Thank you Little Brown and Co. & NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available.

As a Scorpio moon myself, I deeply deeply felt Jamison's memoir Splinters. We're an obsessive group, rehashing old wounds over and over again until fresh blood emerges and we are startled again by the pain. When Jamison separates from her husband and carries on as a single mother, she experiences a wounding of sorts. The memoir is a way for her to heal, to find comfort & romance again, to fall in love with the idea of love, to fall in love with being a mother. It is a vulnerable and beautiful love story.

Thank you to Tin House and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Good Dress by Brittany Rogers is first, and foremost, a love letter to Detroit, to Black women, to Black love, and to Black girlhood. The poems sear and fall apart like good, tender barbecue, leaving a trail of salty spicy sauces on your palate. The collection titillates, never shying away from uncomfortable topics and vulnerabilities. A pleasure to read and hold.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available April 2025

When I think of Sarah Kay, I am inevitably brought back to my high school days where I sat mesmerized by her and Phil Kay's spoken word duets which started to crystallize my own love of poetry and journey deep into other artists who would make my world - Angel Nafis & Jamila Wood & Safia Ehlillo & Fatimah Ashgar & more & more. I say this to say that Kay's poetry is invitational and warm, looking tenderly to the bright side. It is highly energizing and bursting with puns, hidden alleys, and warm cozy days. This is a poetry collection to read on the days that didn't quite turn out right, when the blunt edges of life leave a blister on your thumb, when you just want a warm cup of tea & a gentle scarf. It is soothing and healing in all the measures, vulnerable with the audience yet measured and precise in its cartographies.

Thanks Ecco and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available May 2025.

As a long time Kevin Wilson fan, Run for the Hills was a beautiful read. Funny and profound, the book follows the four Hills siblings as they try to trace their errant father. What really sold this book was the balance between tense emotions of children who have had to grow up without a father and the wry observational humor Wilson has. It just tickles my brain in the right way. This book also had some of the best descriptions of women's basketball I've ever read - Run for the Hills has it all!

Thank you Ecco and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available August 2025.

Whew - it's been a while since I read a collection of short stories as captivating as Mariah Rigg's Extinction Capital of the World. Told through a variety of narrators who are all interconnected, this collection attempts to capture the beauty and tragedy of modern life on the islands of Hawaii. What seems like one isolated tale slowly unfurls itself into a beautiful, colorful tapestry of domestic life and its political weight. Looming in the background is this ever present sense of loss - loss of parents, of children, of lovers, of land and history, of life itself. Yet Riggs balances it by showing us the new ways life carries on and on and on. Excellent work!

Thank you Knopf for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available March 2025.

Set in the distant future, Laila Lalami's newest novel follows a young Morrocan woman as she navigates a predatory security system. When Sara is flagged as a potential threat to public safety, she thinks it is just a glitch. A one hour wait to speak with Risk Assessment turns into a day retained at the local facility turns into 340 days apart from her two children. Lalami explores the dangers for for profit prison system, painting a grim future I can imagine quite easily. Yet I wish Sara had turned evil a lot sooner - I was rooting for her Black August like prison strike. The ending felt liks it came so rapidly.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the Reader's Copy!

Now available.

Part memoir, part historical speculation, part dreaming, The Black Period by Hafizah Augustus Geter is a beautiful exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in America. Fraught with the tension of past and present racism, homophobia, Islamophobia, sexual and physical violence, domestic violence, and more, Geter tenderly traces the amorphous borders of her existence. This book will break your heart and fill you with angst and wonder.  It is deeply researched and deeply felt and I feel grateful to have recieved Geter's words in this universe.

Thank you to Random House and Netgalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy.

Available January 2025.

Compulsively readable, Aria Aber's debut novel is like a retelling of Bluebeard set in contemporary Germany and imbued with a heap of drugs and indie cinema aesthetics. While I generally enjoyed the writing style, I found myself getting annoyed with some of the vapid comments of the narrator and her own self sabatoge. As a Muslim immigrant myself, it felt like the narrator despised her own skin and cultural heritage and upheld values of white supremacy. I had trouble with this aspect of the book and it soured the reading experience some.

Thank you to University of Nebraska and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available Nov 2024.

In his essay, "What Does It Mean To Look At This?", Teju Cole asks us what it means to look at scenes of violence from wars, at destroyed bodies, at distant brutality through our screens.

In Leaked Footages, Abu Bakr Saqid asks the same question. Told through a series of conversations with a cyborg, Sadiq explores the bloody history of Nigeria, including Boko Haram's kidnapping of women and senseless killing of men. Faith, nation, and technology are intertwined, as the book struggles to make meaning of it all.

Thank you to University of Nevada Press and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Now available.

I have such a deep appreciation for Yxta Maya Murray - The World Doesn't Work That Way But It Could is one of my favorite collections. Though A History of Hazardous Objects is a different form, a long narrative rather than short stories, both share a perspective of seeing the world with deep inquisition, love, and care. What I loved most about this book is how it made the cosmos, often vast and unknowable, deeply human by exploring the lives of the scientists themselves. As our narrator delves deeper into the despair of the Universe and impending doom of Aphos, her personal world also implodes with COVID, rise in police brutality, and sickness. The personal and the cosmos are embedded in our cells, Murray seems to urge us, and we are intricately connected to the world we inhabit, to our past, and our future.