African Cities

Delve into the social and cultural history of 100 of the world's most important cities. From the first towns in Mesopotamia to today's global metropolises, cities have marked the progress of civilization. Great Cities offers a rich historical overview of each featured city. The latest title in...

In this soulful debut novel set in the hypnotic music scene of New York City, a young Black woman lands her dream job at a major label—only to discover just how treacherous a place made to birth stars can be. “A decibel-raising debut that compellingly and hauntingly amplifies the unending...

A sweeping and eye-opening study of wealth inequality and the dismantling of local government in four working-class US cities that passionately argues for reinvestment in people-centered leadership and offers “a welcome reminder of what government can accomplish if given the chance” (San...

Rhea's neighborhood is fading away—the mom-and-pop shops of her childhood forced out to make space for an artisanal kombucha brewery here, a hot yoga studio there. And everywhere, the feeling that this place is no longer meant for her. Because while their little corner of South L.A. isn't perfect, to Rhea and her two best friends, it's something even more important—it's home. And it's worth protecting. But as more white people flock to their latest edgy, urban paradise, more of Rhea's friends and family are pushed out. Until Rhea decides it's time to push back.

Ten-year-old Jada Sly is an artist and a spy-in-training. When she isn't studying the art from her idols like Jackie Ormes, the first-known African American cartoonist, she's chronicling her spy training and other observations in her art journal. Back home in New York City, after living in France for five years, Jada is ready to embark on her first and greatest spy adventure yet. She plans to scour New York City in search of her missing mother, even though everyone thinks her mom died in a plane crash. Except Jada, who is certain her mom was a spy, too.

Dee has always been a girl who knows how to hustle. From the time she could walk, she knew the value of a dollar--and how to work for it. You have to, growing up on the streets of Ratchet City. A natural beauty, Dee's childhood in the ghetto and a slew of foster homes has given her a hard edge that belies her appearance. Tough as nails and unwilling to take smack from anybody, she's built to survive in a world where you're either the player or getting played.

On a rainy spring day in Los Angeles, Homicide Detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called away from a rare lunch date to Bonner Park, where the body of 13-year-old Chanita Lords has been discovered. Chanita was interested in photography and, much like Lou, a black girl destined to leave the housing projects behind. Her death fits a chilling pattern of exceptional African American girls - dancers, artists, honors scholars - gone recently missing in the same school district, the one Lou attended not so long ago.

It's 1969 when 15-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City's most prestigious boys' schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey's white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River. But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself facing legal charges.

Over a few weeks in 1741, 10 fires blazed across Manhattan. With each new fire, panicked whites saw more evidence of a slave uprising. Tried and convicted before the colony's Supreme Court, 13 black men were burned at the stake and 17 were hanged. Four whites, the alleged ringleaders of the plot, were also hanged, and seven more were pardoned on condition that they never set foot in New York again.

Fitting seamlessly alongside current bestsellers like Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park, and John Green's Paper Towns, LIKE NO OTHER provides a thoroughly modern take on romance that will inspire laughter, tears, and the belief that love can happen when you least expect it. ...

Instant New York Times bestseller! “A remarkable, breathtaking, earthshaking, poetic thrillride.” —Daniel José Older, New York Times bestselling author of Shadowshaper ​In this riveting, keenly emotional debut fantasy, a Black teen from Houston has her world upended when she learns...

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2020 by Ms. Magazine, USA Today Book Riot, The Rumpus, Library Journal, PureWow, The Every Girl, Parade and more. “Forever and to the end. That’s what they say instead of I love you.” When Ruby King’s mother is found murdered in their home in Chicago’s...

Lorenzo Brown loves his work. In his job as an officer for the Humane Society, he cruises the city streets, looking for dogs that are being mistreated - underfed, unclean, trained to kill. He takes pride in making their lives better. And that pride helps Lorenzo resist the pull of easier money...

Author Thomas Healy resurrects a forgotten saga of race, capitalism, and the struggle for equality in this fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of “Klan Country”.

Copeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive. He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland’s life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates - the highly rated Insurgency Alert Desk that surveils and harasses his neighborhood in the name of anti-terrorism.

In this epic showdown from "one of the best crime novelists alive" (Dennis Lehane), police officer Derek Strange hunts his brother's killer through a city erupting with rage...

One of the world’s greatest bassists lays down the heart of Black music, revealing how its rhythmic structures and the long history of the African diaspora made it the world’s most popular form Why do Bob Marley, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, and Nina Simone move us the way they do? What...

If you really want to understand Jim Crow - what it was and how African Americans rose up to defeat it - you should start by visiting Mobile Street in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, the heart of the historic black downtown. William Sturkey introduces us to both old-timers and newcomers who arrived in search of economic opportunities promised by the railroads, sawmills, and factories of the New South. He also takes us across town and inside the homes of white Hattiesburgers to show how their lives were shaped by the changing fortunes of the Jim Crow South.

Discover how—and why—Black, Indigenous, and people of color in America experience societal, economic, and infrastructural inequality throughout history covering everything from Columbus’s arrival in 1492 to the War on Drugs to the Black Lives Matter movement. From reparations to the prison...

In Black on the Block, Mary Pattillo - a Newsweek Woman of the 21st Century - uses the historic rise, alarming fall, and equally dramatic renewal of Chicago’s North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood to explore the politics of race and class in contemporary urban America.