Nomoto may be an amateur chef, but she dreams big—at least in terms of food portions. Unfortunately, her appetite isn't as large as her imagination, so she can't give her masterpieces the full enjoyment they deserve. Luckily, one evening, she finds the perfect audience in her neighbor, Kasuga, who just happens to love eating. As this important gourmet duo warms up to each other, could tender feelings be brewing?

Impoverished graduate student Kento nearly freezes to death outside his new cheap (unheated) apartment during a blizzard. Luckily, he’s saved by neighbor Soushi, a quiet and somewhat frightening young man who dresses in all black. Although he exudes an aura that screams “keep away,” his eyes, hidden behind long rocker hair, plead for something else. Over the following year, the two share meals together, but as the time passes, the closeted Kento finds it increasingly difficult to ignore his growing feelings. Will he choose to maintain the peaceful, happy times he’s grown to love or risk it all for the possibility of something more?

“Some girls are not made,” torrin a. greathouse writes, “but spring from the dirt.” Guided by a devastatingly precise hand, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound—selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil as the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry—challenges a canon that decides what shades of beauty deserve to live in a poem. greathouse celebrates “buckteeth & ulcer.” She odes the pulp of a bedsore. She argues that the vestigial is not devoid of meaning, and in kinetic and vigorous language, she honors bodies the world too often wants dead. These poems ache, but they do not surrender. They bleed, but they spit the blood in our eyes. Their imagery pulses on the page, fractal and fluid, blooming in a medley of forms: broken essays, haibun born of erasure, a sonnet meant to be read in the mirror. greathouse’s poetry demands more of language and those who wield it. “I’m still learning not to let a stranger speak / me into a funeral.” Concrete and evocative, Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is a testament to persistence, even when the body is not allowed to thrive. greathouse—elegant, vicious, “a one-girl armageddon” draped in crushed velvet—teaches us that fragility is not synonymous with flaw.

In America, demons wear white hoods. In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?

From RuPaul’s Drag Race winner and host of HBO’s We’re Here comes an inventive, wondrous novel about American hero Harriet Tubman that remixes history into a fresh, dynamic novel about love, freedom, salvation, and music. In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say. Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way—by following in the footsteps of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. Harriet wants to put on a show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her. She calls upon Darnell Williams, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed by a rival at the BET Awards. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have one week to write a Broadway caliber musical she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only mount a show that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts, and learn to find a way to a better future. Original, evocative, and historic, Harriet Live in Concert is a landmark achievement that will burrow deep into our hearts (and ears).

Undrowned is a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. Our aquatic cousins are queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions our species has imposed on the ocean. Gumbs employs a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility and naturalist observation to show what they might teach us, producing not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wondering and questioning. From the relationship between the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and Gumbs’s Shinnecock and enslaved ancestors to the ways echolocation changes our understandings of “vision” and visionary action, this is a masterful use of metaphor and natural models in the service of social justice.

Capitalism is killing the planet, and the preservation of a natural environment favorable to human life requires a radical alternative. In this new collection of essays, long time revolutionary and environmental activist Michael Löwy offers a vision of ecosocialist transformation. This vision combines an understanding of the destructive logic of the capitalist system with an appreciation for ongoing struggles, particularly in Latin America.

In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science—and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a fascinating discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals, including primates. Evolution's Rainbow explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behavior. Roughgarden reconstructs primary science in light of feminist, gay, and transgender criticism and redefines our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality. Witty, playful, and daring, this book will revolutionize our understanding of sexuality. Roughgarden argues that principal elements of Darwinian sexual selection theory are false and suggests a new theory that emphasizes social inclusion and control of access to resources and mating opportunity. She disputes a range of scientific and medical concepts, including Wilson's genetic determinism of behavior, evolutionary psychology, the existence of a gay gene, the role of parenting in determining gender identity, and Dawkins's "selfish gene" as the driver of natural selection. She dares social science to respect the agency and rationality of diverse people; shows that many cultures across the world and throughout history accommodate people we label today as lesbian, gay, and transgendered; and calls on the Christian religion to acknowledge the Bible's many passages endorsing diversity in gender and sexuality. Evolution's Rainbow concludes with bold recommendations for improving education in biology, psychology, and medicine; for democratizing genetic engineering and medical practice; and for building a public monument to affirm diversity as one of our nation's defining principles.

At once a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto, this is a singular, genre-warping new novel from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot. “It’s 1992 and I’m the Gloomiest Child Queen.” Welcome to 1990s Norway. White picket fences run in neat rows and Christian conservatism runs deep. But as the Artist considers her past, her practice and her hatred, things start stirring themselves up around her. In a corner of Oslo, a coven of witches begins cooking up some curses. A time-travelling Edvard Munch arrives in town to join a black metal band, closely pursued by the teenaged subject of his painting Puberty, who has murder on her mind. Meanwhile, out deep in the forest, a group of school girls get very lost and things get very strange. Awful things happen in aspic. Jenny Hval’s latest novel is a radical fusion of feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, gender and art.

New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant, author of the renowned Newsflesh series, returns with a novel that takes us to a new world of ancient mysteries and mythological dangers come to life. Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a "mockumentary" bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy. Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.

The water-breathing descendants of African slave women tossed overboard have built their own underwater society—and must reclaim the memories of their past to shape their future in this brilliantly imaginative novella inspired by the Hugo Award nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’ rap group Clipping.Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are.Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.

A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear. Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is. Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honor, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.

In the daring sequel to The Sun Blessed Prince, Elician and Cat must confront the goddess of death to save their nations – unless it's already too late.Elician, a Giver with the power to raise the dead, is crowned King of Soleb, but it’s forbidden for Givers to rule. However, Elician is determined to end a generations-long war with the kingdom of Alelune – and will marry Alelune's rightful heir to do so.But Cat is a Reaper, able to kill with a touch, and is therefore feared by his own people. His claim to the throne is a gamble at best, until his tyrannical brother, Gillage, seizes power before Cat can lay his claim to it – and now the conflict Elician had hoped to avoid seems inevitable.Just as the war between nations begins anew, the goddess of death releases a devastating plague across the continent. To stop it, Elician and Cat must confront Death herself, leaving Elician's rebellious sister, Fen, to do what she can to heal the sick in their absence. But when a coup threatens to upend her brother’s reign, Fen must decide exactly what she is willing to sacrifice to help her brother succeed.With the death toll rising and the struggle for the Alelunen throne in the balance, it’s a race against time to appease the wrath of a god with the monarchies of both countries at stake.

For readers of Ace and Belly of the Beast: A Black queer feminist exploration of asexuality—and an incisive interrogation of the sex-obsessed culture that invisibilizes and ignores asexual and A-spec identity. Everything you know about sex and asexuality is (probably) wrong. The notion that everyone wants sex—and that we all have to have it—is false. It's intertwined with our ideas about capitalism, race, gender, and queerness. And it impacts the most marginalized among us. For asexual folks, it means that ace and A-spec identity is often defined by a queerness that's not queer enough, seen through a lens of perceived lack of pleasure, connection, joy, maturity, and even humanity. In this exploration of what it means to be Black and asexual in America today, Sherronda J. Brown offers new perspectives on asexuality. She takes an incisive look at how anti-Blackness, white supremacy, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and capitalism enact harm against asexual people, contextualizing acephobia within a racial framework in the first book of its kind. Brown advocates for the "A" in LGBTQIA+, affirming that to be asexual is to be queer—despite the gatekeeping and denial that often says otherwise. With chapters on desire, f*ckability, utility, refusal, and possibilities, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality discusses topics of deep relevance to ace and a-spec communities. It centers the Black asexual experience—and demands visibility in a world that pathologizes and denies asexuality, denigrates queerness, and specifically sexualizes Black people. A necessary and unapologetic reclamation, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality is smart, timely, and an essential read for asexuals, aromantics, queer readers, and anyone looking to better understand sexual politics in America.

The Martiniquian-born theorist, revolutionary, and psychiatrist Frantz Fanon was a foundational figure in postcolonial thought and practice, and along with Foucault and Lacan, he remains an indispensable thinker on the complex interrelationships of identity, politics, and psychoanalysis. His biographers have always noted that his medical career was not a profession he chose by chance but one that reflected his humanist convictions, yet his psychiatric work has only received sustained attention in recent years - and then only from scholars fluent in French. Now available for the first time in English, the pieces collected here demonstrate in concrete ways how Fanon's conception of a radical psychiatry based in human liberation and self-activity was directly related to his philosophy and politics. They offer specific content for ongoing debates over psychiatry and politics in contemporary society, and together form an essential text for anyone working in postcolonial studies, Fanon studies, history, psychiatry, and politics.