Radiant Child : The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat

by Javaka Steptoe

2017 WINNER!

Du Iz Tak?

by Carson Ellis

2017 Honor Book

Freedom in Congo Square

by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by R. Gregory Christie

2017 Honor Book

Leave Me Alone

by Vera Brosgol

2017 Honor Book

They All Saw a Cat

by Brendan Wenzel

2017 Honor Book

March: Book 3

by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell

2017 WINNER!

Asking For It

by Louise O'Neill

2017 Honor Book

The Passion of Dolssa

by Julie Berry

2017 Honor Book

Scythe

by Neal Shusterman

2017 Honor Book

The Sun Is Also A Star

by Nicola Yoon

2017 Honor Book

The Girl Who Drank the Moon

By Kelly Regan Barnhill

2017 WINNER!

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life

by Ashley Bryan

2017 Honor Book

The Inquisitor's Tale, or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog

by Adam Gidwitz; illuminated by Hatem Aly

2017 Honor Book

Wolf Hollow

by Lauren Wolk

2017 Honor Book

March: Book 3

by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell

2017 WINNER!

Giant Squid

by Candace Fleming; illustrated by Eric Rohman

2017 Honor Book

Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor's Story

by Caren B. Stelson

2017 Honor Book

Uprooted: The Japanese American experience during World War II

by Albert Marrin

2017 Honor Book

We Will Not Be Silent: The White Rose Student Resistance Movement That Defied Adolf Hitler

by Russell Freedman

2017 Honor Book

Wolf in the Snow

by Matthew Cordell

2018 WINNER!

Big Cat, Little Cat

by Elisha Cooper

2018 Honor Book

Crown: An Ode to a Fresh Cut

by Derrick Barnes; illustrated by Gordon C. James

2018 Honor Book

A Different Pond

by Bao Phi; illustrated by Thi Bui

2018 Honor Book

As a young boy, Bao Phi awoke early, hours before his father's long workday began, to fish on the shores of a small pond in Minneapolis. Unlike many other anglers, Bao and his father fished for food, not re...

Grand Canyon

by Jason Chin

2018 Honor Book

Hello, Universe

by Erin Entrada Kelly

2018 WINNER!

Crown: An Ode to a Fresh Cut

by Derrick Barnes; illustrated by Gordon C. James

2018 Honor Book

Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds

2018 Honor Book

Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

2018 Honor Book

Twelve Days in May: Freedom Ride 1961

by Larry Dane Brimner

2018 WINNER!

Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix

by Jacqueline Briggs Martin & June Jo Lee; illustrated by Man One

2018 Honor Book

Grand Canyon

by Jason Chin

2018 Honor Book

Not So Different: What You Really Want to Ask About Having a Disability

by Shane Burcaw; photographs by Matt Carr

2018 Honor Book

Sea Otter Heroes: The Predators that Saved an Ecosystem

by Patricia Newman

2018 Honor Book

Hello Lighthouse

written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall

2019 WINNER!

Alma and How She Got Her Name

written and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

2019 Honor Book

A Big Mooncake for Little Star

written and illustrated by Grace Lin

2019 Honor Book

The Rough Patch

written and illustrated by Brian Lies

2019 Honor Book

Thank You, Omu!

written and illustrated by Oge Mora

2019 Honor Book

The Poet X

by Elizabeth Acevedo

2019 WINNER!

Damsel

by Elana K. Arnold

2019 Honor Book

A Heart in a Body in the World

by Deb Caletti

2019 Honor Book

I, Claudia

by Mary McCoy

2019 Honor Book

Merci Suárez Changes Gears

by Meg Medina

2019 WINNER!

The Night Diary

by Veera Hiranandani

2019 Honor Book

The Book of Boy

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

2019 Honor Book

The Girl Who Drew Butterflies: How Maria Merian’s Art Changed Science

by Joyce Sidman

2019 WINNER!

Camp Panda: Helping Cubs Return to the Wild

by Catherine Thimmesh

2019 Honor Book

Spooked! How a Radio Broadcast and The War of the Worlds Sparked the 1938 Invasion of America

by Gail Jarrow

2019 Honor Book

The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees

by Don Brown

2019 Honor Book

We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga

by Traci Sorel; illustrated by Frané Lessac

2019 Honor Book

When Angels Sing: The Story of Rock Legend Carlos Santana

by Michael Mahin; art by Jose Ramirez

2019 Honor Book

Darius the Great Is Not Okay

by Adib Khorram

2019 WINNER!

Blood Water Paint

by Joy McCullough

2019 Finalist

Check, Please!: #Hockey

by Ngozi Ukazu

2019 Finalist

Children of Blood and Bone

by Tomi Adeyemi

2019 Finalist

What the Night Sings

by Vesper Stamper

2019 Finalist

The Unwanted: Stories of the Syrian Refugees

by Don Brown

2019 WINNER!

The Beloved World of Sonia Sotomayor

by Sonia Sotomayor

2019 Finalist

Boots on the Ground: America’s War in Vietnam

by Elizabeth Partridge

2019 Finalist

The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler

by John Hendrix

2019 Finalist

Hey, Kiddo: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, and Dealt with Family Addiction

by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

2019 Finalist

The Undefeated

by Kwame Alexander; illustrated by Kadir Nelson

2020 WINNER!

Bear Came Along

by Richard T. Morris; illustrated by LeUyen Pham

2020 Honor Book

Double Bass Blues

by Andrea J. Loney; illustrated by Rudy Gutierrez

2020 Honor Book

Going Down Home with Daddy

by Kelly Starling Lyons; illustrated by Daniel Minter

2020 Honor Book

Dig

by A. S. King

2020 WINNER!

Five teenagers’ disparate lives weave together, unveiling long-buried secrets within a complex shared history. King’s surrealistic narrative confronts themes of white privilege and its dark legacies.

The Beast Player

by Nahoko Uehashi; translated by Cathy Hirano

2020 Honor Book

Orphaned Elin learns to use her ability to communicate with animals as she navigates through political unrest. The beauty and power of the natural world are at the heart of this captivating, nimb...

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me

by Mariko Tamaki; illustrated by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell

2020 Honor Book

Freddy is enamored with the magnetic Laura Dean, but their on-again, off-again relationship is far from healthy. Through soft-hued illustrations and cinematic scope, this g...

Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir

by Nikki Grimes

2020 Honor Book

Grimes’ verse memoir traces her development through a tumultuous childhood as she finds her voice as a powerful storyteller. Themes of family, belonging, and identity combine to tell a story of faith and resilience....

Where the World Ends

by Geraldine McCaughrean

2020 Honor Book

In 1727, a group of men and boys from St. Kilda sail to a remote sea stack on a fowling trip, only to find themselves stranded. McCaughrean’s exceptional tale evokes the harsh beauty of its setting and the ...

New Kid

by Jerry Craft

2020 WINNER!

Scary Stories for Young Foxes

by Christian McKay Heidicker; illustrated by Junyi Wu

2020 Honor Book

The Undefeated

by Kwame Alexander; illustrated by Kadir Nelson

2020 Honor Book

Other Words for Home

by Jasmine Warga

2020 Honor Book

Genesis Begins Again

by Alicia D. Williams

2020 Honor Book

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story

by Kevin Noble Maillard; illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

2020 WINNER!

All in a Drop: How Antony van Leeuwenhoek Discovered an Invisible World

by Lori Alexander; illustrated by Vivien Mildenberger

2020 Honor Book

This Promise of Change: One Girl's Story in the Fight for School Equality

by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy

2020 Honor Book

Ordinary Hazards: A Memoir

by Nikki Grimes

2020 Honor Book

Hey, Water!

by Antoinette Portis

2020 Honor Book

The Field Guide to the North American Teenager

by Ben Philippe

2020 WINNER!

Norris Kaplan, a Black French-Canadian teen, moves to Austin, Texas and tries to survive American high school life by notating his observations, most of which are based on clichés from U.S. movies and television shows...

The Candle and the Flame

by Nafiza Azad

2020 Finalist

Orphaned in an ongoing war between djinn and humans, Fatima undergoes a magical transformation that can save her family and beloved city of Noor. A devout Muslim, she lives harmoniously in this southeast Asian community amongst ...

Frankly in Love

by David Yoon

2020 Finalist

Frank Li is a Korean-American high school student torn between two lives. At school, he’s part of a diverse group of smart friends. At home, he tries to be a model son — working in his parents’ store...

Genesis Begins Again

by Alicia D. Williams

2020 Finalist

Genesis has a list of reasons to hate about herself, started by girls in a Detroit school she attends, and she keeps adding to it. Born dark-skinned in a family that values light-skin black people, Genesis craves to feel ...

There Will Come a Darkness

by Katy Rose Pool

2020 Finalist

The Age of Darkness is upon us, so says a secret prophecy foretold generations ago by the Seven Prophets. Five lives — an exiled prince, a serial killer known as the Pale Hand, a terminally ill girl, a gambler on th...

Free Lunch

by Rex Ogle

2020 WINNER!

An honest and engrossing account of Ogle’s sixth-grade year and his family’s experience with poverty and its effect on their relationships. Ogle captures the voice and emotion of his sixth-grade self in this powe...

The Great Nijinsky: God of Dance

written and illustrated by Lynn Curlee

2020 Finalist

With striking portraits and bold prose, Curlee details the life of the prodigal dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, who, unencumbered by sexuality and gender norms, rapidly ascended to stardom before tragically succu...

A Light in the Darkness: Janusz Korczak, His Orphans, and the Holocaust

by Albert Marrin

2020 Finalist

A heart-wrenching look at the history of the Warsaw Ghetto, told by comparing the philosophies of Doctor Janusz Korczak, a pediatrician-turned-orphanage-director who championed children’s rights, and Adolf Hitler, a ...

A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II

by Elizabeth Wein

2020 Finalist

A thrilling, richly detailed account of the regiments of female Russian aviators who fought in World War II as pilots, mechanics, and navigators. Through extensive research, descriptive personal stories, and examples of overc...

Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of “The Children's Ship"

by Deborah Heiligman

2020 Finalist

In 1940, the passenger ship City of Benares set sail from Britain, carrying 200 passengers, many of them children hoping to escape the ravages of war. Before they could reach safety, the ship was struck by a torpedo, and a...

We Are Water Protectors

by Carole Lindstrom; illustrated by Michaela Goade

2021 WINNER!

Outside In

by Deborah Underwood; illustrated by Cindy Derby

2021 Honor Book

A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart

by Zetta Elliott; illustrated by Noa Denmon

2021 Honor Book

The Cat Man of Aleppo

by Irene Latham & Karim Shamsi-Basha; illustrated by Yuko Shimizu

2021 Honor Book

Me & Mama

by Cozbi A. Cabrera

2021 Honor Book

Everything Sad is Untrue (A True Story)

by Daniel Nayeri

2021 WINNER!

In an autobiographical novel, middle-schooler Daniel, formerly Khosrou, tells his unimpressed and at times cruel classmates about his experience as an Iranian refugee.

Apple (Skin to the Core)

by Eric Gansworth

2021 Honor Book

Gansworth – an enrolled member of the Onandaga Nation – revisits his childhood and teen years spent on a Tuscarora reservation in this ambitious and searing memoir. Told in verse and accompanied by origi...

Dragon Hoops

by Gene Luen Yang; color by Lark Pien

2021 Honor Book

Gene Luen Yang never would have guessed that he would be working on a graphic novel about a basketball team, but he found inspiration in the men’s varsity team at Bishop O’Dowd High S...

Every Body Looking

by Candice Iloh

2021 Honor Book

In this novel in verse, Ada recounts her freshman year as a first generation student attending a Historically Black College, while simultaneously taking the reader through her younger life. Ada feels the pressure to make mone...

We Are Not Free

by Traci Chee

2021 Honor Book

Just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued the Civilian Exclusion Order, forcing the tight knit community of Japantown teens and their families to incarceration camps. Author Traci Chee deftly man...

When You Trap a Tiger

by Tae Keller

2021 WINNER!

Box: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom

by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Michelle Wood

2021 Honor Book

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team

by Christina Soontornvat

2021 Honor Book

We Dream of Space

by Erin Entrada Kelly

2021 Honor Book

A Wish in the Dark

by Christina Soontornvat

2021 Honor Book

Fighting Words

by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

2021 Honor Book

Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera

by Candace Fleming; illustrated by Eric Rohmann

2021 WINNER!

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team

by Christina Soontornvat

2021 Honor Book

Exquisite: The Poetry and Life of Gwendolyn Brooks

by Suzanne Slade; illustrated by Cozbi A. Cabrera

2021 Honor Book

How We Got to the Moon

by John Rocco

2021 Honor Book

If These Wings Could Fly

by Kyrie McCauley

2021 WINNER!

Living in a house that magically conceals the damage inflicted by her volatile father’s rampages, Leighton Barnes finds nothing strange in the thousands of crows descending on her town. As tensions mount in town and ...

Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard

by Echo Brown

2021 Finalist

In this beautifully written, unflinching tale, Brown relays her wizarding journey of hope and self-awareness as a young Black woman growing up on Cleveland’s East Side. Using magical realism, Brown explores the intersec...

The Black Kids

by Christina Hammonds Reed

2021 Finalist

Set against the LA riots in 1992, this historical yet timely novel follows Ashley through her senior year at her predominantly white, privileged school and wealthy neighborhood. Pulling away from her white friends, s...

It Sounded Better in My Head

by Nina Kenwood

2021 Finalist

Devastating acne during her adolescence left Natalie with low self-esteem. Now, as if the news of her parents’ divorce isn’t enough, Natalie feels like a third wheel with her best friends, is anxious about a...

Woven in Moonlight

by Isabel Ibañez

2021 Finalist

After the Indigenous Llacsans rebel and overthrow Illustrian rule, Ximena’s people are forced into exile. When the Llacsan king demands Illustrian Condesa’s hand in marriage, Ximena takes her pla...

The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh

by Candace Fleming

2021 WINNER!

Charles Lindberg is one of the most complicated icons in American history. Celebrated aviator, dogged scientist, heartbroken father, Nazi sympathizer, unapologetic eugenicist, Candance Fleming shows all the facets of a deeply...

All Thirteen: The Incredible Cave Rescue of the Thai Boys' Soccer Team

by Christina Soontornvat

2021 Finalist

On June 23, 2018, twelve young soccer players and their coach became trapped by flood waters in a northern Thailand cave. Clear maps, diagrams, photography and first hand interviews capture every detail of the rescue o...

The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival

by Amra Sabic-El-Rayess with Laura L. Sullivan

2021 Finalist

In 1992 Amra's life is forever changed when Serbian troops seize her hometown of Bihac, Bosnia. Her family and other Muslims face hate, violence, and unimaginable horrors of war. A enligh...

How We Got to the Moon

by John Rocco

2021 Finalist

This extensively researched and illustrated account demonstrates the magnitude of ingenuity and creativity involved in the years' long effort to reach the moon. John Rocco's exquisite illustrations and diagrams ...

You Call This Democracy? How to Fix Our Democracy and Deliver Power to the People

by Elizabeth Rusch

2021 Finalist

From gerrymandering and the electoral college to voter suppression and unequal representation, Elizbeth Rusch breaks down some of the most important problems facing our country's representative democracy. This nonpa...

Watercress

by Andrew Wang; illustrated by Jason Chin

2022 WINNER!

Have You Ever Seen a Flower?

written and illustrated by Shawn Harris

2022 Honor Book

Mel Fell

written and illustrated by Corey R. Tabor

2022 Honor Book

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre

by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Floyd Cooper

2022 Honor Book

Wonder Walkers

written and illustrated by Micha Archer

2022 Honor Book

Firekeeper's Daughter

by Angeline Boulley

2022 WINNER!

Daunis, a half-Ojibwe, half-white former hockey player/aspiring scientist never feels fully settled in either her reservation or the outside world. She finds herself even more torn when she witnesses her best friend&rsqu...

Concrete Rose

by Angie Thomas

2022 Honor Book

If there's one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it's that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King...

Last Night at the Telegraph Club

by Malinda Lo

2022 Honor Book

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the feeling took root – that desire to look, to move closer, to touch. Whenever it started growing, it definitely bloomed the moment she and Kathleen Mi...

Revolution in Our Time: The Black Panther Party’s Promise to the People

by Kekla Magoon

2022 Honor Book

Revolution in Our Time puts the Panthers in the proper context of Black American history, from the first arrival of enslaved people to the Black Lives Matter movement of today. Kekla Magoon's eye-opening work invites...

Starfish

by Lisa Fipps

2022 Honor Book

Bullied and shamed her whole life for being fat, twelve-year-old Ellie finally gains the confidence to stand up for herself, with the help of some wonderful new allies.

The Last Cuentista

by Donna Barba Higuera

2022 WINNER!

Red, White, and Whole

by Rajani LaRocca

2022 Honor Book

A Snake Falls To Earth

by Darcie Little Badger

2022 Honor Book

Too Bright To See

by Kyle Lukoff

2022 Honor Book

Watercress

by Andrew Wang; illustrated by Jason Chin

2022 Honor Book

The People's Painter: How Ben Shahn Fought For Justice With Art

by Cynthia Levinson; illustrated by Evan Turk

2022 WINNER!

The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London's Poop Pollution Problem

by Colleen Paeff; illustrated by Nancy Carpenter

2022 Honor Book

Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown

by Steve Sheinkin

2022 Honor Book

We Are Still Here!: Native American Truths Everyone Should Know

by Traci Sorrel; illustrated by Frané Lessac

2022 Honor Book

Summertime Sleepers: Animals that Estivate

by Melissa Stewart; illustrated by Sarah S. Brannen

2022 Honor Book

Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre

by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Floyd Cooper

2022 Honor Book

Firekeeper's Daughter

by Angeline Boulley

2022 WINNER!

Daunis, a half-Ojibwe, half-white former hockey player/aspiring scientist never feels fully settled in either her reservation or the outside world. She finds herself even more torn when she witnesses her best friend’s murder...

Ace of Spades

by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

2022 Finalist

At Niveus Private Academy, Devon and Chiamaka are the only black students, which makes them targets for a series of anonymous texts revealing...

Vampires, Hearts & Other Dead Things

by Margie Fuston

2022 Finalist

As her father lies gravely ill with pancreatic cancer, Victoria's last desperate hope is to find a vampire in New Orleans, an impossible mission that allows her to process her grief and experience life again.

Me (Moth)

by Amber McBride

2022 Finalist

Aspiring dancer Moth, the Black granddaughter of a Hoodoo root worker, and Sani, a musically talented Navajo boy, embark on a road-trip and together face their demons of grief, depression, and memories of the past.

What Beauty There Is

by Cory Anderson

2022 Finalist

Danger stalks Jack as he attempts to save his brother from foster care and evade his father's old partner, Bardem, looking for his stolen drug money. Who holds the brothers' fates in her hands, but Bardem&...

Ambushed!: The Assassination Plot Against President Garfield

by Gail Jarrow

2022 WINNER!

In this intricately detailed narrative of the assassination of President Garfield, Jarrow uses historical documents, newspaper accounts, and diary entries to create an engaging chronology of events as part of her Medical Fiascoes...

Black Birds in the Sky: The Story and Legacy of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

by Brandy Colbert

2022 Finalist

Colbert contextualizes the Tulsa Race Massacre – which had its 100th anniversary in 2021 – and commemorates the harrowing events using her skillful writing for teen audiences. A well-researched accounting ...

From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry

The Killing of Vincent Chin and the Trial that Galvanized the Asian American Movementby Paula Yoo

2022 Finalist

Yoo weaves an emotional story within a story of a movement that began after the death of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, at the hands of two wh...

In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers

The Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months and Years After the 9/11 Attacksby Don Brown

2022 Finalist

For a new generation living in a post-9/11 era, Brown writes and illustrates the events of the terrorist attack and its immediate aftermath &ndas...

The Woman All Spies Fear: Code Breaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman and Her Hidden Life

by Amy Butler Greenfield

2022 Finalist

With her work buried and credit given to others, female codebreaker Elizebeth Smith Friedman's life and accomplishments are given prime coverage. The book celebrates her intelligence, creativity, and tenacity ...

The Serpent King

by Jeff Zentner

WINNER!

Girl Mans Up

by M-E Girard

Rani Patel In Full Effect

by Sonia Patel

The Smell of Other People's Houses

by Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock

Tell Me Something Real

by Calla Devlin

March: Book 3

by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell

WINNER!

Hillary Rodham Clinton: A Woman Living History

by Karen Blumenthal

In the Shadow of Liberty: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives

by Kenneth C. Davis

Samurai Rising: The Epic Life of Minamoto Yoshitsune

by Pamela S. Turner; illustrated by Gareth Hinds

This Land is Our Land: The History of American Immigration

by Linda Barrett Osborne

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom

by Ilyon Woo

Here is a gripping true story in time for Black History Month. The book recounts how Ellen and William Craft escaped slavery in Georgia through daring, determination, and disguise, with Ellen passing as a wealthy, disabled white man and Willia...

Choosing Brave: Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till, and the Voice That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement

by Angela Joy; illustrated by Janelle Washington

This moving portrait of Mamie Till-Mobley depicts the courage of an individual whose strength in the face of terrible injustice galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. When her son, Emmett Till, was murdered i...

Previously Owned

by Nathan McClain

Nathan McClain teaches at Hampshire College and is Poetry Editor of the Massachusetts Review. In his second poetry collection, he interrogates his speaker’s American heritage, history, and responsibility. Investigating myth, pop...

The Upper World

by Femi Fadugba

This YA title is an exciting debut from Togolese British author Femi Fadugba. A physicist by profession, Fadugba wrote this time-travel thriller, set in south London, which adeptly mixes London slang and quantum physics. Told in a dual narr...

The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family

by Kerri K. Greenidge

A stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that finally reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family. Sarah and Angelina Grimke are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their ...

AphroChic: Celebrating the Legacy of the Black Family Home

by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason

Savor this interior design book featuring the stunning homes of those who have made significant contributions to Black American culture-from chef Alexander Smalls to Don Cheadle and Bridgid Coulter to Danielle Brooks. From a...

The Real Santa

by Nancy Amanda Redd; illustrated by Charnelle Barlow Pinkney

A young Black boy prepares for Christmas, including his favorite tradition of adding to his collection of brown-skinned Santa Claus figurines. As festive preparations continue, the protagonist b...

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

by Linda Villarosa

Chosen as one of the year’s top ten books by the New York Times, this critically important book lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker a...

How You Grow Wings

by Rimma Onoseta

This young adult novel explores the connection between two Nigerian sisters as they go down different paths. Sisters Cheta and Zam deal with complicated family circumstances and a strained relationship with a difficult mother. Neither path...

The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

by Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama offers a series of fresh stories and reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deepe...

Magnolia Flower

by Zora Neale Hurston; adapted by Ibram X. Kendi; illustrated by Loveis Wise

Antiracist scholar Ibram X. Kendi has adapted a short story first published by Zora Neale Hurston in 1925 into a picture book folktale. Narrated by The Mighty River, as told to a ...

Running while Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport that Wasn’t Built for Us

by Alison Mariella Désir

A searing exposé on the whiteness of running. Running saved Alison Désir's life. At rock bottom and searching for meaning and structure, Désir started marathon training, finding that it vastly improved both her physical and mental ...

Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration

by Reuben Jonathan Miller

Reuben Jonathan Miller just received a MacArthur “Genius Award” for his work tracing the long-term consequences that incarceration and re-entry have on the lives of individuals and their families. In his recent...

Root Magic

by Eden Royce

Eden Royce's debut novel is a page-turning middle grade horror story set in South Carolina in the 1960s. Beginning with the death of main character, Jezebel's beloved grandmother, readers are introduced to the traditions of the Gullah people ...

My People: Five Decades of Writing about Black Lives

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an eminent Dean of American journalism, a vital voice whose work chronicled the civil rights movement and the many years since. Spanning datelines in the American South, South Africa, and points in betwee...

Inheritance: A Visual Poem

by Elizabeth Acevedo; illustrated by Andrea Pippins

As we approach the end of Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15), let's shine a light on Afro-Dominican author Elizabeth Acevedo. Acevedo is the author of The Poet X, which was the w...

Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman

by Peter R. Eisenstadt

An inspiration to Martin Luther King Jr., and other civil rights leaders, Howard Thurman was a crucial figure in the history of African Americans in the twentieth century. This book offers a fascinating exploration of the life of thi...

Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future

by Brandi Collins-Dexter

Who are Black skinheads? Brandi Collins-Dexter, a visiting fellow at the Harvard’s Kennedy School and media commentator, introduces readers to voters who gave up on the Democratic Party after Presidents Barack and Joe Bid...

Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide

by Britt Hawthorne with Natasha Yglesias

This timely guide stands out for its intersectional approach to parenting. Author Britt Hawthorne states in her introduction "Many of the parenting books out there focus on individualism-- in this book, I&a...

We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power

by Caleb Gayle

In this largely forgotten chapter of American history, Gayle offers a fascinating look at racial dynamics within the Creek Nation, where for a long period of time, Blacks could become formally adopted and identified fully as Creeks. “Sharp c...

The Hate U Give

by Angie Thomas

This 2017 YA debut from author Angie Thomas depicts a sixteen year old, Starr Carter, dealing with the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend by the police. Starr has to navigate what it means to tell the truth about the incident while...

My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir

by Katherine G. Johnson

The week of the planned launch of NASA’s Artemis I Mission seems an opportune time to promote a memoir by the brilliant mathematician Katherine Johnson. Published shortly after her death in 2020 at age 101, the memoir give...

Hurricane Child

by Kacen Callender

Caroline is considered unlucky because she was born during a hurricane. She has lived her whole life on Water Island, and takes a water taxi every day to her school on St. Thomas (part of the US Virgin Islands). As a young child, she onc...

Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir

by Margo Jefferson

In her memoir Negroland, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Margo Jefferson wrote insightfully about her middle-class Black childhood in the 1950s and ‘60s. In this new memoir, she describes how she escaped the p...

Kings of B'More

by R. Eric Thomas

Best friends Linus and Harrison are two queer black teens living in Baltimore that are both shook when Linus receives news that his family is moving to South Carolina. Harrison, in turn, plans an epic last day in honor of Linus and their ...

Love & Justice: A Journey of Empowerment, Activism, and Embracing Black Beauty

by Laetitia Ky

Filled with beautiful color photographs, this book presents the personal story of artist and activist Laetitia Ky, known for sculpting her own hair to create powerful and joyful artwork that embraces the beauty of Black hair and style, the f...

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy

by Damien Lewis

Josephine Baker, American-born French dancer, singer, and actress, is well known as the first black woman to start in a major motion picture. This new book uncovers a little-known aspect of her life: working as a spy for the British during ...

The Only Black Girls In Town

by Brandy Colbert

Alberta has been the only Black girl in her small town for years, so when Edie, another Black girl, and her family move in across the street, Alberta is excited to finally have a friend who will understand that important piece of her iden...

Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison

by A.J. Verdelle

A.J. Verdelle writes movingly about her more than two decades-long friendship with Chloe Ardelia Wofford, aka Toni Morrison. Thanks to Morrison’s efforts, Verdelle, then a young professor and novelist, was invited to teach at Pri...

Planeta Blu: Rise of Agoo

by Tem Blessed; illustrated by Mike Lariccia

Planeta Blu is a graphic novel created by our own local Amherst talent, Tem Blessed. You might know Tem from their work empowering youth or as a socially conscious hip hop artist. Along with the lush creative ta...

Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from across the African Diaspora

edited by Terry Bryant

James Beard – and NAACP Image Award – winning chef and food activist Terry Bryant presents a rich and fascinating look at the food, culture, history, and people of the African Diaspora, exploring its wide range ac...

My Rainbow

by Trinity and DeShanna Neal; illustrated by Art Twink

My Rainbow is a touching and authentic story which centers a young Black transgender girl named Trinity, who wishes to have longer hair. She expresses to her mother that having longer hair would feel a...

On Juneteenth

by Annette Gordon-Reed

Learn about our newest federal holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, grew up both proudly African American and Texan, and her powerful book is a combinati...

Troublemaker for Justice

by Jacqueline Houtman, Walter Naegle, and Michael G. Long

It's always the right time to learn more about our Queer Black leaders, but as we celebrate Pride this month, it is perhaps the ideal time to shine the light on the accomplishments of Bayar...

The Black History Book

edited by Nemata Amelia Blyden

This illustrated celebration of Black history begins with prehistory and goes to the present. In it, readers will discover the rich and complex history of the peoples of Africa, and the struggles and triumphs of Black culture...

Clean Getaway

by Nic Stone; illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

When Scoob's grandmother shows up unexpectedly in an RV and invites him to go on an adventure together, he jumps at the chance to escape from his strict single father and recent grounding. But as the pa...

Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

by Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman

In the wake of the massacre of Black Americans in Buffalo, we grieve and seek understanding. This new book offers a valuable place to start. The authors explain that the science on race is clear. Common categorie...

Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard

by Echo Brown

Steeped in magical realism and Matrix references, this first-person narrative tells the story of author Echo Brown's own girlhood in Cleveland. Echo struggles to survive some truly difficult circumstances, like poverty, depression, s...

Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families...

by Dorothy E. Roberts

An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change. Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed...

Finding Me

by Viola Davis

The first African American actress to achieve an Academy Award, an Emmy, and two Tony Awards, the "triple crown of acting," Viola Davis has written a candid and inspiring memoir. From her coming of age in Rhode Island to her hard-w...

The Me I Choose To Be

by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley; art by Regis and Kahran Bethencourt

There is much to admire about this gorgeous, affirming picture book, but the photographic illustrations make it feel truly unique and timely. Regis and Kahran Bethencourt, illustrators of Th...

White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America's Darkest Secret

by A. J. Baime

A much-needed new biography of an exceptionally courageous civil rights leader who is too little known today. Walter F. White led two lives: one as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and the NAACP in the early twentieth century; the other as...

Me (Moth)

by Amber McBride

This debut YA novel in verse by Amber McBride was just a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, as well as the Morris Award for new authors. Moth is a teenaged girl, broken and grieving the deaths...

Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration

by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts

A heart-warming book that demonstrates the importance of finding personal joy, even in lives that may be plagued by trauma. The author shows that Black joy is a powerful resource to be drawn upon. She shows how t...

This Book Is Feminist: An Intersectional Primer for Next-gen Changemakers

by Jamia Wilson, illustrated by Aurélia Durand

Fans of Tiffany Jewell's This Book is Anti-Racist may recognize the look and feel of this accessible guide to feminism. Author Jamia Wilson is an activist, writer, speaker, pod-caster, and ...

Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution

by Elie Mystal

Elie Mystal, lawyer, analyst at MSNBC, and legal editor at The Nation, argues that Republicans are wrong when they tell you the First Amendment allows religious fundamentalists to discriminate against gay people who like cake. They're wrong ...

Feminist AF: a Guide to Crushing Girlhood

by Brittney Cooper, Chanel Craft Tanner, and Susana Morris

This is a book I wish had existed when I was a teenager. Written by three Black women who are members of the Crunk Feminist Collective, this guide to crushing girlhood is a fun and relevant way to ...

Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South

by Winfred Rembert; foreword by Bryan Stephenson

The art is this stunning book depicts vivid scenes from the cotton fields and chain gangs of the segregated south to the churches and night clubs of the urban north as it tells of a self-taught artist&ap...

Recognize!: An Anthology Honoring and Amplifying Black Life

by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson

From the stunning cover art to the accessible length of the pieces included in this anthology, Recognize! draws readers into a rich portrait of what it means to be Black in America. As editors Wade Hudson and Cheryl ...

How to Make a Slave and Other Essays

by Jerald Walker

How does a Black professor at a mostly white liberal arts college in Massachusetts experience and confront racism at work and in the community? Our selection for the 2022 On the Same Page Amherst community reading program - How to Make a S...

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip Hop History

by Jeff Chang and Davey D

Jeff Chang's award-winning 2005 history of hip hop has recently been remixed for a young adult audience. Trimmed down in half from its hefty 600 pages, the history has been updated to include the Black Lives Matter moveme...

Angela Davis: An Autobiography

by Angela Davis

Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding a...

One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance

by Nikki Grimes

Nikki Grimes was recently named the recipient of the 2022 Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for Lifetime Achievement. Author of over 77 books for young people, her works include poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. We love so many of h...

Reclamation: Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson, and a Descendant's Search...

by Gayle Jessup White

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson tells how her family's "secret" - carried for generations - was, through her efforts, proven and acknowledged by the wider world, including the historic Monticello site. She th...

Black Birds in the Sky

by Brandy Colbert

The Tulsa race massacre, which took place one hundred years ago in 1921, is a part of our American history that has escaped widespread attention until recently. After watching the pilot episode of HBO's Watchmen, which starts out...

Our African Unconscious: The Black Origins of Mysticism and Psychology

by Edward Bruce Bynum

This third edition demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically - a primordial African unconscious. Edward Bruce Bynum, Ph.D...

The People Remember

by Ibi Zoboi; illustrated by Loveis Wise

Poetic text by National Book Award Finalist Ibi Zoboi and expansive art by Loveis Wise bring the seven principles of Kwanzaa to life in The People Remember. Honoring the oral tradition of Black history being passed ...

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery across America

by Clint Smith

The New York Times has just named this book to their list of the top ten books of 2021. We strongly agree with their choice; Americans urgently need to reckon with the legacy of slavery and with the many monuments to our slave-holding past. ...

A Song Below Water

by Bethany C. Morrow

Set in Portland, Oregon, this young adult novel centers on 16 year old Tavia and her best friend, Effie. Tavia and Effie are both Black girls and have to deal with normal high school things like exes and classmate rivalries. But Tavia ...

The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth

by Kristin Henning

Drawing upon 25 years of experience representing Black youth in Washington D.C.'s juvenile court, attorney Kris Henning confronts America's irrational, manufactured fears of Black youth and clearly shows that they recei...

Molly of Denali: Party Moose

based on a television episode written by Kathy Waugh

This beginner-reader, based on the popular PBS Kids show, features an Alaskan Native kid named Molly. Molly is joined by her best friends Trini and Tooey on many adventures in beautiful Alaska. They are ...

We Were There: The Third World Women’s Alliance and the Second Wave

by Patricia Romney

Congratulations to local author Patricia Romney, whose new book has received glowing advance reviews. From 1970 to 1980, the Third World Women’s Alliance was one of the earliest groups advocating for what came to be known as in...

Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask

by Anton Treuer

In our antiracist efforts to dismantle white supremacy, we have to also look at this country's relationship with its Indigenous communities. Both Black and Indigenous people have suffered under white-led systems of power for centur...

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature

by Farah Jasmine Griffin

Anyone who loves the works of the acclaimed writer Toni Morrison will savor this account by Farah Jasmine Griffin of how she found her father and herself through rereading Morrison’s books. Griffin’s beloved fat...

Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism

by Safiya Umoja Noble

Safiya Umoja Noble was selected in September as one of this year’s MacArthur (Genius) Award winners for her important work about the harm being done to society by search engines. Google and similar online tools may look neut...

White Smoke

by Tiffany Jackson

Need a spooky read to get you in the mood for Halloween? Tiffany Jackson's latest young adult novel White Smoke will do the trick. High schooler Mari is not pleased that her family uprooted from California and moved her to some ...

Breaking It Down: Audition Techniques for Actors of the Global Majority

by Nicole Hodges Persley and Monica White Ndounou

Racism is present in all types of employment, including acting. Here is an acting guide specifically for people who are nonwhite. The authors’ practical advice focuses on stage audition skills but...

Sprouting Wings: The True Story of James Herman Banning

by Louisa Jaggar & Shari Becker, illustrated by Floyd Cooper

This engaging picture book biography tells the story of James Herman Banning, the first African American pilot to complete a flight across the country in 1932. Captivated by flight from child...

You Can Keep that to Yourself: A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Int

by Adam Smyer

The title tells the reader all they need to know about this short little book: it is direct, it does not mince words, it is humorous while being about a deadly serious topic. Words and phrases—from “Ally” to &...

The Parker Inheritance

by Varian Johnson

Varian Johnson's The Parker Inheritance is a masterpiece of a middle grade novel wrapping mystery, history, friendship, and family into one seamless narrative. Beginning with a simple premise - a summer, two friends, and the trea...

All that She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

by Tiya Miles

The story behind this heart-breaking book began when Rose, an enslaved woman in 1850s South Carolina, gave her young daughter, Ashley, a sack containing among other items a braid of hair and a handful of pecans on the eve of Ashley's...

Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds

Last year, Jason Reynolds adapted his award-winning young adult novel in verse into a graphic novel beautifully illustrated by Danica Novgordoff. This short but powerful story takes you on an elevator ride down filled with ghosts and diff...

We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy

by Natalie Baszile

Harvest season is a good time to explore Black people’s connection to the land, and this beautiful volume does just that, covering the years from Emancipation to the present. In the 1920s, there were over one million black farm...

The King of Kindergarten

by Derrick Barnes illustrated by Vanessa Brantley-Newton

Whether you're feeling excited, anxious, curious (or all three at once!) this empowering first day of school picture book will give readers a boost of confidence. From the moment he wakes up on the f...

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred

by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is one of the leading physicists of her generation, at work on the origins of spacetime at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics. She is also one of the fewer than one hundred Black w...

Blackout

by Dhonielle Clayton, et al.

This YA collection of short stories written by YA superstars such as Angie Thomas, Tiffany Jackson, Nic Stone, and Nicola Yoon is super charming. The stories sweetly entangle during a NYC summer heatwave as 6 pairs of Black tee...

You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories about Racism

by Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar

This charming and hilarious sister duo take on the challenging topic of racism. Older sister Lacey Lamar lives in Omaha; her younger sibling Amber left their hometown to become a comedy writer for Late Night with Seth Meyers...

One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race

by Yaba Blay

For generations in this country, a black person has been commonly recognized as someone with any known Black ancestry, the “one-drop rule.” This beautiful book explores whether the social and political landscape has changed in recent times. Si...

Tristan Strong Punches a Hole In the Sky

by Kwame Mbalia

If you're seeking a page-turning adventure perfect for summer reading, look no further than Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia. From the eye-catching cover to the final page, the story of relatable protagonist...

Notes from a Young Black Chef: A Memoir

by Kwame Onwuachi

In 2019, Kwame Onwuachi received much praise for his food. Food & Wine magazine named him one of its Best New Chefs, the James Beard Awards christened him Rising Star Chef of the Year, and Esquire chose him as Chef of the Year, identi...

A Blade So Black

by L.L. McKinney

There just aren't many fantasy books with Black kids in them, so I was so psyched to stumble upon the wonderful Nightmare-Verse series. It's an urban fantasy retelling of Alice in Wonderland with some serious Buffy the Va...

Better Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice

by Yusef Salaam

Yusef Salaam was only 15 years old in 1989 when he and four other teens were falsely accused of the brutal rape of a Central Park jogger. He was imprisoned for seven years, but the Central Park Five were not exonerated until 2002 when one o...

When Aidan Became a Brother

by Kyle Lukoff; illustrated by Kaylani Juanita

This 2020 Stonewall Award Winner is about so much more than Aidan's journey of identity. "When Aidan was born, everyone thought he was a girl....But Aidan didn't feel like any kind of gi...

How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir

by Saeed Jones

During Pride Month, we celebrate great memoirs like this one by a highly regarded poet who was raised in the South by a single mother. In a home where sexuality was never discussed, Saeed Jones struggled to understand what it meant to be gay...

All Boys Aren't Blue

by George Johnson

This 2020 memoir manifesto is the perfect coming-of-age read to celebrate pride this month. Johnson explores the meaning of blackness, queerness, and toxic masculinity and he does so with honesty and vulnerability. His casual narrative vo...

Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice

by Scott Ellsworth

This new book is described as the definitive history of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which occurred a century ago. The author has been researching the tragedy for decades, and in recent years served on the city’s reckoning commissi...

Our Skin: A First Conversation about Race

by Megan Madison & Jessica Ralli; art by Isabel Roxas

Research has shown that children begin recognizing race a few months after birth, and that talking about issues like race and gender from the age of two helps children understand what they see, incr...

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

Caste is, in the words of National Public Radio, “a profound achievement of scholarship and research that stands also as a triumph of both visceral storytelling and cogent analysis.” Isabel Wilkerson, the acclaimed a...

Tell Me Who You Are: Sharing our Stories of Race, Culture, and Identity

by Winona Guo and Priya Vulchi

Tell Me Who You Are is a wonderful collection of stories gathered by two teens on their gap year before college. They traveled around the country and asked people how race, culture, and intersectionality had impacted their li...

Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir

by Rebecca Carroll

Everyone interested in transracial adoption would be wise to read this new memoir. The author, a black cultural critic, recounts her story of being adopted as a young child by a white family from rural New Hampshire. She was raised in an...

The History of the Black Population of Amherst, Massachusetts, 1728-1870

by James Avery Smith

Once only available to those visiting our Special Collections, this important book, published in 1999 by the New England Genealogical Society, can now be borrowed and read at home. Using tax lists, probate and land records, town record...

Parenting for Liberation: A Guide for Raising Black Children

by Trina Greene Brown

Parenting For Liberation was launched as a virtual platform in 2016 by activist-mama Trina Greene Brown. In her introduction to this guidebook she states that the blog and podcast were created to "...connect, inspire, and uplift ...

Age of Phillis

by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

For National Poetry Month, we are pleased to highlight this volume of poetry written about Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Award-winning poet Jeffers spent fifteen years research...

Every Body Looking

by Candice Iloh

This young adult novel in verse is the #ownvoices debut from Candice Iloh, a first-generation Nigerian-American author. It's a poetic coming-of-age story that deals with some heavy themes like the protagonist's complicated...

Julian Bond’s Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement

by Julian Bond

How lucky were the students at Harvard and other American universities who were able to take a class with Julian Bond. Along with being a famed civil rights activist, author, chairman of the NAACP, and Georgia state representative and senato...

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life

by Ashley Bryan

Based on an original estate-appraisal document from 1828, Ashley Bryan's poetry gives voices to 11 enslaved individuals, imagining not only their daily lives but their hopes for the future. While the document that inspired these po...

Grieving while Black: An Antiracist Take on Oppression and Sorrow

by Breeshia Wade

The author, a Black end-of-life caregiver and chaplain, looks at the significance of grief to Black people. In particular she connects sorrow to the ongoing trauma of systemic racism. She encourages readers to attend to their grief so that...

Concrete Rose

by Angie Thomas

Concrete Rose is the prequel to the number one New York Times best-seller, The Hate U Give. Set 17 years in the past, it follows Starr's father, Maverick, as he navigates growing up while raising an infant son and having to make di...

The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song

by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Distinguished scholar Henry Louis Gates offers a history of the Black church in America, showing it to be "the Black community's abiding rock and fortress." Gates powerfully demonstrates that the church was a so...

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

This bestseller marks a milestone in the study of African American history. It is the result of research conducted for the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X...

The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read

by Rita L. Hubbard; illustrated by Oge Mora

This picture book biography tells the inspiring story of Mary Walker, who learned to read at the age of 116. Born enslaved in 1848, Walker was emancipated as a teenager, and was gifted a Bible that she longed to ...

Bingo Love

by Tee Franklin; artwork by Jenn St-Onge

If you're looking for the perfect book to read in honor of St. Valentine's Day, check out the young adult graphic novel Bingo Love which is a joyful celebration of Black queer love and an inspiring...

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

by Resmaa Menakem

Resmaa Menakem approaches the problem of racism from his perspective as a therapist. He explains that racism is embedded in the bodies of blacks and whites in this country. Blacks experience everyday threats and respond by fighting, fleei...

Do Lord Remember Me

by Julius Lester

On what would have been his 82nd birthday, we celebrate a distinguished Amherst author, civil rights activist, professor, musician, and photographer. Julius Lester wrote 31 award-winning children’s books as well as nonfiction and fiction f...

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature

by J. Drew Lanham

In honor of National Bird Day (January 5), we have chosen a remarkable memoir published in 2016 by an African-American birder and naturalist. The Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University, J. Drew Lanham has writte...

Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

edited by Ibi Zoboi

This 2019 anthology of young adult short stories is a wonderful offering of modern Black voices. Featuring 16 excellent Black authors such as Nic Stone and Jason Reynolds, my favorite part of reading this was the diversity of stories to...

The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X

by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

This highly acclaimed new book is winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview...

You Can Keep That to Yourself

A Comprehensive List of What Not to Say to Black People, for Well-Intentioned People of Pallor by Adam Smyer

How do you write something humorous about racism in America? If you are Adam Smyer, an attorney, martial artist, and mediocre bass player,...

King and the Dragonflies

by Kacen Callender

This bittersweet middle grade book takes us to the bayous of small town Louisiana where homophobia and racism are very real things that twelve year old Kingston James must deal with. Mourning the sudden death of his older brother, King s...

The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir

by Michele Harper

The author of this eloquent memoir is an ER doctor and a practitioner of yoga and meditation. Here she recounts how she overcame racist colleagues, a background of domestic violence, and the trauma of seeing suffering people every day at ...

The Truths We Hold: An American Journey

by Kamala D. Harris

The results of the presidential election are now acknowledged by most Americans, and for the first time a woman of color was on the winning ticket! Kamala Harris, the daughter of an economist from Jamaica and a cancer researcher from In...

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States for Young People

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz; adapted by Jean Mendoza & Debbie Reese

In our antiracist efforts to dismantle white supremacy, we have to also look at this country's relationship with its Indigenous communities. Both Black and Indigenous people have suffered ...

Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

by Ruha Benjamin

An African American Studies scholar turns a bright light on technology, illuminating how racism and inequality underpin its newest creations. From everyday apps to complex algorithms, Ruha Benjamin cuts through tech-industry hype to unders...

From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century

by William A. Darity, Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen

Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. William Darity, an economist at Duke University and an Amherst native, and folklorist Kirsten Mullen toge...

The City We Became

by N. K. Jemisin

Congratulations to N. K. Jemisin for being named one of this year’s MacArthur “geniuses!” The MacArthur Foundation describes her as “a speculative fiction writer exploring deeply human questions about structural racism, environmental crise...

Dread Nation

by Justina Ireland

This 2018 young adult historical fiction by Justina Ireland is the perfect spooky October read to get you in the mood for Halloween. Why? Because there are zombies! Zombies! Set just after the Civil War, this is a fun and action-packed s...

Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land

by Leah Penniman

At a time when Americans are closely examining all aspects of our society for racism, those of us interested in food issues would do well to start with this remarkable book. Author Leah Penniman, the 2019 recipient of the James Beard Found...

Say Her Name

by Zetta Elliott; illustrated by Loveis Wise

Turn to the Acknowledgements section in the final pages of this short 100 page collection of poetry-activism and you will see that the author knowingly divines that there will be more black women to mourn and re...

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

by Martha S. Jones

According to conventional wisdom, American women’s campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this women’s movement was an overwhelmingly ...

Towers Falling

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Fifth grade student Dèja is starting the year at a new school in Brooklyn after her family moves into a shelter. Although the first day is filled with challenges, it is also filled with promise: a teacher who connects to her student...

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir

by Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey is a former U.S. Poet Laureate and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She earned her M.F.A. at UMass Amherst. Memorial Drive is her first book that is not poetry. This memoir was written because, in the aut...

One Crazy Summer (One Crazy Summer Series, Book 1)

by Rita Garcia Williams

One Crazy Summer follows the three Gaither sisters as they travel from Brooklyn to Oakland in the summer of 1968, where they hope to get to know the mother who left them. Delphine, the oldest sister, takes on many roles in her famil...

Brother Robert: Growing Up with Robert Johnson

by Annye C. Anderson with Preston Lauterbach; foreword by Elijah Wald

We are excited to offer this new weekly feature and to share a wide array of books about Black lives in America. It seems appropriate to begin with a new book by a well-known Amherst res...

Gordon Parks: How the Photographer Captured Black and White America

by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Jamey Christoph

This picture book biography introduces readers to the life and work of multi-talented artist Gordon Parks. It traces Parks’ path to becoming one of the most important photographers of the 20th ce...

March: Book 1, 2, and 3

by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin; illustrated by Nate Powell

The nation is mourning the death of a civil rights hero and “conscience of the Congress,” Representative John Lewis. Adults and young adults wanting to know more about Lewis and the civil rights mo...

This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope

by Shayla Lawson

Writing in a fierce and humorous voice, Shayla Lawson provides a memoir in essays that is also a celebration of black women’s lives and culture. She knows the richness and resilience of black girl culture (its irony and rebellion!) and the...

Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You

by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

In this 2020 YA remix of Ibram X. Kendi’s work (2016’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America), Jason Reynolds is quick to point out that this isn’t a history book. That said, he d...

Horace Pippin, American Modern

by Anne Monahan

Horace Pippin, sometimes described as an American Henri Rousseau, was a disabled veteran (WWI) without formal art training who began painting in his 40s and soon became famous in the art world. His works depict WWI, black families, Abraham ...

Never Forgotten

by Patricia McKissack; artwork by Leo & Diane Dillon

Presented in verse poems accompanied by powerful illustrations, Never Forgotten tells the story of a Mende blacksmith who raises his son with love and the help of the four elements — Earth,...

Fortune's Bones: The Manumission Requiem

by Marilyn Nelson

Every Body Looking

by Candice Iloh

Candice Iloh tells the story of a girl we know as Ada — a mixed race dancer in contemporary America. As a semi-autobiographical work, Iloh's story focuses on Ada's internal processing as she deals with the troubl...

A Wreath For Emmett Till

by Marilyn Nelson; illustrated by Philippe Lardy

A Wreath for Emmett Till is a collection of fourteen interlinked sonnets; the last line of one becomes the first line of the next. The author creates a wreath of remembrance of suffering while celebrating li...

Long Way Down

by Jason Reynolds

Jason Reynolds is one of those authors whose every word is placed precisely where it needs to be. Long Way Down is the kind of story you feel in your chest the whole way through, packaged in a simple, elegant, perfect frame narrative. You...

Punching the Air

by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam

A beautiful and gnawing narrative poem written in verse, Punching the Air is the personal perspective of Amal Shahid, an artist and a poet, who is tried as an adult and wrongfully convicted of a crime at the age of sixteen.

Exa...

The Black Flamingo

by Dean Atta

This coming of age novel, told in verse, tells the story of Michael Angeli as he navigates his cultural identity as well as his emerging sexuality. Throughout the course of this inspiring quick read, Michael enters college and discovers the Dr...

A Song for Gwendolyn Brooks

by Alice Faye Duncan; illustrated by Xia Gordon

This biography in verse introduces us to the brilliant poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Author (and school librarian!) Alice Faye Duncan weaves her own poetry with poems by Brooks to paint a picture of childhood on the...

Words With Wings

by Nikki Grimes

Words With Wings is a captivating, beautifully written work of fiction by Nikki Grimes that conveys an entire novel’s worth of events, emotions, and milestones through a series of short illuminating poems. In this novel, daydreame...

The Women Who Caught the Babies: A Story of African American Midwives

by Eloise Greenfield; illustrated by Daniel Minter

In this story in verse, Eloise Greenfield paints a vivid portrait of Black midwives across hundreds of years. Paired with artwork by Daniel Minter, readers follow the history of midwifery, including Greenf...

The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot, and Score in This Game Called Life

by Kwame Alexander

This short book weaves together inspirational quotes, bios, and poetry to talk about life and its challenges through sports metaphors. While it's not entirely about basketball (Kwame talks about his own experience playing tennis...

Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life

by Ashley Bryan

Ashley Bryan's poetic portraits, inspired by an original estate-appraisal document from 1828, give voices to 11 enslaved individuals by imagining not only their daily lives but their hopes for the future. Bryan is as prolific as he...

Absalom, Absalom!

Far From the Madding Crowd

Song of Solomon

Daniel Deronda

My Man Jeeves

Our Mutual Friend

Loving

The Three Theban Plays

Frankenstein

The Age of Innocence

My Ántonia

Stories by Katherine Mansfield

Wives and Daughters

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Back

The Last Chronicle of Barset

Tom Jones

Walden and Other Writings

The Annotated Persuasion

Anna Karenina

The Tempest

Washington Square

Great Expectations

Madame Bovary

Beloved

Mill on the Floss

Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Pale Fire

Bleak House

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Middlemarch

Light in August

Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother, and forging her ow...

Black Cake

by Charmaine Wilkerson

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 Cal...

The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being. After the tragic death his beloved musician father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begin...

Unsettled Ground

by Claire Fuller

At fifty-one years old, twins Jeanie and Julius still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation in the English countryside. The cottage they have shared their entire lives is their only protection against the modernizing world around...

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

by Gail Honeyman

Reviewed by Janet:Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine, thank you very much. She is quite settled and safe in her routine, keeping herself to herself, moving from work to home and back, with 2 bottles of vodka on the weekend. Yet her carefu...

Call Me American: A Memoir

by Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop artists like Michael Jackson and watching films starring action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines lan...

Normal People

by Sally Rooney

At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He's popular and well-adjusted, star of the school football team, while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her job at...

Out of Darkness, Shining Light

by Petina Gappah

The captivating story of the loyal men and women who ensured explorer and missionary Dr. Livingstone's remains, papers, and maps could be returned home to England.

The Limits of the World

by Jennifer Acker

Reviewed by Linda:Jennifer Acker of Amherst College is editor of the school's literary magazine The Common and organizer of LitFest, which brings distinguished writers to campus each spring. This elegantly written and thought-provoking no...

Five-Carat Soul

by James McBride

An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American ...

There There

by Tommy Orange

Reviewed by Janet:

This powerful novel begins as a series of loosely connected short stories, but turns into something so much more in this exploration of the plight of the urban Native American. Each of the characters follows their own path...

Little Fires Everywhere

by Celeste Ng

Reviewed by Janet:

When things don’t go to plan in the planned community of Shaker Heights, Elena Richardson finds herself struggling to make sense of it all. The secrets she uncovers about her tenants Mia and Pearl threaten to disrupt her own...

The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

Reviewed by Linda:Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, this novel is for and about writers, teachers of writing, and those who love fine writing. The narrator is a woman who loses her beloved literary mentor to suicide and finds h...

All You Can Ever Know: A Memoir

by Nicole Chung

Chung investigates the mysteries and complexities of her transracial adoption in this chronicle of unexpected family for anyone who has struggled to figure out where they belong.

The Mothers

by Brit Bennett

This dazzling debut novel tells a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community — and the things that ultimately haunt us most.

Asymmetry

by Lisa Halliday

A first novel by an award-winning writer explores the imbalances that spark and sustain dramatic human relations, tracing the overlapping stories of a young American editor's relationship with a famous older writer, an unexpected New York ...

Small Fry

by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

A frank, smart and captivating memoir by the daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs. Born on a farm and named in a field by her parents — artist Chrisann Brennan and Steve Jobs — Lisa Brennan-Jobs's childhood unfolded in a rapidly changi...

A Place for Us

by Fatima Farheen Mirza

A Place for Us is a deeply moving and resonant story of love, identity, and belonging. As an Indian wedding gathers a family back together, parents Rafiq and Layla must reckon with the choices their children have made. There is Hadi...

The Locals

by Jonathan Dee

Mark Firth is a home builder in Howland, Massachusetts in the early 2000s who, after being swindled by a finanical advisor, feels opportunity passing him by. In the paranoid days after 9/11, a New York money manager, Philip Hadi, moves his ...

They May Not Mean To, But They Do

by Cathleen Schine

Joy Bergman is not slipping into old age with the quiet grace her children, Molly and Daniel, would prefer. She won't take their advice, and she won't take an antidepressant. Her marriage to their father, Aaron, has lasted through health...

Moonglow

by Michael Chabon

A man bears witness to his grandfather's deathbed confessions, which reveal his family's long-buried history and his involvement in a mail-order novelty company, World War II, and the space program.

Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

Reviewed by Linda:

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, this novel follows three generations of an African American family in Mississippi over the course of a few days. Ward, a two-time winner of the NBA, writes powerfully of how p...

Future Home of the Living God

by Louise Erdrich

A tale set in a world of reversing evolution and a growing police state follows pregnant thirty-two-year-old Cedar Hawk Songmaker, who investigates her biological family while awaiting the birth of a child who may emerge as a member of a ...

The Music Shop

by Rachel Joyce

It's 1988. The CD has arrived. Sales of the shiny new disks are soaring on high streets in cities across the country. Meanwhile, down a dead-end street, Frank's music shop stands small and brightly lit, jam-packed with records of every kind...

Walking Lions

by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

After neurosurgeon Eitan Green hits and kills an African migrant while driving on a deserted road late at night, the victim's wife tracks him down and confronts him, and her price for silence shatters his safe existence.

All Grown Up

by Jami Attenberg

Hiding the truth about her unhappiness and struggles with anxiety from everyone including her family, best friend, and therapist, Andrea Bern joins her loved ones in a reevaluation of family strength in the wake of her newborn niece's hea...

When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi

Reviewed by Janet:

Paul Kalanithi was a promising young neurosurgeon on the verge of completing his residency. A talented doctor, he sought to connect with his patients as individuals, not merely problems to be fixed in surgery. Yet a diag...

News of the World

by Paulette Jiles

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her ...

Home Fire

by Kamila Shamsie

From an internationally acclaimed novelist, the suspenseful and heartbreaking story of a family ripped apart by secrets and driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences. Isma is free. After years of watching out for h...

The Locals

by Jonathan Dee

Reviewed by Linda:

I once met a librarian from the Berkshires who told me that many of the new houses in his hometown have helicopter pads in the backyards. I thought of him as I devoured Jonathan Dee’s new novel about a small Berkshire town...

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

by Jill Lepore

This cultural history of Wonder Woman traces the character's creation and enduring popularity, drawing on interviews and archival research to reveal the pivotal role of feminism in shaping her seven-decade story.

Pachinko

by Min Jin Lee

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is sav...

Be Frank with Me

by Julia Claiborne Johnson

Reclusive literary legend M. M. 'Mimi' Banning has been holed up in her Bel Air mansion for years. But after falling prey to a Bernie Madoff-style ponzi scheme, she's flat broke. Now Mimi must write a new book for the first time ...

Strangers in Their Own Land

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country – a stronghold of the conserva...

Man at the Helm

by Nina Stibbe

When her charmed life is shattered by her father's abandonment, young Lizzie is forced to move to a gossipy, disapproving village where her sister and she resolve to find a new man for their dysfunctional mother.

Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

Shocking her blueblood political family by volunteering for the war effort in 1939 London, socialite Mary teaches evacuated and marginalized children and bonds with her employer, Tom, before their romance is challenged by a painful love tri...

The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between

by Hisham Matar

In 2012, after the overthrow of Qaddafi, the acclaimed novelist Hisham Matar journeyed to his native Libya after an absence of thirty years. When he was twelve, Matar and his family went into political exile. Eight years later Matar’s fathe...

Lab Girl

by Hope Jahren

This debut memoir by an award-winning paleobiologist traces her childhood in her father's laboratory, her longtime relationship with a brilliant but wounded colleague, and the remarkable discoveries they have made both in the lab and during ...

My Brilliant Friend

by Elena Ferrante

The story begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets, the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow — and as their paths ...

The Summer Before the War

by Helen Simonson

Arriving in the village of Rye, England, in 1914, Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good family, becomes the first female teacher of Latin at the local school and falls in love with her sponsor's nephew.

The State We're In: Maine Stories

by Ann Beattie

An award-winning short story master presents a collection of new, linked tales that impart the diverse perspectives of women orbiting around a disaffected teen who is staying with relatives while attending summer school.

The Marriage of Opposites

by Alice Hoffman

Dreaming of an exotic life in Paris while coming of age in a St. Thomas refugee community, young Rachel is forced to marry a widower before falling scandalously in love and becoming the mother of Impressionist master Camille Pissarro.

Nora Webster

by Colm Tóibín

Set in Wexford, Ireland, Colm Tóibín's superb seventh novel introduces the formidable, memorable, and deeply moving Nora Webster. Widowed at forty, with four children and not enough money, Nora has lost the love of her life, Maurice, the man...

The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

by Kate Andersen Brower

An intimate account of White House life from the perspectives of the service staff from the Kennedys through the Obamas details their friendships, marriages, everyday activities, and elaborate state dinners.

Dimestore: A Memoir

by Lee Smith

In her first work of nonfiction, an author recounts her early days in the small coal town of Grundy, Virginia — and beyond.

Three Strong Women

by Marie NDiaye; translated by John Fletcher

The U.S. release of a Prix Goncourt-winning novel follows the intertwined stories of three women who discover the power of saying no, including a French-born lawyer who must save a victim of her tyrannical fathe...

Euphoria

by Lily King

Frustrated by his research efforts and depressed over the death of his brothers, Andre Banson runs into two fellow anthropologists, a married couple, in 1930s New Guinea and begins a tumultuous relationship with them.

A Strangeness in My Mind

by Orhan Pamuk

Selling Turkish spirits on the street and dreaming of becoming rich in a rapidly developing Istanbul, street youth Melvut Karatas elopes with the wrong woman and builds a family over decades marked by a series of dead-end jobs and an endurin...

Alice in Bed

by Judith Hooper

Reviewed by Linda:

In Amherst author Judith Hooper’s fascinating work of historical fiction it wasn’t hysteria that kept the brilliant Alice James trapped in bed. Sister to the famous writer Henry and psychologist William, she suffered as m...

Deep South

by Paul Theroux

One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked. Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklor...

Delicious

by Ruth Reichl

Working as a public relations hotline consultant for a once-prestigious culinary magazine, Billie Breslin unexpectedly enters a world of New York restaurateurs and artisanal purveyors while reading World War II letters exchanged between a pl...

The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

Life in a West Bank settlement from one of Israel's most acclaimed young novelists, skewering the complex, often absurd reality of life in Israel, the West Bank settlers, and the nation's relationship to the United States.

Dear Life

by Alice Munro

This collection of stories illuminates moments that shape a life, from a dream or a sexual act to simple twists of fate that turn a person out of his or her accustomed path and into another way of being. Set in the countryside and towns of L...

Some Luck

by Jane Smiley

An epic novel that spans thirty years in the lives of a farm family in Iowa, telling a parallel story of the changes taking place in America from 1920 through the early 1950s.

Ladies of the House

by Lauren Edmondson

One Crazy Summer

by Rita Williams-Garcia

The House at Riverton

by Kate Morton

Wives and Daughters

by Elizabeth Gaskell

Dodger

by Terry Pratchett

Sense and Sensibility

by Jane Austen

Mansfield Park

written and directed by Patricia Rozema

My Jane Austen Summer: A Season in Mansfield Park

by Cindy Jones

White Teeth

by Zadie Smith

Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves

by Adam Hochschild

The Book of Night Women

by Marlon James

Mansfield Park

The Mysteries of Udolpho

Northanger Abbey

Excellent Women

Longbourn

Jane Austen's England

Bridget Jones's Diary

Jane Austen: A Life

Pride and Prejudice

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters

by Steven Pinker

Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenm...

The Hundred-Foot Journey

directed by Lasse Hallström

Hassan is a culinary ingenue with the gastronomic equivalent of perfect pitch. Displaced from their native India, his family settles in a quaint village in the south of France. They plan to open an Indian restaurant &am...

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

One of the most important books to appear in years. The author, who also wrote The Warmth of Other Suns, looks at how an unspoken caste system has shaped America and compares it to caste systems in India and in Nazi Germany. There are a...

These Truths: A History of the United States

by Jill Lepore

In the most ambitious one-volume American history in decades, award-winning historian Jill Lepore offers a magisterial account of the origins and rise of a divided nation, an urgently needed reckoning with the beauty and tragedy of American ...

A Gentleman in Moscow

by Amor Towles

Reviewed by Linda:An utterly charming and moving tale of a Russian count, one Alexander Ilyich Rostov, who is called before a Bolshevik tribunal in 1922 for having written an incendiary poem, and is sentenced to house arrest at the Metropol,...

A Little Chaos

directed by Alan Rickman

A romantic drama following Sabine (Kate Winslet), a strong-willed and talented landscape designer, who is selected to build one of the main gardens at King Louis XIV's new palace at Versailles. In her new position of power...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

Reviewed by Linda:This gripping history of human beings begins 70,000 years ago by asking why we sapiens are the only species of human — there were at least six that scientists know of so far — still in existence. T...

Full Mouth: Poems about Food

by Sara Eddy

“Amid the many delicious feasts contained in Full Mouth — ranging from caviar and oysters to donuts and dumplings — you’ll find the “sweet improbable globes” of oranges, and the batte...

Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide

by Tony Horwitz

The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and ...

The Man Who Invented Christmas (streaming video)

directed by Bharat Nalluri

A film about the magical journey that led to the creation of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christopher Plummer), Tiny Tim, and other classic characters from A Christmas Carol. Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) mixed real-life inspirations with h...

A Long Petal of the Sea

by Isabel Allende

In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them...

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II

by Sonia Purnell

Reviewed by Linda:Open this book and meet a truly remarkable woman, one who was instrumental in liberating France from the Nazis. Virginia Hall was considered a most unlikely candidate to be a spy: a socialite from Baltimore who had a pros...

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

by Isabel WilkersonIn this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern an...

My Afternoons with Margueritte (Le Tête en Friche) (streaming video)

directed by Jean BeckerThis film stars Gerard Depardieu who plays Germain, a 45-year-old, illiterate handyman. Margueritte is a lovely 95-year-old lady who loves any good book to share with others. The two meet in the afternoons where Margueritte reads an...

Becoming Astrid (streaming video)

directed by Pernille Fischer Christensen

This film follows the early life of the Swedish children author, Astrid Lindgren. She is considered to be the world’s third most-translated children’s author. She has written more than a 100 titl...

1985 (streaming video)

directed by Yen Tan

This film is shot on black-and-white super 16mm film and centers on a pivotal time in America during the first wave of the AIDS crisis. Adrian returns to Texas to celebrate Christmas and reconnect with his family. Unresolved issues forc...

A Man Called Ove

by Fredrik Backman

In this bestselling and delightfully quirky debut novel from Sweden, a grumpy yet loveable man finds his solitary world turned on its head when a boisterous young family moves in next door.

Elephant Company

by Vicki Croke

The remarkable story of James Howard "Billy" Williams, whose uncanny rapport with the world’s largest land animals transformed him from a carefree young man into the charismatic war hero known as Elephant Bill.

Call Me American: A Memoir

by Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop artists like Michael Jackson and watching films starring action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines lan...

The Improvisatore

by Hans Christian Andersen; translated by Frank Hugus

This semi-autobiographical novel, inspired by Andersen’s travels in Italy, was recently translated by Frank Hugus, Amherst resident and UMass Professor of German & Scandinavian Studies.

The Rosie Project

by Graeme Simsion

Reviewed by Janet:Don Tillman is a socially challenged professor who decides it is time to marry. Being a researcher, he decides to use a specially designed questionnaire for the Wife Project, as he calls it. However, things go contrary t...

The Battle for Christmas

by Stephen Nissenbaum

In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay General Court declared the celebration of Christmas to be a criminal offense. What the Puritans were trying to suppress was a holiday marked by boisterous invasions of the homes of the wealthy. As recentl...

The End of American Childhood

by Paula S. Fass

A sweeping look at the history of American childhood and parenting, from the nation's founding to the present day. Renowned historian Paula Fass shows how, since the beginning of the American republic, independence, self-definition, and in...

Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation

by Cokie Roberts

Cokie Roberts's number one New York Times bestseller, We Are Our Mothers' Daughters, examined the nature of women's roles throughout history and led USA Today to praise her as a "custodian of time-honored values." Her second best...

Sisters In Law

by Linda Hirshman

The relationship between Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — Republican and Democrat, Christian and Jew, western rancher's daughter and Brooklyn girl — transcends party, religion, region, and culture. Strengt...

Coming of Age: My Journey to the Eighties

by Madeleine May Kunin

Many readers are already familiar with Madeleine Kunin, the former three-term governor of Vermont, who served as the deputy secretary of education and ambassador to Switzerland under President Bill Clinton. The topic of this — her mo...

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

by Trevor Noah

Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggl...

The Hidden Life of Trees

by Peter Wohlleben

A forester's fascinating stories, supported by the latest scientific research, reveal the extraordinary world of forests and illustrate how trees communicate and care for each other.

Just Mercy

by Bryan Stevenson

The executive director of a social advocacy group for prisoners tells the story of Walter McMillian, a man condemned to death row for a murder he didn't commit — and explains why justice and mercy must go hand-in-hand.

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West

by Nate Blakeslee

The enthralling story of the rise and reign of O-Six, the celebrated Yellowstone wolf, and the people who loved or feared her. Before men ruled the earth, there were wolves. Once abundant in North America, these majestic creatures were hu...

The Locals

by Jonathan Dee

Reviewed by Linda:I once met a librarian from the Berkshires who told me that many of the new houses in his hometown have helicopter pads in the backyards. I thought of him as I devoured Jonathan Dee’s new novel about a small Berk...

Becoming

by Michelle Obama

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive Whit...

RGB

directed and produced by Betsy West & Julie Cohen

At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a lengthy legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But the unique personal journey of her rise to the na...

The Library Book

by Susan Orlean

Orlean chronicles the LAPL fire and its aftermath to showcase the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives; delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metro...

Revolution Song: A Story of Freedom

by Russell Shorto

In his epic new book, Russell Shorto takes us back to the founding of the American nation, drawing on diaries, letters and autobiographies to flesh out six lives that cast the era in a fresh new light. They include an African man who free...

Let's Take the Long Way Home

by Gail Caldwell

In this moving memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gail Caldwell reflects on her own coming-of-age in midlife, as she learns to open herself to the power and healing of sharing her life with a best friend.

The Hanging Judge

by Michael Ponsor

When a drive-by shooting in Holyoke, Massachusetts, claims the lives of a Puerto Rican drug dealer and a hockey mom volunteering at an inner-city clinic, the police arrest a rival gang member. With no death penalty in Massachusetts, the U...

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia

by Steven Stoll

An original investigation into the rise of the Appalachian homestead explores the impact of coal mining, timber and other industries on victimizing and marginalizing the region, sharing insights into how Appalachia became wrongly associated...

The Stranger in the Woods

by Michael Finkel

For readers of Jon Krakauer and The Lost City of Z, a remarkable tale of survival and solitude — the true story of a man who lived alone in a tent in the Maine woods, never talking to another person and surviving by stealing supplies from...

Moloka'i

by Alan Brennert

Seven-year-old Rachel is forcibly removed from her family's 1890s Honolulu home when she contracts leprosy and is placed in a settlement, where she loses a series of new friends before new medical discoveries enable her to reenter the worl...

Saints for All Occasions

by J. Courtney Sullivan

A sweeping novel about two sisters — one the matriarch of a boisterous Irish Catholic family, the other a cloistered nun, hidden from the world — and the secret that drove them apart.

News of the World

by Paulette Jiles

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an elderly widower and itinerant news reader, is offered fifty dollars to bring an orphan girl, who was kidnapped and raised by Kiowa raiders, from Wichita Falls back to her ...

Mr. and Mrs. Prince

by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

This dual portrait of a pioneering African-American poet and her Revolutionary War veteran husband describes their groundbreaking court battle to retain their land in Vermont and Massachusetts when bigoted neighbors attempted t...

Austin and Mabel

by Polly Longsworth

The romance between Mabel Loomis Todd and Austin Dickinson, the brother of the poet Emily Dickinson, is portrayed in a selection of letters.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

by Jill Lepore

This cultural history of Wonder Woman traces the character's creation and enduring popularity, drawing on interviews and archival research to reveal the pivotal role of feminism in shaping her seven-decade story.

The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House

by Kate Andersen Brower

America's first families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and hea...

Strangers in Their Own Land

by Arlie Russell Hochschild

In Strangers in Their Own Land, the renowned sociologist Arlie Hochschild embarks on a thought-provoking journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country – a stronghold of the conserva...

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

by J.D. Vance

Provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction i...

Born on a Blue Day

by Daniel Tammet

An autistic savant with genius-level mathematical talents describes how he was shunned by his classmates in spite of his super-human capacity for math and language and offers insight into how he experiences the world.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore

by Ilene Beckerman

In a volume originally intended just for friends, the author reflects on her fortunes and misfortunes through the clothes she has worn, clothes that have expressed her hopes and dreams — from her Brownie uniform to her first maternity dr...

The Sixth Extinction

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extin...

The Nightingale

by Kristin Hannah

Reunited when the elder's husband is sent to fight in World War II, French sisters Vianne and Isabelle find their bond as well as their respective beliefs tested by a world that changes in horrific ways.

Fates and Furies

by Lauren Groff

An exhilarating novel about marriage, creativity, art, and perception.

The Job: True Tales from the Life of a New York City Cop

by Steve Osborne

A retired NYPD lieutenant shares the most entertaining and engrossing true stories from his two decades on the beat, including when he mistook a dentist as an armed robbery suspect and a strange request made by the mother of a suspected cr...

An Unmarked Grave

by Charles Todd

When battlefield nurse Bess Crawford, while contending with wounded soldiers and influenza patients, stumbles upon the body of an officer and family friend who has been murdered, she – using her father's connections in the military – search...

All the Light We Cannot See

by Anthony Doerr

A blind French girl on the run from the German occupation and a German orphan-turned-Resistance tracker struggle with their respective beliefs after meeting on the Brittany coast.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

by Atul Gawande

Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Gawande asserts that medicine can comfort and enhanc...

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (DVD)

directed by John Madden

When seven cash-strapped seniors decide to 'outsource' their retirement to a resort in far-off India, friendship and romance blossom in the most unexpected ways.

Mr. Holmes (DVD)

directed by Bill Condon

In 1947, an aging Sherlock Holmes returns from a journey to Japan, where, in search of a rare plant with powerful restorative qualities, he has witnessed the devastation of nuclear warfare. Now, in his remote seaside farmhouse, Holm...

Strangers in Good Company (DVD)

directed by Cynthia Scott

Seven elderly women and their bus driver band together to survive when their bus breaks down in the Quebec countryside. As they draw closer, the women begin to share stories from their pasts.

Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility

by Ellen J. Langer

If we could turn back the clock psychologically, could we also turn it back physically? For more than thirty years, award-winning social psychologist Ellen Langer has studied this provocative question, and now, in Counter Clockwise, she ...

A Master of Djinn

by P. Djèlí Clark

Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark returns to his popular alternate Cairo universe for his fantasy novel debut, A Master of Djinn. Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of A...

Severance

by Ling Ma

After an epidemic causes most New Yorkers to flee, Candace Chen stays behind and continues her routine: going to work, getting paid, and blogging about the deserted city. Eventually, though, Candace will have to leave – putting her at ...

Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

Franny Stone has always been a wanderer. By following the ocean's tides and the birds that soar above, she can forget the losses that have haunted her life. But when the wild she so loves begins to disappear, Franny can no l...

Foundryside

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Sancia Grado is a thief, and a damn good one. And her latest target, a heavily guarded warehouse on Tevanne’s docks, is nothing her unique abilities can’t handle. But unbeknownst to her, Sancia’s been...

The City of Brass

by S. A. Chakraborty

A brilliantly imagined historical fantasy in which a young con artist in eighteenth century Cairo discovers she's the last descendant of a powerful family of djinn healers. With the help of an outcast immortal warrior and a rebellious ...

A Natural History of Dragons

by Marie Brennan

Isabella, Lady Trent, known as the world's preeminent dragon naturalist, writes her memoir detailing how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and of her thrilling expedition to the perilous mountains of...

Green Rider

by Kristen Britain

After being expelled from school, spoilt Karigan G'ladheon meets a rider dying from an arrow wound who gives her a magic brooch and a message for his king. So begins a life of adventure which transforms Karigan into an exemplary heroine....

The Tethered Mage

by Melissa Caruso

CONTROL THE MAGIC, CONTROL THE WORLD. In the Raverran Empire, magic is scarce and those born with power are strictly controlled — taken as children and conscripted into the Falcon Army. Zaira has lived her life on the streets to...

The Immortals

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

A high quality contemporary fantasy novel that will appeal to a wide range of readers from fans of American Gods to kids who grew up reading Percy Jackson. The Relentless One, the Bearer of the Bow, the Untamed... those are only a f...

Going Postal

by Terry Pratchett

Arch-swindler Moist Van Lipwig never believed his confidence crimes were hanging offenses — until he found himself with a noose tightly around his neck, dropping through a trapdoor, and falling into — a government job...

Existence

by David Brin

In a future world dominated by a neural-link web where people can tune into live events and revolutions can be instantly sparked, an active alien communication device is discovered in orbit around the Earth, triggering an international upheav...

Storm Front

by Jim Butcher

A modern-day mage and consultant to the police finds his stale life suddenly enlivened by the presence of a rival in the black arts.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction (32nd Annual Collection)

edited by Gardner Dozois

A selection of thirty-six of the best science fiction stories of the year from such authors as Nancy Kress, Cory Doctorow, Elizabeth Bear, Ian McDonald, Lauren Beukes, Michael Stanwick, Peter Watts, Alastair Reynolds, and Ken Liu.

The Belgariad (Volume 1)

by David Eddings

The Orb protecting the West from the evil god Torak has been stolen and must be reclaimed in this fast-paced and dramatic epic fantasy series. At the center of these banter-filled stories of good and evil, Gods and Kings, monsters and prop...

Wool

by Hugh Howey

In a ruined and toxic landscape, a community exists in a giant silo underground, hundreds of stories deep. In a society full of regulations meant to protect the community, Sheriff Holston unexpectedly breaks the greatest taboo of all: he asks...

Age of Myth

by Michael Sullivan

Michael Sullivan's trailblazing career began with the breakout success of his Riyria series: full-bodied, spellbinding fantasy adventures whose imaginative scope and sympathetic characters won a devoted readership and comparisons to fan...

The Light of Other Days

by Arthur C. Clarke

A breakthrough in quantum physics allows all human beings to spy on each other and to look back into the past, but the human race may not be ready to handle all the ramifications of the scientific innovation.

River of Stars

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Ren Daiyan was just a boy when he took the lives of seven men while guarding an imperial magistrate of Kitai. That moment on a lonely road changed his life — in entirely unexpected ways, sending him into the forests of Kitai am...

The Handmaid’s Tale

by Margaret Atwood

Offred, a Handmaid, describes life in what was once the United States, now the Republic of Gilead, a shockingly repressive and intolerant monotheocracy, in this dystopian tour de force set in the near future.

Poison Study

by Maria V. Snyder

After she is given a reprieve from her death sentence, Yelena faces mounting disasters as rebels plot to seize Ixia, her life is once again threatened, and the chief of security is attempting to poison her.

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

by Robert A. Heinlein

A one-armed computer technician, a radical blonde bombshell, an aging academic, and a sentient all-knowing computer lead the lunar population in a revolution against Earth's colonial rule.

Ship of Magic

by Robin Hobb

Expecting to inherit her family's Liveship, Althea Vestrit now must defend this animate, intelligent treasure from both her scheming brother-in-law, who plans to use it as a slave ship, and a nation of ruthless pirates led by Captain Kennit.

Blue Remembered Earth

by Alistair Reynolds

In a future where crime, war, and disease have been eradicated, Geoffrey Akinya must travel to the Moon in an attempt to protect his family's name and businesses from dangerous secrets his late grandmother left behind.

A Crown for Cold Silver

by Alex Marshall

Twenty years ago, feared general Cobalt Zosia led her five villainous captains and mercenary army into battle, wrestling monsters and toppling an empire. When there were no more titles to win and no more worlds to conquer, she retired and ...

The Birthday of the World

by Ursula K. Le Guin

A collection of stories that are filled with love, lust, sex, marriage, gender, and other annoying problems that people must deal with no matter where they reside in the universe.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven

by Tad Williams

Bobby Dollar, an angel who has taken part in the long battle between Heaven and Hell, must figure out why there are suddenly an unprecedented number of souls missing from both sides and who summoned a Babylonian demon to kill him.

A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

A Fire Upon the Deep is the big, breakout book that fulfills the promise of Vinge's career to date: a gripping tale of galactic war told on a cosmic scale. Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is ...

Acacia

by David Anthony Durham

Leodan Akaran, the powerful ruler of an idyllic empire, hides the dark realities of their prosperity from his four children, until an assassin from the Mein — a race exiled to an ice-locked stronghold in the north &mda...

Proxima

by Stephen Baxter

Mankind's future in this galaxy could be all but infinite. There are hundreds of billions of red dwarf stars, lasting trillions of years — and their planets can be habitable for humans. Such is the world of Proxima Centauri. And...

Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

Heir to the throne Yarvi, prompted by the murder of his father, embarks on a kingdom-transforming journey to regain the throne, even though having only one good hand means he cannot wield a weapon.

The Martian Chronicles

by Ray Bradbury

The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by the earthmen who have come to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth.

Mage's Blood

by David Hair

The first book in an epic fantasy quartet about the struggle for mastery in a world ruled by magic.

Welcome to the Monkey House

by Kurt Vonnegut

A collection of twenty-five short works written between 1950 and 1968 and originally printed in a wide range of publications including The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and Ladies’ Home Journal.

The Night Circus

by Erin Morgenstern

A circus, titled Le Cirque des Reve, comes to town out of the blue and without warning. Within its tents, young magicians Celia and Marco compete to be the best, having done so since childhood. However, under the backdrop of their inten...

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

by Mary Roach

The author of Stiff and Gulp explores the irresistibly strange universe of space travel and life without gravity.

The Black Prism

by Brent Weeks

Gavin Guile is the Prism, the most powerful man in the world. He is high priest and emperor, a man whose power, wit, and charm are all that preserves a tenuous peace. But Prisms never last, and Guile knows exactly how long he has left to liv...

The Sparrow

by Mary Doria Russell

The sole survivor of a crew sent to explore a new planet, Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz discovers an alien civilization that raises questions about the very essence of humanity – an encounter that leads Sandoz to a public inqu...

A Wizard of Earthsea

by Ursula K. Le Guin

A boy grows to manhood while attempting to subdue the evil he unleashed on the world as an apprentice to the Master Wizard.

Contact

by Carl Sagan

Astrophysicist Dr. Rebecca Blake deciphers a message from outer space and finds that it contains directions for the construction of a complicated machine.

The Warded Man

by Peter V. Brett

As darkness falls each night, the corelings rise, demons who well up from the ground like a hellish steam, and when young Arlen decides to brave the night roads and face the demons, he attempts something not dreamt of since ancient times:...

Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick

with an introduction by Jonathan Lethem

This collection of stories by the master of science fiction includes "The Minority Report," about the creator of an innovative crime prevention system who himself falls victim to his own invention.

Sorcerer to the Crown

by Zen Cho

While trying to discover why England's magical stocks are drying up, Zacharias Wythe, freed slave and Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers, meets an unusual woman whose power could alter the nature of sorcery in all of Britain.

Red Rising

by Pierce Brown

This tale set in a bleak future society torn by class divisions follows the experiences of secret revolutionary Darrow, who after witnessing his wife's execution by an oppressive government joins a revolutionary cell and attempts to infiltr...

Watership Down

by Richard Adams

An allegorical tale of survival about a band of wild rabbits who leave their ancestral home to build a more humane society, Watership Down chronicles their adventures as they search for a safe place to establish a new warren where they can...

Foreigner

by C. J. Cherryh

Two hundred years after a group of humans had lost a war to the atevi, Bren Cameron, the only human allowed into the atevi society, realizes he must forge a bond between the two seemingly incompatible species.

Theft of Swords

by Michael J. Sullivani

Two thieves in the wrong place at the wrong time are on the run in this fast-paced adventure fantasy.

Redshirts

by John Scalzi

Enjoying his assignment with the xenobiology lab on board the prestigious Intrepid, ensign Andrew Dahl worries about casualties suffered by low-ranking officers during away missions before making a shocking discovery about the starship's act...

Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy

edited by Robert Silverberg

A collection of original short novels by such acclaimed authors as Stephen King, Robert Jordan, Anne McCaffrey, Ursula K. Le Guin, Orson Scott Card, and Terry Goodkind returns each to his own special fantasy world for a new and ...

Embassytown

by China Miéville

Retaining a tenuous peace on a distant planet in the far future, humans and aliens work together through a mutually beneficial economic arrangement that is threatened by the arrival of a new group of humans that destabilizes th...

The Name of the Wind

by Patrick Rothfuss

The story of a hero told in his own voice. It is a tale of sorrow, a tale of survival, a tale of one man's search for meaning in his universe, and how that search, and the indomitable will that drove it, gave birth to a legend. So begin...

Goblin Emperor

by Katherine Addison

The youngest, half-goblin son of the Emperor has lived his entire life in exile, distant from the Imperial Court and the deadly intrigue that suffuses it. But when his father and three sons in line for the throne are killed in an "...

The Night Watchman

by Louise Erdrich

It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be ...

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

by Layla F. Saad

When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #meandwhitesupremacy, she never predicted it would become a cultural movement. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, ...

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

by Matthew Desmond

From Harvard sociologist and MacArthur "Genius" Matthew Desmond, a landmark work of scholarship and reportage that will forever change the way we look at poverty in America. In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmon...

Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough

by Pawan Dhingra

Beyond soccer leagues, music camps, and drama lessons, today's youth are in an education arms race that begins in elementary school. In Hyper Education, Pawan Dhingra uncovers the growing world of high-achievement education and th...

The Space Between Us

by Thrity Umrigar 

Set in modern-day India, this evocative novel follows upper-middle-class Parsi housewife Sera Dubash and 65-year-old illiterate household worker Bhima as they make their way through life. Though separated by their stations in l...

Sing, Unburied, Sing

by Jesmyn Ward

Reviewed by Linda:

Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, this novel follows three generations of an African American family in Mississippi over the course of a few days. Ward, a two-time winner of the NBA, writes powerfully of how p...

Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

by Kate Manne

An urgent exploration of men's entitlement and how it serves to police and punish women, from the acclaimed author of Down Girl, which Rebecca Traister called "jaw-droppingly brilliant." In this bold and stylish critique, C...

Love Anthony

by Lisa Genova

Two women meet by accident on a Nantucket beach and are drawn into a friendship. Olivia is a young mother whose eight-year-old severely autistic son has recently died. She comes to the island in a trial separation to try and make sense of th...

Heavy: An American Memoir

by Kiese Laymon

Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about the physical manifestations of violence, grief, trauma, and abuse on his own body. He writes of his own eating disorder and gambling addiction as well as similar issues that run throughout his fam...

Middlesex

by Jeffrey Eugenides

Calliope's friendship with a classmate and her sense of identity are compromised by the adolescent discovery that she is a hermaphrodite, a situation with roots in her grandparent's desperate struggle for survival in ...

This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto

by Suketu Mehta

There are few subjects in American life that prompt more discussion and rancor these days than immigration. In This Land is Our Land, the renowned author Suketu Mehta offers a reality-based polemic that vitally clarifies the debate. Drawing...

Shuggie Bain

by Douglas Stuart

Reviewed by Linda:Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize and a National Book Award finalist, this beautiful and heart-breaking novel is about a boy growing up in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Shuggie adores his alcoholic mother, ...

Girl, Woman, Other

by Bernardine Evaristo

The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades...

I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

by Austin Channing Brown

The author's first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when her parents told her they named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. She grew up in majority-white schools...

Stones from the River

by Ursula Hegi

A dwarf becomes the librarian of a small German town. The work makes her privy to many of the town's secrets and she uses them to set people against each other. It's her way of paying them back for the taunts and humiliatio...

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

by Lindy West

A series of essays by the American writer and comedian, dealing with issues of body image, popular culture, feminism, and social justice.

White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism

by Robin DiAngelo

A sociologist probes the reasons that white Americans resist confronting racism.

A Mind Unraveled

by Kurt Eichenwald

The compelling story of an acclaimed journalist and New York Times bestselling author's ongoing struggle with epilepsy — his torturous decision to keep his condition a secret to avoid discrimination, and his ensuing de...

An African American and Latinx History of the United States

by Paul Ortiz

Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history, arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America a...

Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

by Albert Woodfox

Nearly forty years in solitary confinement in a 6-foot by 9-foot cell for 23 hours a day for a crime he did not commit, Albert Woodfox survived and emerged with his humanity and sense of hope for the future intact.

You’ll Like It Here: The Story of Donald Viktus

by Ed Orzechowski

Abandoned by his unwed mother during World War II, Donald Vitkus becomes a ward of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He is 27 days old. Six years later as 'Patient #3394,' he is committed to Belchertown State School, where he is labeled ...

The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America

by Tommy Tomlinson

A searing, honest, and candid exploration of what it's like to live as a fat man, from acclaimed journalist Tommy Tomlinson, who decided he had to change his life as he neared the age of fifty weighing in at 460 pounds.

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women — black and white, mo...

Becoming

by Michelle Obama

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive Whit...

Call Me American: A Memoir

by Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop artists like Michael Jackson and watching films starring action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines lan...

Americanah

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi

A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected.

There There

by Tommy Orange

Reviewed by Janet:

This powerful novel begins as a series of loosely connected short stories, but turns into something so much more in this exploration of the plight of the urban Native American. Each of the characters follows their own path...

If a Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard

by Jennifer Rosner

This revelatory memoir explores family, silence, and what it means to be heard. When her daughters are born deaf, Rosner is stunned. Then she discovers a hidden history of deafness in her family, going back generations to the Jewish encl...

So You Want to Talk about Race

by Ijeoma Oluo

A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.

Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances

by Leland Melvin

A memoir by the former NASA astronaut and NFL wide receiver traces his personal journey from the gridiron to the stars, examining the intersecting roles of community, perseverance, and grace that create opportunities for success.

Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet’s Journey

by Stephen Kuusisto

A blind poet describes his relationship with his first guide dog and how it changed his life and gave him a newfound appreciation for travel and independence.

The Hate U Give

by Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of he...

The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life

by Lauren Markham

The deeply reported story of identical twin brothers who escape El Salvador's violence to build new lives in California — fighting to survive, to stay, and to belong. Growing up in rural El Salvador in the wake of the civil war,...

Make Trouble

by Cecile Richards

From the president of Planned Parenthood, daughter of the late Governor Ann Richards, and featured speaker at the Women's March on Washington, comes a story about learning to lead and make change, based on a lifetime of fighting for wome...

When They Call You a Terrorist

by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & Asha Bandele

A memoir by the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement explains the movement's position of love, humanity, and justice, challenging perspectives that have negatively labeled the movement's activists while ...