by Alice Randall
Songwriter, author, professor, and Black music historian Alice Randall spotlights the Black history of country music in her urgent, engaging memoir, My Black Country. Randall (Black Bottom Saints) celebrates the often-erased Black musicians who shaped the genre, including the "First Family of Black Country": Lil Hardin Armstrong, DeFord Bailey, Charley Pride, Herb Jeffries, and Ray Charles. Randall traces their collective influence and weaves together country music's Black history with her own story. Born
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by Timothy Schaffert
Serendipity can yield unpredictable alliances, as is the case with the people who didn't board the Titanic--the central figures of The Titanic Survivors Book Club, Timothy Schaffert's opulent work of historical fiction. A year after the ocean liner sank, 26-year-old Yorick--his father was a vaudevillian who "fancied himself a Shakespearean actor"--is the owner of a Paris bookshop purchased with an inheritance. One morning, he finds outside the shop a bottle that contains an invitation to a saloon, where he
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by Sanae Ishida
Author, artist, and designer Sanae Ishida melds her literary talents (Little Kunoichi) with her sewing prowess (Sewing Love) to create the exquisitely empowering picture book Sashiko's Stitches.
Sashiko is overwhelmed by "so many feelings" that sometimes all she can do is cry. Her mother embraces the girl, then reminds her about the origins of her name. Sashiko goes back "many, many hundreds of years" to when families of hardworking Japanese fishermen mended their damaged clothing using "tiny little stitches."
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by Katrina Carrasco
Katrina Carrasco (The Best Bad Things) blends deeply researched historical fiction with riveting queer adventure in Rough Trade, the spectacular second installment of her episodic crime series about the undeniably charming antihero Alma Rosales.
It's the summer of 1888, and Alma's crew is working the Tacoma docks of Washington Territory. Their cover story is that they're stevedores, but smuggling opium is their real trade.
In the months that follow a drug bust on their ship, several new players wander
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by Alliah L. Agostini, illus. by Sawyer Cloud
Black U.S. history is dynamically showcased through food, drink, crafts, games, and music playlists in The Juneteenth Cookbook, author Alliah L. Agostini and illustrator Sawyer Cloud's thematic sequel to their picture book The Juneteenth Story. Co-author and recipe developer chef Taffy Elrod brings 20 years of experience in the food industry to this celebratory and accessible cookbook for children.
Each section--Drinks, Appetizers, Mains, Sides, and Desserts--features three or four recipes based on "historically
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by James Goodhand
It takes tremendous skill to transform a sci-fi trope into an emotional tear-jerker, which James Goodhand (Last Lesson) does in The Day Tripper. In 1995, 20-year-old Londoner Alex Dean spends his days with his wonderful new girlfriend, drinking and smoking and getting ready to take his place at Cambridge. But when Blake Benfield, a bully from his childhood, confronts him, Alex decides for once to choose fight over flight. Blake completely batters Alex and throws him into the Thames. When Alex wakes up next,
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by Elisha Cooper
How is Emma, a dog, full of "wonders"? By literally being full of puppies! In the blindsidingly moving Emma Full of Wonders, Elisha Cooper (Train; 8: An Animal Alphabet) offers a picture-book tour through a dog's experience of pregnancy and puppy birth, although the fact that Emma is expecting may come as a big, beautiful surprise to readers.
An omniscient narrator introduces Emma, "a large dog/ with many small dreams." These "dreams" take the form of a clutch of fantasy puppies who float above Emma's head
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