For many, spring is the season to get outdoors and enjoy the weather much more favorable than in previous months. However, just because you’re out of the house, doesn’t mean you still can’t relax in the company of a good book.
There are plenty of good novels, biographies, and essays to look forward to this year. From Monique Rainford’s book on pregnancy and maternal health in the Black community, to Clint Smith’s work about life and parenthood, the 2nd quarter of 2023 will definitely grab the attention of millions of readers around the world. This spring is not only bringing great temperatures, but also some amazing books to consume at your leisure.
Books such as Bill Bellamy’s Top Billin’: Stories of Laughter, Lessons, and Triumph, and Kwame Alexander’s Why Fathers Cry at Night: A Memoir in Love Poems, Recipes, Letters, and Remembrances gives people a glimpse into the lives of some of the world’s most creative minds, and novels like Symphony of Secrets, Burning Season, and The Late Americans will take you to a place far from reality, while staying close to the realm of possibility.
However you decide to spend the next few months, there will always be something good to read along the way.
Here are some of the works from Black authors that we can’t wait for you to read this spring.
A wide-ranging collection, including two novellas and ten stories exploring complex identities, from the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing, and Palmares. Pre-Order HERE.
In this final installment in the acclaimed Black Girls Must Die Exhausted trilogy, Tabitha is juggling work, relationships, and a newborn baby—but will she find the happy ending she’s always wanted? Pre-Order the upcoming novel HERE.
The Kevin Powell Reader is an electric and deeply inspiring selection from Powell’s lifework, spanning the Reagan-Bush years of AIDS and crack epidemics to our current era framed by the COVID-19 pandemic; the tragic killing of George Floyd; the #MeToo movement; and much more. Pre-Order HERE.
A tragedy is unfolding all around us and is receiving well overdue attention. Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy than their white peers. But Dr. Monique Rainford is working to better understand these disparities and do something about them. Pre-Order HERE.
A gripping page-turner from the celebrated author of book club favorite The Violin Conspiracy: Music professor Bern Hendricks discovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time—his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed. Pre-Order HERE.
From the MTV trailblazer, stand-up comedian, and actor, a hilariously candid memoir that is an intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt tour through the exclusive, elusive, and eternally iconic world of ’90s pop culture. Pre-order HERE.
National bestselling author Kiki Swinson’s novels set it off with killer plot twists, merciless characters—and an unsparing portrayal of Southern struggling, lying, betraying, and dying. Now everything is on the line as a female firefighter desperate for money gets caught up in a man-made disaster. Pre-Order HERE.
Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black. Pre-Order HERE.
A hilarious new essay collection from #1 New York Times bestselling unabashed fan-favorite Samantha Irby invites us to share in the gory particulars of her real life, all that festers behind the glitter and glam. Pre-order HERE.
A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life. Pre-Order HERE.
Clint Smith, the #1 New York Times bestselling and National Book Critics Circle award-winning author of How the Word Is Passed, returns with a vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. Pre-Order HERE.
This powerful memoir from a #1 New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medalist features poetry, letters, recipes, and other personal artifacts that provide an intimate look into his life and the loved ones he shares it with. Pre-Order HERE.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Ian K. Smith brings back former Chicago detective turned private eye Ashe Cayne in this eagerly anticipated mystery in which the investigator finds himself in a race against the clock to protect a high-profile Chicago news anchor and solve the racially charged murder of a Black teen by a white police officer. Pre-Order HERE.
Author of Reese’s Book Club Pick His Only Wife, Peace Adzo Medie returns with a moving novel about the unbreakable power of female friendship. After two inseparable young friends in Ghana become estranged, one moving to the U.S., only a crisis can bring them back together and reconnect their bond. Pre-Order HERE.
A novel about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune—a forbidden friendship that changed the world, from the New York Times bestselling authors of The Personal Librarian. Pre-Order HERE.
Available once again for a new generation of readers, the second volume in Arthur Ashe’s epic trilogy that chronicles the remarkable legacy of Black athletes in the United States—a major addition to our understanding of American history and the fulfillment of this legendary sports star and global activist’s lifelong dream. Pre-Order HERE.
