Karen Chilton

A RECOMMENDED READ FROM: The Washington Post • Atlanta Journal-Constitution • CrimeReads • Library Journal

A gripping, radically intimate debut novel about a group of enslaved women staging a covert rebellion against their owners

On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night.

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The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that's made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma. To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past. In doing so Ailey must learn to embrace her full heritage, a legacy of oppression...

For all of the War Between the States, Marlie Lynch has helped with coded letters about anti-Rebel uprisings in her Carolina woods; tisanes and poultices for Union prisoners; and silent aid to fleeing slave and Freeman alike. Then the vicious Confederate Home Guard claims Marlie's home for their new base of operations in the guerrilla war against Southern resistors of the Rebel cause. Escaped prisoner Ewan McCall is sheltering in Marlie's laboratory;...

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century. • “Timely and essential."—The Washington Post
“A must-read for anyone who dares...

Under a Dark Summer Sky is a stunning debut novel, at once a love story set in a time of great turmoil and a vivid depiction a vicious hurricane.

Florida, 1935. In Heron Key, relationships are as tangled as the swamp's mangrove roots. It's been eighteen long years since Henry went away to war. Still, Missy has waited, cleaning the Kincaids' house and counting the stars. Now he's back, but she barely recognizes the desperate,

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Vern escapes the religious compound where she was raised and gives birth to twins in the forest, raising them away from the influence of the outside world. Her community won't let her go that easily, however, and as they pursue, she breaks the boundaries of humanity, changing her body in uncanny ways in order to protect her family.

A celebration of the gospel anthem and Civil Rights protest song "We Shall Overcome," masterfully brought to life by Caldecott Honor recipient and a nine-time Coretta Scott King Award winner Bryan Collier.

"We Shall Overcome" is one of the most recognizable anthems of the Civil Rights movement, widely performed at protests and rallies to promote nonviolent civil rights activism. Now, these inspirational, empowering, legendary lyrics...

"In African Icons, Baptiste engages in the hard work of unveiling the myths about the African continent to young readers . . . This is a great beginner's guide to pre-colonial Africa." -Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist   Meet ten real-life kings, queens, inventors, scholars, and visionaries who lived in Africa thousands of years ago and changed the world.  ...

Chronicling her remarkable journey to definitively understand her heritage and reclaim it, a black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings' family offers a compelling portrait to ensure the nation lives up to the ideals advocated by her legendary ancestor.

"She was brilliant, ambitious, and unafraid to break barriers. As the only member of a squad of twenty high-powered lawyers who was not a white male, she devised the strategy that in the 1930s sent Mafia chieftain Lucky Luciano to prison. She achieved so much--but what could she have accomplished if not for barriers of race and gender? ..."--Back cover. "She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter...