How the Word Is Passed meets Braiding Sweetgrass in a cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery, told through the stories of long-lived trees. The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely. In When Trees Testify, award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery explores the way seven trees—as well as the cotton shrub—are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants. Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.

Thrilling, sharp, and deeply humane, philosopher Amia Srinivasan's The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century upends the way we discuss—or avoid discussing—the problems and politics of sex.How should we think about sex? It is a thing we have and also a thing we do; a supposedly private act laden with public meaning; a personal preference shaped by outside forces; a place where pleasure and ethics can pull wildly apart.How should we talk about sex? Since #MeToo many have fixed on consent as the key framework for achieving sexual justice. Yet consent is a blunt tool. To grasp sex in all its complexity—its deep ambivalences, its relationship to gender, class, race and power—we need to move beyond yes and no, wanted and unwanted.We do not know the future of sex—but perhaps we could imagine it. Amia Srinivasan’s stunning debut helps us do just that. She traces the meaning of sex in our world, animated by the hope of a different world. She reaches back into an older feminist tradition that was unafraid to think of sex as a political phenomenon. She discusses a range of fraught relationships—between discrimination and preference, pornography and freedom, rape and racial injustice, punishment and accountability, students and teachers, pleasure and power, capitalism and liberation.The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century is a provocation and a promise, transforming many of our most urgent political debates and asking what it might mean to be free.

A twisting, gothic literary thriller sure to delight fans of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield, The Wonder by Emma Donaghue, and The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters. It is 1962, and Marta Khoury, a trailblazing marine archaeologist, has been called to Cairnroch, a small island off the east coast of Scotland. A Victorian shipwreck, dragged from arctic waters, holds the remains of a celebrated explorer and the treasures of his final expedition. But on her first dive down to the ship, Marta becomes convinced she has seen a dark figure lurking amid the wreckage.When the Cuban Missile Crisis and the deep chill of a record-breaking winter keeps Marta stranded on Cairnroch, she forms a relationship with Elsie, a local woman working in the island’s only hotel. When the ship's artefacts inexplicably disappear, Marta and Elsie have to brave the freezing conditions to search for the missing objects before anyone else catches on. As something eerie seems to follow her at every step, Marta must confront if the haunting is a figment of her imagination, the repercussions from a terrible mistake from her past, or if something more sinister is at play that will trap her and everyone on the island—and their secrets—in an icy wilderness.

Russ Williams was raised on Wales’s stories, like the one about a mountain that would send you mad or turn you into a gifted poet if you camped out on it, the one about the lost civilisation drowned by the sea and the one about the bottomless lake leading down to the Welsh Otherworld. Stories of witches and giants and heroic kings, dragons and mad doctors, ghostly women, giant beaver monsters, vampire furniture and pirate-fighting monks.As entertaining as it is informative, Where the Folk follows Russ Williams as he travels in Griff, his creaky red Fiesta, in search of places associated with Wales’s legends, folklore and urban myths. In this joyful travelogue, not only does Russ recount some of Wales’s most interesting stories; he also explores the origins behind the myths, talking to experts and storytellers to find out how and why they might have come about, and what they tell us about Wales past and present.

Meet Mei, a young Chinese American who has discovered she has the mystical ability to transport herself anywhere that is spiritually “China”—including Chinatowns around the world and different eras of Chinese history. As an adoptive child of the diaspora, Mei was raised in America with no knowledge of Chinese folklore or fairy tales, but when an antiques dealer friend needs help retrieving a mythic artifact—a jade carving of a peach that represented same-sex love in ancient China—she’s game to give it a try. Her quest sends Mei not only into the past, but on a journey of self-discovery. PRAISE “Full of queerness, generative solidarity, and gently profound insights into love and choice, Tan’s tale goes down smoothly but its wisdom lingers. Not to be missed.” —Shelley Parker Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun "Cecilia Tan has carved a jade peach, and then turned it real for you. Cup your hands around this enchanting tale of romance, art, and magic, and savor its juice. An absolute gem!" —Claire Light, author of Slightly Behind and to the Left/Jadie Jiang, author of Monkey Around "Bitten Peach's ingenious time travel narrative structure is as tight as it is playful. Its themes of displacement and yearning are equally exquisitely intertwined through gender, space, and culture. And it all comes together in delicious resonance with the nature of its Chinese history and spiral-time magic! It's the kind of story that burrows into my brain and lives there for years and years.": —Emma Mieke Candon, author of Ronin, and The Archive Undying

A sapphic rivals to lovers rom com for fans of Ted Lasso and A League of Their Own, where two soccer teammates are at odds before falling in love as their team gears up for the World Cup.Grace Henderson has been a star of the US Women’s National Team for ten years, even though she’s only 26. But when she’s sidelined with an injury, a bold new upstart, Phoebe Matthews, takes her spot. Phoebe is everything Grace isn’t—a gregarious jokester who plays with a joy that Grace lost somewhere along the way. The last thing Grace expects is to become friends with benefits with this class clown she sees as her rival.Phoebe Matthews has always admired Grace’s skill and was star struck to be training alongside her idol. But she quickly finds herself looking at Grace as more than a mere teammate. After one daring kiss, she’s hooked. Grace is everything she has been waiting to find.As the World Cup approaches, and Grace works her way back from injury, the women decide to find a way they can play together instead of vying for the same position. Except, when they are off the field, Grace is worried she’s catching feelings while Phoebe thinks they are dating. As the tension between them grows, will both players realize they care more about their relationship than making the roster?