Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah’s eleventh birthday, Hetty ‘Handful’ Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins…
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as “wildly undisciplined,” Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her past—including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life—and brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.
with contributions from Garth Nix, Scott Lynch, R.F. Kuang, Ann Leckie, Rachel Swirsky, Daniel Abraham, Peter S. Beagle, Beth Cato, Zen Cho, C.S.E. Cooney, Aliette de Bodard, Kate Elliott, Theodora Goss, Ellen Klages, Ken Liu, Patricia A. McKillip, K.J. Parker, Kelly Robson, Michael Swanwick, Jo Walton, Elle Katharine White, Jane Yolen, Kelly Barnhill, Brooke Bolander, Sara Gailey, Neon Yang, and Rovina Cai
From China to Europe, Africa to North America, dragons have long captured our imagination in myth and legend. Whether they are rampaging beasts awaiting a brave hero to slay or benevolent sages who have much to teach humanity, dragons are intrinsically connected to stories of creation, adventure, and struggle beloved for generations.
Bringing together nearly thirty stories and poems from some of the greatest science fiction and fantasy writers working today, this extraordinary collection vividly breathes fire and life into one of our most captivating and feared magical creatures as never before and is sure to become a treasured keepsake for fans of fantasy, science fiction, and fairy tales.
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behaviour and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more.
They call him The Mute for a reason. Hard, cold and calculated, he rarely speaks. When he does, it’s with disdain. When he does, my stomach flips and my world tilts on its axis. He is thirty-three. I am eighteen. He’s a single dad and my father’s business partner. I’m just a kid to him and his enemy’s daughter. He’s emotionally unavailable. And I am…feeling things I shouldn’t feel for him. Trent Rexroth is going to break my heart. The writing isn’t just on the wall, it’s inked on my soul. And yet, I can’t stay away. A scandal is the last thing my family needs. But a scandal is what we’re going to give them. And oh, what beautiful chaos it will be.
Not all love stories are written the same way. Ours had torn chapters, missing paragraphs, and a bittersweet ending. Luna Rexroth is everyone’s favourite wallflower. Underneath the meek, tomboy exterior everyone loves (yet pities) is a girl who knows exactly what, and who, she wants—namely, the boy from the treehouse who taught her how to curse in sign language. Who taught her how to laugh, to live. To love. Knight Cole is everyone’s favourite football hero. This daredevil hell-raiser could knock you up with his gaze alone, but he only has eyes for the girl across the street… Read more.
They say that life is a beautiful lie and death a painful truth. They’re right. No one has ever made me feel more alive than the guy who serves as a constant reminder that my clock is ticking. He is my forbidden, shiny apple. The striking fallacy to my blunt, raw, truth. He is also my sister’s ex-boyfriend. One thing you should know before you judge me; I saw him first. I craved him first. I loved him first. Eleven years later, he waltzes into my life, demanding a second chance. Dean Cole wants to be my bronze horseman. But my clock is ticking. See, I’m not like the rest. I have an illness. Sometimes I conquer it. Sometimes it conquers me. My white knight has finally arrived. Hopefully, he isn’t too late.
Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colours to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves.
A Deadly Education is set at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death (for real) — until one girl, El, begins to unlock its many secrets. There are no teachers, no holidays, and no friendships, save strategic ones. Survival is more important than any letter grade, for the school won’t allow its students to leave until they graduate… or die! The rules are deceptively simple: Don’t walk the halls alone. And beware of the monsters who lurk everywhere.
El is uniquely prepared for the school’s dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out millions. It would be easy enough for El to defeat the monsters that prowl the school. The problem? Her powerful dark magic might also kill all the other students.
The Vela by Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Rivers Solomon & S.L. Huang
In the fading light of a dying star, a soldier for hire searches for a missing refugee ship and uncovers a universe-shattering secret. Asala Sikou is used to looking after number one while crisis reigns in her dying planetary system. But when she’s hired to find a missing refugee ship, she discovers that this is no ordinary rescue mission, and she must play a role in deciding the fate of the whole universe.