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The Black Kingdom Trilogy

Not all heroes are saints. Not all villains are monsters.

Arix Sable is a free-spirit. She roves through the cities of Rökuur, slipping nimble-footed into ornate halls, and nimble-fingered into the pockets of those who cross her path. Her self-taught talent and luck has kept her out of the dungeons, but even Arix can’t survive on luck forever.

Caught in an alley and coerced into a deadly competition to become the king's personal sorcerer, The Black Hand, Arix realizes that her way to freedom won’t be an easy one. Fearing that she’ll be found out for her lack of magical ability, Arix fights against a gambit of skilled individuals, all clawing for the ultimate victory.

With only one path left in front of her, Arix struggles to find her footing in the competition, and must use her old skills to survive. Can she learn to find her place in this new world without becoming a pawn in a power-hungry game? And will she be able to distinguish between friend and competitor as their numbers dwindle?

THE BLACK HAND is high fantasy novel with a focus on the rise from hero to villain, with intricate religious and magical worldbuilding.

If you love villain origin stories filled with magical items and magical creatures, political intrigue, morally gray characters, and retribution, then you’ll love The Black Kingdom trilogy.

THE BLACK KINGDOM TRILOGY READING ORDER:

Book 1: The Black Hand

Book 2: The Black Crown

Book 3: The Black Kingdom

By: Micah House (Author), 2024, Paperback

The Blanchard family were left devastated by the events they faced in THE HOUSE OF DUQUESNE. The losses the family suffered have taken months to come to terms with, but now they are settling into their new normal. 

In this fifth novel of THE BLANCHARD WITCHES series...the Blanchard family may be absent a few faces, but their indomitable family love is carrying them through. Unfortunately, stretches of peace never last too long for these valiant witches.  A new (and somewhat inexperienced) enemy has plans to wipe out the entire Blanchard clan.  And as if that is not trouble enough, one surviving foe from Duquesne House is still out there, biding his time to seek his revenge.

While Demitra holds down the home front, guiding her grieving family into brighter days, Artemis travels the country on the hunt for Seth and Yasmine, once beloved Blanchards, now turned fiendish vampires. Their daughter Hera has been changed forever by their abandonment, but her stepmother Miranda will do whatever she can to give Hera the stability and love she needs. 

And the Blanchards have lived through too many inexplicable events to continue under the public radar.  A reporter from a major news network is digging into the events of The House of Duquesne, and the mysteries of the Blanchard family.  The walls between the natural and supernatural world is crumbling, and perhaps it is about time, for some of the Blanchard witches are HALF SICK of SHADOWS.

By: Micah House (Author), 2021, Paperback

Welcome back to Daihmler County, Alabama. Come sit on Blanchard House porch and visit a spell, but don't get too cozy. The Autumn leaves aren't the only things changing as more problems emerge for the Blanchard witches.

As the second novel in The Blanchard Witches series opens…Olympia's youngest daughter Nacaria (who has been cursed to the shadows for two decades) has been freed from her sentence, but she has not come home. As the family tries to figure out why, a rescue mission seems necessary. Olympia’s middle daughter, Demitra, has mourned her late husband for years. Now she has a new beau, but her sister Artemis is suspicious of him. Is he who he says he is or is he up to something? And Fable is continuing to conceal her secret pregnancy not knowing what the family will do if they discover her baby was fathered by the werewolf they recently destroyed.

While the love that fills Blanchard House may be magical, that love will be tested as secrets are revealed and a deadly enemy must be faced down. Not everyone will make it out alive as the prodigal daughters come home.

By: Micah House, 2021, Paperback

Things are not always easy for the Blanchard family of Daihmler, Alabama. Over the last few years they've experienced more than their share of tribulations, even for a family of witches. Through the many ups and downs they have always had each other, but that was threatened at the end of Book Two as one of their own suddenly disappeared from a family cookout.

In the third novel of The Blanchard Witches series, the story picks up where PRODIGAL DAUGHTERS left off. The family is shocked to have just witnessed one of their own disappear right before their eyes, but there is little time to react as more Blanchard vanish from existence. Those who remain must search the past to find their loved ones. They will encounter relatives they have only heard about through family lore while facing delicate challenges in unfamiliar worlds. And someone will make a mistake which will alter the future of the Blanchard family forever.

You don’t want to miss this one! It’s when everything changes. Join the Blanchard as they face one of the greatest foes they've come up against...time.

By: Sonya Renee Taylor (Author), Ijeoma Olio (Foreword), 2021, Paperback

"To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves...'The body is not an apology' is the mantra we should all embrace."
--Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum

"Taylor invites us to break up with shame, to deepen our literacy, and to liberate our practice of celebrating every body and never apologizing for this body that is mine and takes care of me so well."
--Alicia Garza, cocreator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Strategy + Partnerships Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance

"Her manifesto on radical self-love is life altering--required reading for anyone who struggles with body image."
--Claire Foster, Foreword Review

Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.

The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.

By: Evan Friss (Author), 2024, Hardcover

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Goodreads Choice Award Winner in History & Biography

One of Time’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

"A spirited defense of this important, odd and odds-defying American retail category." —The New York Times

"It is a delight to wander through the bookstores of American history in this warm, generous book." —Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author and owner of Books Are Magic

An affectionate and engaging history of the American bookstore and its central place in American cultural life, from department stores to indies, from highbrow dealers trading in first editions to sidewalk vendors, and from chains to special-interest community destinations

Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They nurture local communities while creating new ones of their own. Bookshops are powerful spaces, but they are also endangered ones. In The Bookshop,we see the stakes: what has been, and what might be lost.

Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many. The story begins with Benjamin Franklin’s first bookstore in Philadelphia and takes us to a range of booksellers including the Strand, Chicago’s Marshall Field & Company, the Gotham Book Mart, specialty stores like Oscar Wilde and Drum and Spear, sidewalk sellers of used books, Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books, and Parnassus. The Bookshop is also a history of the leading figures in American bookselling, often impassioned eccentrics, and a history of how books have been marketed and sold over the course of more than two centuries—including, for example, a 3,000-pound elephant who signed books at Marshall Field’s in 1944.

The Bookshop is a love letter to bookstores, a charming chronicle for anyone who cherishes these sanctuaries of literature, and essential reading to understand how these vital institutions have shaped American life—and why we still need them.

By: Emme Lund (Author), 2023, Paperback

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize

A “poignantly rendered and illuminating” (The Washington Post) coming-of-age story about “the ways in which family, grief, love, queerness, and vulnerability all intersect” (Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author). Perfect for fans of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Thirty Names of Night.

Though Owen Tanner has never met anyone else who has a chatty bird in their chest, medical forums would call him a Terror. From the moment Gail emerged between Owen’s ribs, his mother knew that she had to hide him away from the world. After a decade spent in isolation, Owen takes a brazen trip outdoors and his life is upended forever.

Suddenly, he is forced to flee the home that had once felt so confining and hide in plain sight with his uncle and cousin in Washington. There, he feels the joy of finding a family among friends; of sharing the bird in his chest and being embraced fully; of falling in love and feeling the devastating heartbreak of rejection before finding a spark of happiness in the most unexpected place; of living his truth regardless of how hard the thieves of joy may try to tear him down. But the threat of the Army of Acronyms is a constant, looming presence, making Owen wonder if he’ll ever find a way out of the cycle of fear.

“An honest celebration of life and everything we need right now in a book” (Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author), The Boy with a Bird in His Chest grapples with the fear, depression, and feelings of isolation that come with believing that we will never be loved for who we truly are and learning to live fully and openly regardless.

From the author of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School, two best bros fake an engagement–but will their friendship survive?

It’s about time roommates Alejandro and Kenny get married. Or at least, that’s what all their close friends and family think when they announce their engagement. The kicker? The two are faking their whole relationship so Alejandro can get a green card. But if Han was going to marry anyone, it would be his ride or die since second grade.

Han has never been able to put down roots, and the only one who truly breaks through his walls is Kenny. Sweet, sensitive Kenny is newly single, and what better distraction from his soul-sucking relationship than proposing marriage to Han? Kenny can’t think of anything more fun than spending his life with his best friend, even if it’s just for a piece of paper. But as Kenny keeps up the charade, he’s soon struggling to resist their sizzling chemistry.

The line between fact and fiction begins to blur the closer they get to their wedding date. With all eyes on Han and Kenny—including a meddling ex and immigration officers—will these two bros make it down the altar for real?

By: Naseem Jamnia (Author), 2022, Paperback

“I loved this gorgeous book about blood magic, chosen family and refugees in a hostile city. Naseem Jamnia has created a rich, complex world.”
—Charlie Jane Anders, author of All the Birds in the Sky

[STARRED REVIEW] “A delight to read. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal

In this intricate debut fantasy introducing a queernormative Persian-inspired world, a nonbinary refugee practitioner of blood magic discovers a strange disease that causes political rifts in their new homeland. Persian-American author Naseem Jamnia has crafted a gripping narrative with a moving, nuanced exploration of immigration, gender, healing, and family. Powerful and fascinating, The Bruising of Qilwa is the newest arrival in the era of fantasy classics such as the Broken Earth Trilogy, The Four Profound Weaves, and Who Fears Death.

Firuz-e Jafari is fortunate enough to have immigrated to the Free Democratic City-State of Qilwa, fleeing the slaughter of other traditional Sassanian blood magic practitioners in their homeland. Despite the status of refugees in their new home, Firuz has a good job at a free healing clinic in Qilwa, working with Kofi, a kindly new employer, and mentoring Afsoneh, a troubled orphan refugee with powerful magic.

But Firuz and Kofi have discovered a terrible new disease which leaves mysterious bruises on its victims. The illness is spreading quickly through Qilwa, and there are dangerous accusations of ineptly performed blood magic. In order to survive, Firuz must break a deadly cycle of prejudice, untangle sociopolitical constraints, and find a fresh start for their both their blood and found family.

By R.F. Kuang, Paperback

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead. Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.

Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.

A Penguin Classic

First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde's experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women's pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women's body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde's testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.

By: Olivia White (Author), 2020, Paperback

We are in the midst of a global crisis of care. How do we get out of it?

The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care--childcare, healthcare, elder care--to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.

The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our everyday lives, making it the organising principle in every dimension and at every scale of life. We are all dependent on each other, and only by nurturing these interdependencies can we cultivate a world in which each and every one of us can not only live but thrive.

The Care Manifesto demands that we must put care at the heart of the state and the economy. A caring government must promote collective joy, not the satisfaction of individual desire. This means the transformation of how we organise work through co-operatives, localism and nationalisation. It proposes the expansion of our understanding of kinship for a more 'promiscuous care'. It calls for caring places through the reclamation of public space, to make a more convivial city. It sets out an agenda for the environment, most urgent of all, putting care at the centre of our relationship to the natural world.

What if you could trust in getting the health care you need in ways that felt good and helped you thrive? What if the health system honored and valued queer and trans people’s lives, bodies and expertise? What if LGBTQ+ communities led and organized our own health care as a form of mutual aid? What if every aspect of our health care was rooted in a commitment to our healing, pleasure and liberation?
LGBTQ+ health care doesn’t look like this today, but it could. This is the care we dream of.
Through a series of essays (by the author and others) and interviews, this book by the editor of the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology The Remedy offers possibilities—grounded in historical examples, present-day experiments, and dreams of the future – for more liberatory and transformative approaches to LGBTQ+ health and healing. It challenges readers to think differently about LGBTQ+ health and asks what it would look if our health care was rooted in a commitment to the flourishing and liberation of all LGBTQ+ people. This book is a calling out, a calling in and a call to action. It is a spell of healing and transformation, rooted in love.

By:  Alison Cochrun (Author), 2021, Paperback

A MOST ANTICIPATED ROM-COM SELECTED BY * BUZZFEED * LGBTQ READS * BUSTLE * THE NERD DAILY * ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT * FROLIC MEDIA * AND MORE!

A BEST BOOK PICK BY * HARPER’​S BAZAAR * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

“The Charm Offensive will sweep you off your feet.” —PopSugar

​​​​In this witty and heartwarming romantic comedy—reminiscent of Red, White & Royal Blue and One to Watch—an awkward tech wunderkind on a reality dating show goes off-script when sparks fly with his producer.

Dev Deshpande has always believed in fairy tales. So it’s no wonder then that he’s spent his career crafting them on the long-running reality dating show Ever After. As the most successful producer in the franchise’s history, Dev always scripts the perfect love story for his contestants, even as his own love life crashes and burns. But then the show casts disgraced tech wunderkind Charlie Winshaw as its star.

Charlie is far from the romantic Prince Charming Ever After expects. He doesn’t believe in true love, and only agreed to the show as a last-ditch effort to rehabilitate his image. In front of the cameras, he’s a stiff, anxious mess with no idea how to date twenty women on national television. Behind the scenes, he’s cold, awkward, and emotionally closed-off.

As Dev fights to get Charlie to connect with the contestants on a whirlwind, worldwide tour, they begin to open up to each other, and Charlie realizes he has better chemistry with Dev than with any of his female co-stars. But even reality TV has a script, and in order to find to happily ever after, they’ll have to reconsider whose love story gets told.