"Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long...

Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an undersground hip-hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri's got massive shoes to fill. But it's hard to get your come up when you're labeled a hoodlum at school and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri purs her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral ... for all the...

Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. (Oh, and she'd also like to make it through seventh grade with her best friendships intact, learn to run track, and have a cute boy see past her giant forehead.) But in junior high, it's like all the rules have changed. Now she's suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she's not black enough. Wait, what? Shay's sister,...

Seventeen-year-old Quell is reluctantly inducted into a magical debutante society of social elites where she must bind with her forbidden magic while evading the assassin who has been tasked with hunting her kind.

Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families - the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are...

"Glory Edim launches her Well-Read Black Girl Library with this vital anthology celebrating stories from such luminaries as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Since founding the Well-Read Black Girl Book Club in 2015, Glory Edim's profile has skyrocketed. From her roots in a Brooklyn-based community to a massive online following, she has been heralded as the literary tastemaker for a new generation. With On Girlhood, Edim has beautifully curated a canonical...

Eager to make a good first impression at her new middle school, thirteen-year-old Charlie does her best to fit in until she meets a group of diverse Black girls who show her the importance of authenticity.

Mae wanted to be an astronaut. She dreamed of dancing in space. She imagined herself surrounded by billions of stars, floating, gliding, and discovering. Her parents encouraged her, saying, "If you believe it, and work hard for it, anything is possible." This encouragement, along with Mae's own curiosity, intelligence, and determination, paved the way for her to become the first African American woman to travel in space.

When a fourteen-year-old girl is the alleged victim of a terrible act of racial violence, the incident shocks and galvanizes her community, exacerbating the racial tension that has been simmering in this New Jersey town for decades.

Black girls, including gender non-conforming individuals, star in this collection of sixteen stories of fantasy, science fiction, and magic. From folktales retold to futuristic societies, this collection of stories centers on Black women and gender nonconforming individuals dealing with love and betrayal, strength and resistance. In all of them, the heroines shine brightly-- characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. -- adapted...