The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

Ailey is the descendant of enslaved Georgians and tenant farmers. She follows in her parents’ footsteps by attending an HBCU. We see her reckon with ancestral trauma while growing up in the 1980s and ’90s and her family history from the centuries of the colonial slave trade through the Civil War to the present day.

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Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann

With hints of classical mythology, we follow a family that has been at the center of most of the drama in their sleepy small-town of Olympus, Texas. When March returns home two and a half years after his affair with his sister-in-law, we see the family secrets, scandals, and betrayals.

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Leaving Breezy Street by Brenda Myers-Powell, April Reynolds

Raised by an alcoholic grandmother, Powell was sexually abused at a young age by her uncle and friends. At fourteen, she was addicted to crack and working as a prostitute to support her two infants. The book shares how she got out of prostitution and drug use and how she used her experiences to get others off the street.

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The Stranger Behind You by Carol Goodman

The night a journalist’s article exposing newspaper tycoon Caspar Osgood as a sexual predator goes live, she’s brutally attacked outside her Manhattan apartment. She moves into a highly secure apartment where she should be safe, but cryptic incidents start to occur that she can’t explain.

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The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu

A contemporary fantasy set in modern Edinburgh following high school dropout Ropa, who works as a ghostalker, ferrying messages between the worlds of the dead and the living for the right price. When she learns that something is sucking the souls out of the bodies of the city’s children, she goes on a hunt to discover who or what is behind these sinister attacks.

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Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

When Eva Mercy and Shane Hall met as teenagers, they were instantly attracted to each other, and they spent one crazy week madly in love. Fifteen years later, Eva is a bestselling author, and she meets Shane unexpectedly at a literary event in New York City. But will they be able to make their relationship work as adults, or will their pasts get in the way?

The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimons

A contemporary romance about a biracial transgender soccer star starting over at a new school: he must decide between fighting for his right to play, blending in, and keep his identity private. All while juggling his crush on a boy whose Christian extremist family doesn’t know he’s gay.

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