Black by Popular Demand
Let's keep it going this BHM with Lemming's new romance, a YA mystery, and more books to hook you!
Elizabeth’s Bookshop of Akron, Ohio is our Black independent bookstore of the week! Let’s keep Black History Month going strong by filling up your bookshelves~
Happy Reading!
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com
Dorothy Valentine is close to getting her PhD in wildlife biology when she’s attacked by a lion. On the bright side, she’s saved! On the not-so-bright side, it’s because they’re abducted by aliens. In her scramble to escape, Dory and the lion commandeer an escape pod and crash-land on an alien planet that has...dinosaurs?
Dory and her new lion bestie, Toto, are saved in the nick of time by a mysterious and sexy alien, Sol. On their new adventure, they team up with the equally hot, equally dangerous Lok, who may or may not be a war criminal. Whether it be trauma, fate, or intrigue, Dory can’t resist the attraction that’s developing in their trio....
As this ragtag group of misfits explore their new planet, Dory learns more about how and why they’ve all ended up together, battles more prehistoric creatures than she imagined (she imagined...zero), and questions if she even wants to go back home to Earth in this hilarious and steamy alien romance adventure comedy romp.
(Romance)
Who Better Than You?
Whether you're just starting out or ready to make a major move, Who Better Than You? is a wildly entertaining roadmap to being successful in an unpredictable world, featuring behind-the-scenes Hollywood lessons, empowering guidance, and indispensable encouragement.
From Stomp the Yard to Ride Along to Girls Trip and many more, Will Packer's films have collectively grossed more than $1 billion at the box office, with ten opening at number one! To outsiders, the unabashed confidence that has driven him since his college days--when he was trying to sell a micro-budget indie film--may look like arrogance. To Packer, that's just what it took to make it on his own terms.
With Who Better Than You?, Packer has created the success toolkit he wished he'd had back then, filled with illuminating and laugh-out-loud stories as well as practical advice, such as:
1. Be arrogant! The highest-achieving people have "healthy arrogance" Superior confidence not only in themselves and their abilities but also in their predestined success. You too can unlock this level of confidence.
2. Convince people your goals are essential and vital. It is crucial to assure others that your success benefits both you and them.
3. It's the work you put in when nobody's watching that makes everyone pay attention later. No single person on the planet is more deserving of achieving their wildest dreams than you. But it will never happen until you act accordingly in every aspect of your life.
It's time for you to start producing your own blockbuster life--by first believing there is no one more worthy of it than you.
(Nonfiction)
African Stories
Award-winning writer Ben Okri, author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Famished Road, curates this one-volume overview of the best of African literature. Here is a pantheon of enormous talents from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, hailing from a wide variety of countries and cultures and including multiple winners of the Nobel Prize in literature, the Booker Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. The writers include Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Tayeb Salih, Doris Lessing, J. M. Coetzee, M. G. Vassanji, Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, and many more.
The short story form has a rich history on the African continent, drawing on a deep well of traditional oral tales, fables, and legends as well as a vital and ongoing engagement with the forces of history and modernity. Subjects range from the vicissitudes of daily life to sweeping social commentary, with such varied characters as a shopkeeper yearning for love in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s “Cages,” a faith-healing priest in Bessie Head’s “Jacob,” a freedom fighter facing apartheid in Nadine Gordimer’s “Amnesty,” and invading aliens overcome by music in Emmanuel Boundzéki Dongala’s “Jazz and Palm Wine.” Whether they touch on the spirit world, the urban experience, colonialism, politics, humor, or love, these stories are both dazzling and moving.
Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.
(Short Stories)
Becoming Spectacular
The Radio City Rockettes are as American as baseball, hot dogs, and the Fourth of July. Their legendary synchronized leg kicks, precise lines, and megawatt smiles have charmed audiences for a century. But there is a hidden side to this illustrious national institution. When the Rockettes began in 1925, Black people were not allowed to dance on stage with white people. However, during the Civil Rights Movement, dance history changed significantly when Black and white dancers were permitted to perform together, marking a moment of progress and inclusivity in the world of dance and entertainment. Even so, as late as the early 1980s, Rockette director Violet Holmes said having “one or two Black girls in the line would definitely distract.”
In 1987 the 63-year color barrier at Radio City was finally broken by one brave and tenacious woman. When she arrived, Jennifer Jones was met with pushback—a fierce resistance she details in this intimate and inspiring memoir. After overcoming seemingly impossible odds to join the line of The Rockettes, a PR director summoned the Black dancer to her hotel room and announced, “You’re old news, nobody cares about you, your story or anything about you. You're just lucky to be here.”
Those words would haunt this shy, insecure biracial woman, who had always felt like an outsider.
(Memoir)
Needy Little Things
Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need—tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger—an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to let her become yet another forgotten Black girl.
Not trusting the police and media to do enough on their own, Sariyah and her friends work together to figure out what led to Deja’s disappearance. When Sariyah’s mother loses her job and her little brother faces complications with his sickle cell disease, managing her time, money, and emotions seems impossible. Desperate, Sariyah decides to hustle her need-sensing ability for cash—a choice that may not only lead her to Deja, but put her in the same danger Deja found herself in.
(Young Adult)