poignant story of love, family and friendship [that] celebrates the power of liberation” (People).

“An enrapturing tale of survival . . . Eckstine has poured a ton of heart into her characters.”—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“The richly textured prose quickly pulled me into [Junie’s] treacherous yet magical world.”—Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake

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—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.

With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?

Most Anticipated by Goodreads, People, BookRiot, Reactor, Screenrant, and more!

For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, Listen To Your Sister is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.

Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.

When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.

“A knockout debut." -Ashley Winstead

“Incredibly original and seriously scary.” – Nick Medina

“A brilliant fever-dream of a novel that effortlessly dances between horror, literary, and family saga—sure to appeal to fans of Grady Hendrix, Tananarive Due, Mona Awad, and Stephen King. – Maria Dong

Winner of the Westport Prize for Literature
Winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Award

Finalist for New American Voices Award and Pacific Northwest Book Award

Best Book of the Year at TIME, Apple, Debutiful, Electric Literature, Well-Read Black Girl, Chicago Review of Books, and Goodreads

Afrocritik Notable African Book of 2025 
Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books of 2025

Best Book of the Month at Oprah Daily, Apple Books, Alta Journal, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, The Roots, Write or Die, and Southern Review of Books

Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Water tells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.

In Ibadan, Nigeria, a mother receives a divination that foretells danger for her daughter in America. In spite of this warning, she allows her to forge her own path, and Amina arrives in New Orleans filled with hope. But just as Amina begins to find her way, a hurricane threatens to destroy the city, upending everything she’d dreamed of and the lives of all she holds dear. Years later, her daughter is left with questions about the mother she barely knew, and the family she has yet to discover in Nigeria.

Exploring the love of a determined mother and dreaming daughter who do not say enough to each other until it is too late, the detangling of Yoruba Christianity, traditional religion, and folklore, and the tellings of three generations of daring women—through times of longing, promise, and romance, as well as heartbreak—Olufunke Grace Bankole’s The Edge of Water is a luminous debut novel about a young woman brave enough to leave all she knows behind, and the way her fate transforms a family destined to stay together.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR (SO FAR) BY THE NEW YORK TIMES
A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW BOOK CLUB SELECTION
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2025 by TIME, Kirkus Reviews, and the Chicago Public Library: "Surreal and propulsive... The Catch takes readers on an experimental and wildly emotional journey." (Mahita Gajanan, Time)

Best Books of Summer: Washington Post, TIME, USA Today, Forbes
Most Anticipated Books of 2025: TIME, Publishers Weekly, Lit Hub, We Are Bookish, The Millions and Book Riot
A Belletrist (Emma Roberts) Featured Book
A Prose Hose (Eli Rallo) Book Club Selection

The inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl Books series, The Catch is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity.

Twin sisters Clara and Dempsey have always struggled to relate, their familial bond severed after their mother vanished into the Thames. As infants they were adopted into different families, Clara sent to live with a successful, upper-class couple, and Dempsey with a sullen, unaffectionate city councilor. In adulthood, they are content to be all but estranged, until Clara sees a woman who looks exactly like their mother on the streets of London. The catch: this version of Serene, aged not a day, has enjoyed a childless life—the very life, it seems, she might have had if the girls had never been born.

As with most things, Clara and Dempsey cannot see eye to eye on the confounding appearance of this woman. Clara, a celebrity author with a penchant for excessive drinking and one-night stands, is all too willing to welcome the confident and temperamental Serene into her home. But cloistered Dempsey, who makes a modest living doing menial data entry work from the confines of her apartment, is dubious of the whole situation, believing this all to be the insidious ruse of a con woman. Clashing over this stranger who burrows deeper and deeper into their lives, the sisters hurtle toward an altercation that threatens their very existence, forcing them to finally confront their pasts—together.

In her riveting first foray into fiction, Yrsa Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, “How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?”

 

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Cool and concise; a talent to watch.” —Jay McInerney author of Bright Lights, Big City

“You’re going to get papercuts, you’re going to turn the pages so fast.” —Brad Thor, Today

A gripping debut from an electrifying new voice about an upwardly mobile and downwardly spiraling Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamourous parties and sudden consequences, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest.

An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.

A riveting, emotionally-charged tale of forbidden love, centred on an estranged couple who are brought together to reckon with the events that tore their family apart decades ago.

In 1960s Lagos, a city enlivened with its newfound Independence, headstrong Margaret meets British-born Benjamin, a man seeking his ancestral roots after the death of his half-Nigerian father. Their connection is immediate, but as the two begin to fall in love, they discover that their pasts are more interwoven than they imagined due to a series of devastating events that transpired in their ancestral community. The shadow of these events, combined with Margaret's deteriorating mental health eventually tear them apart.

By 2005, the couple have been estranged for forty years. Margaret has retired to an upscale gated community in Lagos, and seemingly happy Benjamin lives alone in Atlanta, managing his heart problems but feeling unmoored when faced with the question of who to name as his next of kin. But their attempt at a settled life is shattered when their grandson begins to show ominous signs that echo the struggles Margaret once faced. Now, Margaret and Benjamin must finally reunite to confront the buried secrets that they had dismissed in the passion of their youth-secrets that continue to ripple through their family. Their reunion becomes a journey into the past--one that forces them to grapple with both the personal and ancestral burdens that have followed them through generations.
A startling and propulsive tale of forbidden love, THIS KIND OF TROUBLE traces the intertwined legacies of one family's history, exploring the complex relationship between tradition, modernity and the ways we seek healing in a changing world. Spanning a tumultuous century, the story moves us to consider the ways we are beholden to the past and what we owe the future. With this debut novel, Tochi Eze announces herself as a dazzling new literary voice in world literature.