STASH: Charity, a young woman is accused of killing and castrating her abusive father. QUALITY: Two white women do laundry while discussing the challenges of living in a neighborhood that is gradually being gentrified. INNOCENTS: Three black women gather behind a courthouse in the South to reflect on their loss of innocence. SELF/PRESERVATION: A white couple, desperate to save their home from eminent domain, falsely claims their cellar was once part of the Underground Railroad. HER VOW: After miraculously recovering from a coma, Lila attacks life with a vigor that frightens and alienates her...

CONNOR'S BOY: Connor, a successful artist and transracial adoptee, commits suicide after being accused of abusing his beloved son. Connor's death forces the people who loved him to confront each other, the past, and the guilt that fuels their fierce struggle over his child. MOTHER LOAD: A black woman filmmaker in her mid-thirties, Liv, decides to attend her estranged mother's sixtieth birthday party. Her mother, Cleo, is a prolific, celebrated playwright. Liv arrives determined to triumphantly disclose her pregnancy, but instead she must confront the fact that Cleo is dying of uterine cancer....

Stranger in the Family is a mixed-media memoir that examines the shifting terrain upon which we negotiate race, kinship, and identity. When my father died of cancer in the spring of 2004, I accepted an offer to teach in the tiny east African country of Djibouti. While abroad, I reflected upon the complicated concept of diaspora, and the alienation I sometimes felt as a foreigner brought to mind a hurtful remark my father once directed at me: "You're a stranger in this family." When my teaching assignment in Djibouti ended prematurely, I returned to Toronto and wrote a collection of essays to...

girl/power: While in the custody of Child Protective Services, two underage girls compare their relationships with the men accused of exploiting them. Brotherhood: Upon his release from prison, Von returns to his foster mother's home hoping to build a new life with the remnants of his family. But with the house on the brink of foreclosure, Von must confront the forces of change that have transformed the world he left behind. Deluged: A young woman conducting research on lynching in Louisiana finds herself swept up in a hurricane and dropped onto a plantation off the Mississippi River. Men of...

More than anything, Nina Traymore wants stability in her life. After graduating from college, Nina returns to New York City determined to immerse herself in the struggle to revive impoverished communities. Her world is shattered, however, when she is brutally raped in her home by a male acquaintance. Traumatized by the violation but fearful of life outside the city's familiar limits, Nina accepts a teaching position in Brooklyn and moves there hoping to piece her life back together. At the Sojourner Center for Families and Youth, Nina meets Isaiah Edwards, an aspiring architect whose...

Named to Bank Street College of Education's prestigious 2016 Best Children's Books of the Year with a star for outstanding merit.

Summer vacation has just begun and Dayshaun wants to spend Saturday morning playing his new video game. But Dayshaun's mother has other plans: she volunteers at a nearby community garden and that means Dayshaun has to volunteer, too. When Dayshaun puts on his grandfather's grubby old gardening hat, something unexpected happens-the hands of time turn backward and Dayshaun finds himself in the free Black community of Weeksville during the summer of 1863 While helping the survivors of the New York City Draft Riots, Dayshaun meets a frail old man who entrusts him with a precious family heirloom....

Best friends Carlos and Tariq love their block, but Barkley Street has started to change. The playground has been taken over by older boys, which leaves Carlos and Tariq with no place to call their own. They decide to turn the yard of an abandoned brownstone into their secret hang-out spot. Carlos and Tariq soon discover, however, that the overgrown yard is already occupied by an ancient phoenix When the Pythons try to claim the yard for their gang, the magical bird gives the friends the courage to make a stand against the bullies who threaten to ruin their beloved neighborhood.