"Nadia Shammas and Marie Enger's Where Black Stars Rise is an eldritch horror graphic novel that explores mental illness and diaspora, set in modern-day Brooklyn. Dr. Amal Robardin, a Lebanese immigrant and a therapist in training, finds herself out of her depth when her first client, Yasmin, a schizophrenic, is visited by a nightly malevolent presence that seems all too real. Yasmin becomes obsessed with Robert Chambers' classic horror story collection...

I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men's thoughts lengthen in the afternoon...I pray God will curse the writer, as the writer has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth - a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow. The weird tales in this slim volume are all linked by a play, the second act of which reveals truths so...

"The great city of Tova is shattered. The sun is held within the smothering grip of the Crow God's eclipse, but a comet that marks the death of a ruler and heralds the rise of a new order is imminent. The Meridian: a land where magic has been codified and the worship of gods suppressed. How do you live when legends come to life, and the faith you had is rewarded? As sea captain Xiala is swept up in the chaos and currents of change, she finds an unexpected...

"Film legend recalls his remarkable life of nearly eight decades-a heralded actor who's played the roles he wanted, unchecked by the racism and typecasting so rife in the mostly all-white industry in which he triumphed. Billy Dee Williams was born in Harlem in 1937 and grew up in a household of love and sophistication. As a young boy, he made his stage debut working with Lotte Lenya in an Ira Gershwin/Kurt Weill production where Williams ended up...

Born in Missouri in 1928, Maya Angelou had a difficult childhood. Jim Crow laws segregated blacks and whites in the South. Her family life was unstable at times. But much like her poem, "Still I Rise," Angelou was able to lift herself out of her situation and flourish. She moved to California and became the first black and first female streetcar operator before following her interest in dance. She became a professional performer in her twenties and...

Wanting to be a dancer while growing up in a large military family made Christine Barker somewhat of a black sheep, but she followed her dreams to New York City, where--in a moment of almost unbelievable good fortune--she was chosen for the London cast of A Chorus Line. London, and then New York, in the '70s and '80s opened up Christine's world. The creativity, culture, and nightlife were intoxicating, enough so to compel her older brother Laughlin...

"The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed,"--Amazon.com. Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a...

A complete account of the triumphs and difficulties of the brilliant and high-tempered Nina Simone, whose distinctive voice and music occupy a singular place in the canon of American song. One of eight children in a proud North Carolina black family, the prodigiously talented child was trained in classical piano through the charity of a local white woman, then devastatingly rejected by the Curtis Institute of Music--a dream deferred that would forever...

A longtime LGBTQ and AIDS activist offers an account of his life from sexually liberated 1970s San Francisco, through the AIDS crisis, and up to his present-day involvement with the marriage equality battle. "Born in 1954, Cleve Jones was among the last generation of gay Americans who grew up wondering if there were others out there like himself. There were. Like thousands of other young people, Jones, nearly penniless, was drawn in the early 1970s...

"1984 meets the matrix in this riveting science fiction novel about corporate totalitarianism, personal freedom, and one brave character's journey to reclaim her humanity from an oppressive regime. 250 years in the future, artificial intelligences control every aspect of Kim's life, from what she has for breakfast to who she is allowed to have sex with. Living in the northeast province of what used to be the United States, she is a rising star of...