My Most Anticipated 2024 Black Authored Releases
A new year always makes me excited as it means new book releases! Some of my favorite authors are releasing books this year and I cannot wait. It’s definitely looking to be a great year in reading. Here are some of the books at the top of my TBR.
This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan
Release Date: March 5, 2024
First up on the list is Kenendy Ryan’s This Could Be Us! I loved Before I Let Go and cannot wait to dive into the sequel. Be on the lookout for this to be a book club selection in the coming months.
Book Synopsis: Soledad Barnes has her life all planned out. Because, of course, she does. She plans everything. She designs everything. She fixes everything. She’s a domestic goddess who’s never met a party she couldn’t host or a charge she couldn’t lead. The one with all the answers and the perfect vinaigrette for that summer salad. But none of her varied talents can save her when catastrophe strikes, and the life she built with the man who was supposed to be her forever, goes poof in a cloud of betrayal and disillusion.
But there is no time to pout or sulk, or even grieve the life she lost. She’s too busy keeping a roof over her daughters’ heads and food on the table. And in the process of saving them all, Soledad rediscovers herself. From the ashes of a life burned to the ground, something bold and new can rise.
But then an unlikely man enters the picture—the forbidden one, the one she shouldn’t want but can’t seem to resist. She’s lost it all before and refuses to repeat her mistakes. Can she trust him? Can she trust herself?
After all she’s lost . . .and found . . .can she be brave enough to make room for what could be?
The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest
Release Date: February 27, 2024 (my birthday)
My Next selection is The Partner Plot by Kristina Forest. We read The Neighbor Favor as a book club and absolutely loved every bit of it. Kristina Forest quickly became my new favorite author so it’s no suprise that the sequel landed on my most anticipated reads list. It also just so happens to come out on my birthday! Woot woot!
Book Synopsis: To Violet Greene, fashion is everything. As a successful celebrity stylist, she travels all over the world, living out her dreams. Professionally, she’s thriving, but her personal life is in shambles. After surviving a very public breakup with her ex-fiancé six months ago, Violet is now determined to focus on her career. But life hands her something—or rather, someone—that might derail everything…
Xavier Wright did not expect to run into his high school girlfriend Violet—the girl he once thought he’d marry—on a birthday trip to Vegas. As a high school teacher and basketball coach, he rarely leaves his New Jersey hometown, so what were the chances? But when the initial shock wears off, they decide to celebrate together. They feel young and reckless as they party the night away—and reckless they clearly were when the following morning, they wake up beside each other with rings on their fingers.
Their impulsive nuptials might be a blessing in disguise, though, when they realize that both of their careers could benefit from the marriage. So they play the part of a blissfully wedded couple. Yet when their passion comes hurling back, they realize their feelings are just as real as they were back when they were teens. But are their lives too different to stick it through or will they finally get a happy ending?
You Get What You Pay For: Essays by Morgan Parker
Release Date: March 12, 2024
Book Synopsis: Dubbed a voice of her generation, poet and writer Morgan Parker has spent much of her adulthood in therapy, trying to square the resonance of her writing with the alienation she feels in nearly every aspect of life, from her lifelong singleness to a battle with depression. She traces this loneliness to an inability to feel truly safe with others and a historic hyperawareness stemming from the effects of slavery.
In a collection of essays as intimate as being in the room with Parker and her therapist, Parker examines America’s cultural history and relationship to Black Americans through the ages. She touches on such topics as the ubiquity of beauty standards that exclude Black women, the implications of Bill Cosby’s fall from grace in a culture predicated on acceptance through respectability, and the pitfalls of visibility as seen through the mischaracterizations of Serena Williams as alternately iconic and too ambitious.
With piercing wit and incisive observations, You Get What You Pay For is ultimately a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness and its effects on mental well-being in America today. Weaving unflinching criticism with intimate anecdotes, this devastating memoir-in-essays paints a portrait of one Black woman’s psyche—and of the writer’s search to both tell the truth and deconstruct it.
This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets edited by Kwame Alexander
Release Date: January 30, 2024
Book Synopsis: In this comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology, bestselling author and poet Kwame Alexander curates a collection of contemporary anthems at turns tender and piercing and deeply inspiring throughout. Featuring work from well-loved poets such as Rita Dove, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Ross Gay, Tracy K. Smith, Terrance Hayes, Morgan Parker, and Nikki Giovanni, This Is the Honey is a rich and abundant offering of language from the poets giving voice to generations of resilient joy, “each incantation,” as Mahogany L. Browne puts it in her titular poem, is “a jubilee of a people dreaming wildly.”
This essential collection, in the tradition of Dudley Randall’s The Black Poets and E. Ethelbert Miller’s In Search of Color Everywhere, contains poems exploring joy, love, origin, race, resistance, and praise. Jacqueline A.Trimble likens “Black woman joy” to indigo, tassels, foxes, and peacock plumes. Tyree Daye, Nate Marshall, and Elizabeth Acevedo reflect on the meaning of “home” through food, from Cuban rice and beans to fried chicken gizzards. Clint Smith and Cameron Awkward-Rich enfold us in their intimate musings on love and devotion. From a “jewel in the hand” (Patricia Spears Jones) to “butter melting in small pools” (Elizabeth Alexander), This Is the Honey drips with poignant and delightful imagery, music, and raised fists.
Fresh, memorable, and deeply moving, this definitive collection a must-have for any lover of language and a gift for our time.
When I Think of You by Myah Ariel
Release Date: April 16, 2024
Book Synopsis: Kaliya Wilson has paid her dues. But all the years behind the reception desk at a flashy film studio have only pushed her movie-making dreams further out of reach. That is, until a surprise reunion presents an opportunity that could make her career, or break her heart…a second time.
It’s been seven years since Kaliya’s whirlwind college romance with Danny Prescott went up in flames. While her passions have stalled, his career is taking off. So when the hot shot director reappears to offer her a job on his next production, it’s a shock to the system. Working with Danny may recapture the intensity of their film school days, but trusting him again won’t come as easily.
As the pair allows themselves the openness and vulnerability to entrust their deepest truths to each other, the possibility of a true connection draws ever closer. But when Hollywood politics and scandal threaten to sink the production and her career, Kaliya may have to risk everything to do what’s right—even if it means letting go of the second chance love of a lifetime.
The Library Thief: A Novel by Kuchenga Shenjé
Release Date: May 7, 2024
Book Synopsis: 1896. After he brought her home from Jamaica as a baby, Florence’s father had her hair hot-combed to make her look like the other girls. But as a young woman, Florence is not so easy to tame—and when she brings scandal to his door, the bookbinder throws her onto the streets of Manchester.
Intercepting her father’s latest commission, Florence talks her way into the remote, forbidding Rose Hall to restore its collection of rare books. Lord Francis Belfield’s library is old and full of secrets—but none so intriguing as the whispers about his late wife.
Then one night, the library is broken into. Strangely, all the priceless tomes remain untouched. Florence is puzzled, until she discovers a half-burned book in the fireplace. She realizes with horror that someone has found and set fire to the secret diary of Lord Belfield’s wife—which may hold the clue to her fate…
Evocative, arresting and tightly plotted, The Library Thief is at once a propulsive Gothic mystery and a striking exploration of race, gender and self-discovery in Victorian England.
I Did a New Thing: 30 Days to Living Free (A Feeding the Soul Book) by Tabitha Brown
Release Date: January 30, 2024
Book Synopsis: Years ago, Tabitha Brown started a 30-day personal challenge that she called “I Did a New Thing!” The challenge was simple. Every day she would do something she’d never done before. Sometimes it was something small like trying a new food. Other times, she’d step it up a bit and speak to someone she’d never spoken to before. Still other times, she’d do the hard thing—facing a fear that she had, like having that tough conversation with a friend. No matter what it was, the point was that she was going to take a leap of faith and watch God open up a new lane for her.
One of the “new things” she tried was a vegan challenge. She’d been struggling with illness for nearly a year and was desperately searching for healing. She challenged herself to eat vegan every day for thirty days, and six years later, her life has never been the same—all because she decided to do a new thing.
In I Did a New Thing, Tab shares her own stories and those of others, alongside gentle guidance and encouragement to create these incredible changes for yourself and see what good can come from them. Whether that means having the hard conversation or trying for a promotion or simply wearing something different or doing something kind for someone else, Tab has a plan for you: Try one new thing, every single day, for thirty days. You don’t have to wait until Monday or the beginning of a new month or year to get started. There’s no set time and place or any extra preparation required. All you have to do is show up for yourself. And that can start right now.
Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks by Crystal Wilkinson
Release Date: January 23, 2024
Book Synopsis: People are always surprised that Black people reside in the hills of Appalachia. Those not surprised that we were there, are surprised that we stayed.
Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine.
An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits, brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts honors the mothers who came before, the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia.
As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes, Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century.
Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton
Release Date: January 23, 2024
Book Synopsis: On a cold day in March of 1911, officials marched twelve Black men into the heart of a forest in Maryland. Under the supervision of a doctor, the men were forced to clear the land, pour cement, lay bricks, and harvest tobacco. When construction finished, they became the first twelve patients of the state’s Hospital for the Negro Insane. For centuries, Black patients have been absent from our history books. Madness transports readers behind the brick walls of a Jim Crow asylum.
In Madness, Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist Antonia Hylton tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the last segregated asylums with surviving records and a campus that still stands to this day in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. She blends the intimate tales of patients and employees whose lives were shaped by Crownsville with a decade-worth of investigative research and archival documents. Madness chronicles the stories of Black families whose mental health suffered as they tried, and sometimes failed, to find safety and dignity. Hylton also grapples with her own family’s experiences with mental illness, and the secrecy and shame that it reproduced for generations.
As Crownsville Hospital grew from an antebellum-style work camp to a tiny city sitting on 1,500 acres, the institution became a microcosm of America’s evolving battles over slavery, racial integration, and civil rights. During its peak years, the hospital’s wards were overflowing with almost 2,700 patients. By the end of the 20th-century, the asylum faded from view as prisons and jails became America’s new focus.
In Madness, Hylton traces the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people’s bodies and minds in our current mental healthcare system. It is a captivating and heartbreaking meditation on how America decides who is sick or criminal, and who is worthy of our care or irredeemable.
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
Release Date: January 30, 2024
Book Synopsis: It’s 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the chance. But Millie’s starry-eyed hustle becomes jeopardized by odd new friends, vengeful dorm pranks, and illicit intrigue.
A fresh and intimate portrait of desire, consumption, and reckless abandon, Come and Get It is a tension-filled story about money, indiscretion, and bad behavior—and the highly anticipated new novel by acclaimed and award-winning author Kiley Reid.
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams
Release Date: February 3, 2024
Book Synopsis: Leap years are a strange, enchanted time. And for some, even a single February can be life-changing.
Ricki Wilde has many talents, but being a Wilde isn’t one of them. As the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, she’s the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. Where they’re long-stemmed roses, she’s a dandelion: an adorable bloom that’s actually a weed, born to float wherever the wind blows. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her.
When regal nonagenarian, Ms. Della, invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone, Ricki jumps at the chance for a fresh beginning. She leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. And just beneath the surface of her new neighborhood, the music, stories and dazzling drama of the Harlem Renaissance still simmers.
One evening in February as the heady, curiously off-season scent of night-blooming jasmine fills the air, Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.
Set against the backdrop of modern Harlem and Renaissance glamour, A Love Song for Ricki Wilde is a swoon-worthy love story of two passionate artists drawn to the magic, romance, and opportunity of New York, and whose lives are uniquely and irreversibly linked.
It seems like the first quarter of the year is going to be jam packed with antisipated new releases! Looking forward to another great year of reading! Cheers!
