Activist and historian Edmonds began to research the life of her great-great-grandfather, Jefferson Lewis Edmonds, in 2009, inspired by her father to “care for our archive, the value of it.” Like much else in Black history, that archive was scattered and incomplete: Edmonds hit the documentary trail at home in Los Angeles but traveled to …
Alice Emerson, a single mother in her mid-20s, is at a crossroads in her life, living in Chesapeake, Virginia, with her 6-year-old son Henry. Her boyfriend of two years has just dumped her; six months earlier, her grandfather Paul died and left her the beachside building that housed his bicycle shop in Kitty Hawk on …
On their way to deliver a birthday cake to Granny Goat, our spirited heroes carefully steer clear of the direct path, which would take them under the bridge where the fearful troll dwells. The bumpy journey down the river has many twists and turns, and the elaborate multilayered confection nearly meets a watery end. But …
Prairie Nightingale’s business card says “Homemaker,” but the divorced, sharp-eyed mother of two has more ambitious plans for her life in Green Bay, Wisconsin. While waiting for her kids at school pickup, Prairie wonders why her former friend Amber Jenkins is carrying a very expensive handbag when her car has a broken taillight and her …
The isles of the Cynnahu archipelago are under the threat of the snake-like, “mireborn” Naga. These villains are after the Dragon Shrines, relics of the Dragonkin—the long-gone magical dragons who once ruled Cynnahu. The assaults by the Naga may be a sign of the Last War alluded to in a seer’s prophecy that also foretells …
In the Atlantic States of America, the people are governed via a corporate-run caste system, with a handful of companies profiting from their labor. Conscripted workers are clad in pale blue and microchipped, and Shepherd officers police them with cruelty and electric “zap-crooks.” When 23-year-old Ruby Roth’s boss Colin Tate’s betrayal leads her into a …
Ari, Ya, and Atlas are seniors in their final semester at Baldwin Hills High. In honor of Pride Month, the high school’s theater club has chosen to put on a student-produced play. Ari (Arielle), a brilliant wordsmith who is Black, autistic, and gay, has written a queer adaptation of Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “We Real Cool.” …
In twin prologues, the author introduces John Whatley, a car dealership owner who’s freezing to death while locked out of his company car in the bitter Saskatchewan countryside, and reintroduces private eye Merry, a trans woman who’s long been estranged from her family but has just begun to reconnect with them by phone after years …
The author begins the story of her beloved brother in 1993 with the striking observation that, even though they were both grown adults now, the AIDS virus has shrunk her brother’s body, leaving him “lost in the folds of an over-washed, white hospital gown.” When they were children in 1969, Olaf (as Boulanger lovingly called …
Gwendolyn Richards bickers with her mother on a regular morning as the family is preparing to begin another day. With roosters crowing in the yard and Gwen’s dad getting ready for a humdrum shift at the nearby sugar factory, mother and daughter share local news until Gwen’s best friend, Sharon, arrives to walk with Gwen …