A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State

The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States.

In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.

As the sweeping changes and brief glimpses of hope brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction began to wither, anger at the opportunities available to newly freed Black people was on the rise. As a result, both Black and white people searched for new places to settle. That was when Edward McCabe, a Black businessman and a rising political star in the American West, set in motion his plans to found a state within the Union for Black people to live in and govern. His chosen site: Oklahoma, a place that the U.S. government had deeded to Indigenous people in the 1830s when it forced thousands of them to leave their homes under Indian Removal, which became known as the Trail of Tears.

McCabe lobbied politicians in Washington, D.C., Kansas, and elsewhere as he exhorted Black people to move to Oklahoma to achieve their dreams of self-determination and land ownership. His rising profile as a leader and spokesman for Black people, as well as his willingness to confront white politicians, led him to be known as Black Moses. And like his biblical counterpart, McCabe nearly reached the promised land but was ultimately foiled by politics, business interests, and the growing ambitions of white settlers who also coveted the land.

In Black Moses, Gayle brings to vivid life the world of Edward McCabe: the Black people who believed in his dream of a Black state, the white politicians who didn’t, and the larger challenges of confronting the racism and exclusion that bedeviled Black people’s attempts to carve a place in America for themselves. Gayle draws from extraordinary research and reporting to reveal an America that almost was.

The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore

Longtime NBC News reporter Char Adams writes a deeply compelling, rigorously reported history of Black political movements, told through the lens of Black-owned bookstores, which have been centers of organizing from abolition to the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter.

In Black-Owned, Char Adams celebrates the living history of Black bookstores. Packed with stories of activism, espionage, violence, community, and perseverance, Black-Owned starts with the first Black-owned bookstore, which an abolitionist opened in New York in 1834, and after the bookshop’s violent demise, Black book-lovers carried on its cause. In the twentieth century, civil rights and Black Power activists sparked a nationwide Black bookstore boom. Malcolm X gave speeches in front of the National Memorial African Book Store in Harlem—a place dubbed “Speakers’ Corner”—and later, Black bookstores became targets of FBI agents, police, and racist vigilantes. Still, stores continued to fuel Black political movements.

Amid these struggles, bookshops were also places of celebration: Eartha Kitt and Langston Hughes held autograph parties at their local Black-owned bookstores. Maya Angelou became the face of National Black Bookstore Week. And today, a new generation of Black activists is joining the radical bookstore tradition, with rapper Noname opening her Radical Hood Library in Los Angeles and several stores making national headlines when overwhelmed by demand during the Black Lives Matter era. As Adams makes clear, in an age of increasing repression, Black bookstores are needed now more than ever.

Full of vibrant characters and written with cinematic flair, Black-Owned is an enlightening story of community, resistance, and joy.

Author Info:

Char Adams is a former reporter for NBC News and People, and her writing on race and identity has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, Oprah Daily, Vice, Teen Vogue, and Bustle. She hosted COVID University New York, one of the first podcasts to chronicle the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. She is a proud Philadelphia native and now lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Publisher Synopsis:

A publicist discovers that everything’s bigger in Texas—even love—in the next swoony romance from beloved author Alexa Martin.

Luna Starr was destined for a life with her head in the clouds, and as one of the most sought-after publicists in romance publishing, her delusional tendencies serve her well…or at least they used to. After life threw her a curveball and her latest book launch failed, she decides it’s time to turn her cowboy fantasies into reality and purchases a tiny farm in Celestial, Texas.

Tate Jacobs hates cowboys, which is a small problem, considering his family happens to own the largest ranch in Celestial. Life might not have gone the way he wanted, but as head coach at his old high school and the town’s best (and only) handyman, he’s figured out how to stay busy and keep his head down—until the new girl in town shows up.

As Tate and Luna spend more time together, unexpected feelings and undeniable chemistry bubble to the surface. Luna might’ve moved to Celestial to make her cowboy dreams come true, but somewhere beneath the Friday night lights, she discovers that love in the real world can be far better than she imagined.

Author Info:

Alexa Martin lives in Dallas with her husband, four children, and German Shepherd. The Playbook Series was inspired by the eight years she spent as a NFL wife and her deep love of all things pop culture, sparkles, leggings, and wine. When she’s not dreaming up her next romance hero, you can find her catching up on whatever Real Housewives franchise is currently airing or filling up her Etsy cart with items she doesn’t need.

An African Epic

A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer (“A bombshell of a book... Sharp, explosive, hilarious"—The New York Times)

When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps.

There is also the matter of the family curse—“No man will call your house home. And if they try, they will not have peace...”—which has broken numerous hearts and caused three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof. 

When Eniiyi falls in love, she can no longer run from her family’s history. Is she destined to live out her family's story of love and heartache? Or can she break the pattern, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death but liberating herself from all the secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she can remember?

Cursed Daughters is a brilliant cocktail of vibrant humor and hard-won wisdom, romantic love and familial obligation. It asks us what it means to be granted a second chance, and how to live both wisely and well with what we’ve been given.

Author Info:

OYINKAN BRAITHWAITE is the author of My Sister, the Serial Killer. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised there and in the UK. She currently lives in London with her family.

“A gorgeous, captivating gem of a memoir… Josephine Baker’s as enthralling on the page as she was on the stage.” —Abbott Kahler, New York Times bestselling author of Eden Undone and Sin in the Second City

After stealing the spotlight as a teenage Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. In her famous banana skirt, she enraptured royalty and countless fans—Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso among them. She strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah wearing a diamond collar. With her signature flapper bob and enthralling dance moves, she was one of the most recognizable women in the world.

When World War II broke out, Josephine became a decorated spy for the French Résistance. Her celebrity worked as her cover, as she hid spies in her entourage and secret messages in her costumes as she traveled. She later joined the US Civil Rights movement, boycotting segregated concert venues and speaking at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

First published in France in 1949, her memoir will now finally be published in English. At last, we can hear Josephine in her own voice: charming, passionate, and brave. Her words are thrilling and intimate, like she’s talking with her friends over after-show drinks in her dressing room. Through her own telling, we come to know a woman who danced to the top of the world and left an unforgettable mark.

From New York Times bestselling author Ayana Gray comes a new kind of villain origin story, reimagining one of Greek mythology's most iconic monsters as a provocative and powerful young heroine.

Meddy has spent her whole life as a footnote in someone else’s story. Out of place next to her beautiful, immortal sisters and her parents—both gods, albeit minor ones—she dreams of leaving her family’s island for a life of adventure. So when she catches the eye of the goddess Athena, who invites her to train as an esteemed priestess in her temple, Meddy leaps at the chance to see the world beyond her home.

In Athens’ colorful market streets and the clandestine chambers of the temple, Meddy flourishes in her role as Athena’s favored acolyte, getting her first tastes of purpose and power. But when she is noticed by another Olympian, Poseidon, a drunken night between girl and god ends in violence, and the course of Meddy’s promising future is suddenly and irrevocably altered.

Her locs transformed into snakes as punishment for a crime she did not commit, Medusa must embrace a new identity—not as a victim, but as a vigilante—and with it, the chance to write her own story as mortal, martyr, and myth.

Exploding with rage, heartbreak, and love, I, Medusa portrays a young woman caught in the crosscurrents between her heart’s deepest desires and the cruel, careless games the Olympian gods play.

Author Info:

Ayana Gray is the New York Times bestselling author of Beasts of Prey. Her works have been translated into eleven languages across five continents. She currently lives and writes in Arkansas. I, Medusa, is her adult debut.

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.

When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.

With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?

For those who wish to decolonize their minds, particularly Black women, comes a thoughtful guide to ancestral veneration, with a focus on the importance of reclaiming African Spiritual practices as an act of liberation.

In today's world, there's a notable resurgence in spiritual exploration that diverges from the mainstream New Age culture. People are seeking clarity that aligns with their own ancestral lineage, and ancestral veneration has emerged as a powerful avenue to navigate life's complexities. For Black communities, this resurgence represents a reclamation of hope for the diaspora.

In this book, Ifa and Orisa priestess Ehime Ora shares the importance of connection to the ancestors, and to one’s spiritual roots. There’s a certain type of radical healing that takes place when we reconnect to our ancestral veneration and follow through with their wisdom.

Providing healing through the written word, Ehime walks you though the reclamation of African Spiritual practices, discussing the spiritual renaissance occurring in the African community, and includes interviews with elders of the rich traditions. She also provides tangible spiritual tools so that you can incorporate ancestral veneration in your life: how to properly set up and work with an ancestral altar, the importance of spiritual hygiene, and bringing forth the concept of the ori, or the higher self.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 photographs, including never-before-seen images, The Look is a stunning journey through Michelle Obama’s style evolution, in her own words for the first time.

In this celebration of style, from the moment she entered the public eye during her husband’s U.S. Senate campaign through her time as the first Black First Lady and today as one of this country’s most influential figures, Michelle Obama shares how she uses the beauty and intrigue of fashion to draw attention to her message.

Featuring the voices of Meredith Koop, Obama’s trusted stylist, as well as her makeup artist Carl Ray, hairstylists Yene Damtew, Johnny Wright, and Njeri Radway, and many of the designers who have dressed Obama for notable events, The Look brings readers behind the scenes not only to reveal how her most memorable looks came together but also to tell a powerful story about how we present ourselves.

Obama’s intimate and candid stories illuminate how her approach to dressing has evolved throughout her life—from the colorful sheath dresses, cardigans, and brooches she wore during her time as First Lady to the bold suits, denim, and braids of her post-White House life and all the active looks and beautiful gowns in between.

In The Look, Michelle Obama explores the joy and the purpose of fashion and beauty and how—when wielded with grace and care—they can uplift and affirm the values one holds most dear. Confidence, she concludes, cannot be put on. But when you’re wearing something that’s intentional or beloved, clothing can make you feel like the best version of yourself.

Author Info:

Michelle Obama served as First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Mrs. Obama started her career as an attorney at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she met her future husband, Barack Obama. She later worked in the Chicago mayor’s office, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Mrs. Obama also founded the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an organization that prepares young people for careers in public service. She is the author of the #1 bestsellers The Light We Carry, Becoming,and American Grown. Through Higher Ground, which she co-founded with her husband in 2018, her work to share stories has won awards and accolades. At its release in 2020, The Michelle Obama Podcast was the most successful original in Spotify history. The Obamas currently live in Washington, D.C., and have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

A powerful new voice, telling the American story through three generations of Black mothers.

Sasha Bonét grew up in 1990s Houston, worlds removed from the Louisiana cotton plantation that raised her grandmother, Betty Jean, and the Texas bayous that shaped Sasha’s mother, Connie. And though each generation did better, materially, than the last, all of them carried the complex legacy of Black American motherhood with its origins in slavery. All of them knew that the hands used to comb and braid hair, shell pecans, and massage weary muscles were the very hands used to whip children into submission.

When she had her own daughter, Sofia, Bonét was determined to interrupt this tradition. She brought Sofia to New York and set off on a journey—not only up and down the tributaries of her bloodline but also into the lives of Black women in history and literature—Betty Davis, Recy Taylor, and Iberia Hampton among them—to understand both the love and pain they passed on to their children and to create a way of mothering that honors the legacy but abandons the violence that shaped it.

The Waterbearers is a dazzling and transformative work of American storytelling that reimagines not just how we think of Black women, but how we think of ourselves—as individuals, parents, communities, and a country.

Author Info:

SASHA BONÉT is a writer and cultural critic based in New York City. Her criticism and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among other publications. Bonét is a professor of creative writing at Columbia University and Barnard College.

Named a Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025

In his first new novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize, a master storyteller captures a time of dizzying global change.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.

An “unsparing, erudite, and incisive” (Jelani Cobb, staff writer, The New Yorker) reframing of the past and present of Black resistance—both nonviolent and violent—to white supremacy

Named a Best Book of 2024 by Smithsonian * Kirkus * Chicago Review of Books * Emancipator * Ms. Magazine

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.  
 
The dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force—from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt—has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. But violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away. 
 
Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

Winner of the Organization of American Historians’ 2025 Darlene Clark Hines Award

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A revolutionary playbook for building generational wealth, no matter where you grew up—from the founders of the explosively popular podcast and financial literacy platform Earn Your Leisure

You deserve to be rich.

You deserve to make a purchase without fear that your check might bounce. You deserve to go on vacation. You deserve to care for loved ones without worrying about bills. You deserve to live the way you want, without reservations or fear. You deserve freedom—financial freedom. If you agree, you’ve come to the right place.

We grew up in New York playing basketball together. As kids, both of us were fascinated by finance, curious about the stock market and how money moves among systems and pockets. But we began to notice that—for people in our community—hard work wasn’t enough. The system wasn’t set up to help people like us turn our hustle into lasting wealth.

We started Earn Your Leisure to change that. We never could have imagined the response. Soon our little podcast started to feel more like a financial revolution. But a podcast can do only so much. This book is our answer to the thousands upon thousands of people who have asked us for a detailed blueprint. The key to earning your leisure is to see money as a strategic tool for wealth development. In You Deserve to Be Rich, you’ll learn how to:

• Deal with the psychological toll of growing up living paycheck to paycheck.

• Create income-building strategies outside your nine-to-five, from investing to side hustles.

• Use passive income to put you in control of your time and lifestyle.

• Master tax and insurance systems and identify (legal) loopholes to maximize wealth.

• Navigate family financial drama and find ways to support your community.

That’s just the start. This book is full of tips, insights, and stories about real people, just like you, who have used the tools of wealth building to overcome barriers and build the life they want.

You deserve to be rich. This is the playbook to make it happen.