Stuff your kindle day is September 20, 2023

Hey, everyone! Sept 20 -22 is Stuff Your E-Reader/Kindle Day, where you can download tons of FREE eBooks to own.

Amazon.com: stuff your kindle day

Let us know what you get and/or would recommend!

Romance bookworms: free books for a limited time

For romance readers, check out Romance Bookworms for links to free romance books.

They have sections for:

Black romance books

Books written by BIPOC Authors

Books with LGBTQ+ Protagonists

Books written by authors with disabilities

Colette's recommendation

A book series I personally recommend is the Isaac Taylor Mystery Series by Lashell Collins. It's a psychic mystery thriller series with a sweet, lightly spiced BWWM romance throughout. Their meetcute is *chef's kiss* it has an interesting cast of diverse characters and the writing is superb!

Book 1 of the series, Voices & Visions, is free to download and own today!

Happy reading!

~Mod Colette and WWC

Edit: $0 Sale continues into Friday, Sept 22! Also, you do not need Kindle Unlimited to get the eBooks. this sale applies to Nook Books and can be found in other ebook formats as well.

If your fav white character can have godhood status without anyone objecting and having to prove themself then so can characters of color.

If your fav white character can one shot somebody then so can characters of color.

If your fav white character can be angry then so can characters of color.

If your fav white character can be the savior then so can characters of color.

If your fav white character can be loved unconditionally THEN SO CAN CHARACTERS OF COLOR.

Y’all constantly want characters of color to struggle and that’s a problem. They can never just exist. They can never be powerful just because. They can’t be anything without y’all questioning why they have the right to be that way. It’s racism. Point blank period. Constantly questioning why marginalized characters aren’t struggling, why they get to show off their powers and just be is racist. The fact y’all don’t hesitate to do it either makes it even more obvious. Like what do you mean Storm not struggling does a disservice to marginalized characters??? Or that Hazel despite being super powerful doesn’t deserve to be in the seven??? Or that Bree is annoying when she is a grieving 16 year old???? What do you mean by that??????

Happy Black History Month! Check Out 15 of Our Favorite Queer Reads by Black Authors

February is Black History Month in the United States, and Duck Prints Press is joining in the celebration by sharing 15 of our favorite queer reads by Black authors! The contributors to this list are Shadaras, boneturtle, Tris Lawrence, Sebastian Marie, Shea Sullivan, Terra P. Waters, and an anonymous author.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth Trilogy) by N.K. Jemisin

A Necessary Chaos by Brent Lambert

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix (Remixed Classics Series) by Bethany C. Morrow

Nothing Burns As Bright As You by Ashley Woodfolk

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson

This Poison Heart (This Poison Heart Series) by Kalynn Bayron

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

How to Find a Princess (Runaway Royals Series) by Alyssa Cole

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers

My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix (Remixed Classics Series) by Kalynn Bayron

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

What are YOUR favorite reads by Black authors? We’d love to find more to add to our to-be-read piles!

Want to chat your favorite reads with us? Join our Book Lover’s Discord server!

You can view this list as a bookshelf on Goodreads!

Love reading queer books? Our Queer Book Challenge is running on Storygraph through the end of 2024. Come join us!

RECO OF THE WEEK!

An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi

Synopsis:

"It's 2003, several months since the US officially declared war on Iraq, and the American political world has evolved. Tensions are high, hate crimes are on the rise, FBI agents are infiltrating local mosques, and the Muslim community is harassed and targeted more than ever. Shadi, who wears hijab, keeps her head down.

She's too busy drowning in her own troubles to find the time to deal with bigots.

Shadi is named for joy, but she's haunted by sorrow. Her brother is dead, her father is dying, her mother is falling apart, and her best friend has mysteriously dropped out of her life. And then, of course, there's the small matter of her heart--

It's broken.

Shadi tries to navigate her crumbling world by soldiering through, saying nothing. She devours her own pain, each day retreating farther and farther inside herself until finally, one day, everything changes.

She explodes.

An Emotion of Great Delight is a searing look into the world of a single Muslim family in the wake of 9/11. It's about a child of immigrants forging a blurry identity, falling in love, and finding hope--in the midst of a modern war."

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Check out my review on Goodreads here.

Add this book to your TBR on Goodreads here.

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Have you read this book? Would you recommend it?

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Happy reading!

I hope it gets backed!! I just saw it last night and backed it as soon as I got back to my dorm <3 I love horror and being brown I don’t get to see a lot of myself in horror so this means a lot to me!!!

I’m with you! Thank you Kell-Eramis! I had the honor of contributing to the first DitM. This second book is a jaw-dropping continuation. Everyone has worked so hard!

Only a bit of time left, on the Kickstarter, but I believe it can happen!

The link once again to Sloane’s outstanding Bipoc Horror Anthology:

(please consider backing or boosting)

I finished A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark today and absolutely loved it.

Synopsis:

Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage. Alongside her Ministry colleagues and her clever girlfriend Siti, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city -or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems…

My Review

I highly recommend reading A Dead Djinn in Cairo, the 0.1 novella in this series, before starting this book! I skipped all the other novellas (though I'll probably get around to them when I can because I do love this universe), and didn't feel like it made a difference, but A Dead Djinn in Cairo is where Fatma and Siti meet, and the case they work on in that book is referenced multiple times in this book and has a huge impact on the overall plot - I would have been SO annoyed and confused by all those references if I hadn't read that book first. That out of the way, I LOVE this book. The setting - alternate universe 1920s Egypt with some steampunk vibes to it - is SO cool, the main characters are fantastic, and the plot and mystery are really fun. I wouldn't try and sell this as a romance (the main couple are already together at the beginning of the book and the story doesn't revolve around them too much), but Fatma is a butch lesbian with hot femme fatal girlfriend Siti, and Fatma's friendship with Hadia, her new partner in the department, is a delight. I also think it had some fantastic things to say about colonialism, racism, colourism, slavery and xenophobia - often with a fantastic dry humour to it. If you're a fan of A Marvellous Light's trilogy by Freya Marske I would highly recommend this to you.

Cover Art | Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams

A teenager on the run from his past finds the family he never knew existed and the community he never knew he needed at an HBCU for the young, Black, and magical. Enroll in this fresh fantasy debut with the emotional power of Legendborn and the redefined ancestral magic of Lovecraft Country. Ten years ago, Malik’s life changed forever the night his mother mysteriously vanished and he discovered he had uncontrollable powers. Since then, he has kept his abilities hidden, looking out for himself and his younger foster brother, Taye. Now, at 17, Malik is finally ready to start a new life for both of them, far from the trauma of his past. However, a daring act to rescue Taye reveals an unexpected connection with his long-lost grandmother: a legendary conjurer with ties to a hidden magical university that Malik’s mother attended. At Caiman University, Malik’s eyes are opened to a future he never could have envisioned for himself— one that includes the reappearance of his first love, Alexis. His search for answers about his heritage, his powers, and what really happened to his mother exposes the cracks in their magical community as it faces a reawakened evil dating back to the Haitian Revolution. Together with Alexis, Malik discovers a lot beneath the surface at Caiman: feuding covens and magical politics, forbidden knowledge and buried mysteries.  In a wholly unique saga of family, history and community, Malik must embrace his legacy to save what’s left of his old family as well as his new one. Exploring the roots and secrets that connect us in an unforgettable contemporary setting, this heart-pounding fantasy series opener is a rich tapestry of atmosphere, intrigue, and emotion.

Artwork by Hillary D. Wilson

Release date | May 7, 2024 Storygraph

At BDA Publishing, we're on a mission to amplify diverse voices and break barriers in the publishing world. Submit your manuscript to our open call and be part of reshaping the narrative. We're seeking originality, strong character development, engaging narratives, unconventional themes, and experimental styles—all under 80k words. Your story matters—let's make it heard!

Click here to submit your manuscript. Please allow a 6-week reading period for our editing team to evaluate your entry. Contracts are awarded on a rolling basis and subject to our discretion.

“People told Lucy Yu it was a crazy time to open a bookstore in Chinatown. It was early 2021, and the pandemic had devastated the neighborhood, forcing dozens of stores and restaurants to close. The rise of anti-Asian hate crimes had shaken residents and local business owners.

But Ms. Yu believed that a bookstore was just what the neighborhood needed.

She raised around $20,000 on GoFundMe, enough to rent a narrow storefront — a former funeral supply store — on Mulberry Street in downtown Manhattan. A neighborhood grant gave her $2,000 for shelves and books. And in December [2021], she opened Yu and Me Books, which specializes in titles by and about immigrants and people of color.

The store was profitable within four months, Ms. Yu said.

Yu and Me Books is one of more than 300 new independent bookstores that have sprouted across the United States in the past couple of years, in a surprising and welcome revival after an early pandemic slump. And as the number of stores has grown, the book selling business — traditionally overwhelmingly white — has also become much more diverse.

“People were hungry for a place focused on Asian American and immigrant stories,” said Ms. Yu, 27, who worked as a chemical engineer and supply chain manager before opening the store. “That’s something I was always searching for when I went to bookstores, and I wanted people to come here and not have to search.”

Two years ago, the future of independent book selling looked bleak. As the coronavirus forced retailers to shut down, hundreds of small booksellers around the United States seemed doomed. Bookstore sales fell nearly 30 percent in 2020, U.S. Census Bureau data showed. The publishing industry was braced for a blow to its retail ecosystem, one that could permanently reshape the way readers discover and buy books.

Instead, something unexpected happened: Small booksellers not only survived the pandemic, but many are thriving.

“It’s kind of shocking when you think about what dire straits the stores were in in 2020,” said Allison Hill, the chief executive of the American Booksellers Association, a trade organization for independent bookstores. “We saw a rally like we’ve never seen before.”

The association now [in July 2022] has 2,023 member stores in 2,561 locations, up from 1,689 in early July of 2020. Some of the growth reflects the renewal of memberships by existing stores that put off doing it last year amid the uncertainly caused by the pandemic. But there has also been a sharp and sustained rise in new bookshops, and more than 200 additional stores are preparing to open in the next year or two, Ms. Hill said.

Many stores have also seen a bump in profits. In a survey of booksellers [in 2022], the association found that some 80 percent of respondents said they saw higher sales in 2021 than in 2020, and nearly 70 percent said their sales last year were higher than 2019, Ms. Hill said.”

-via The New York Times, 7/10/22. Excerpt continues below.

“At Blue Willow Bookshop in Houston, revenue was up by 20 percent in 2021, and the store made more money last year than it did in 2019, according to the owner, Valerie Koehler. Mitchell Kaplan, the founder of Books & Books, an independent chain in South Florida, said sales were up more than 60 percent in 2021 compared to 2020.

Many of the new stores that opened during the pandemic are run by nonwhite booksellers, among them The Salt Eaters Bookshop in Inglewood, Calif., which specializes in books by and about Black women, girls and nonbinary people; the Libros Bookmobile, a Latina-owned mobile bookstore in a converted school bus in Taylor, Texas, which stocks fiction in Spanish and English, and Reader’s Block, a Black-owned bookshop in Stratford, Conn.

...One unexpected outcome of the pandemic was the way many communities rallied around their local bookstores in a time of crisis. When in-person shopping plummeted during the shutdown, bookstores rapidly scaled up their online sales operations, and found other ways to keep their customers, including curbside pickup, home delivery, outdoor pop-up stores and bookmobiles. Readers, it turned out, were eager for print books during the pandemic, and the spike in sales continued into 2021, when publishers sold nearly 827 million print books, an increase of roughly 10 percent over 2020, according to NPD BookScan.

The new crop of bookstores may also be a byproduct of broader pandemic-driven shifts in the economy as people re-evaluated their lives and changed professions, and retail spaces became more affordable. Government assistance to small businesses helped many bookstores weather the shutdown, while stimulus checks enabled some people to leave their jobs and start new businesses.

Julie Ross quit her job in human resources at Google this year to open Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, Pa., with two friends who left academia. They opened their “queer, feminist indie bookstore” — there is a table near the front with books about abortion — in a conservative part of the state, close to where one of her co-owners grew up.

The pandemic “burst the bubble of believing we had any control over what was coming,” Ms. Ross said. “We had this moment of, ‘What are we waiting for?’”

...[As for Yu and Me Books, [author Ava Chin], whose family has lived in Chinatown for generations, said that the store has become a gathering spot for artistic and literary-minded locals, and something of an Asian American literary hub. Its packed calendar includes a bilingual poetry reading with the poet Yam Gong, a book launch for the writer and essayist Larissa Pham, and a signing with the novelist Marie Myung-Ok Lee.

At a moment when anti-Asian hate crimes have surged, the store has also come to feel like a safe haven, Ms. Chin said. In March, the shop held an event to raise awareness and distributed more than 1,000 safety alarms and pepper spray canisters.

“It’s not just a bookstore, it really is a de facto community space,” Ms. Chin said. “I don’t think we realized we needed a bookstore until we had one.””

-via The New York Times, 7/10/22

Please Support Me! I Write Short Stories!

And now, I'm writing full-length novels, too!

Book Reviews - Cinderella Is Dead, A Clash Of Steel and You're Not Supposed To Die Tonight

Fourth Wing never was and never will be a BIPOC book. Stop saying that cuz trying to insinuate that white books are BIPOC is honestly insulting. What part of Black, Indigenous, People of Color don’t y’all understand??? If the author falls under that category then then it is a BIPOC book. Percy Jackson isn’t BIPOC. If the author is white then it is not BIPOC!!!! Iron Widow, LegendBorn, The Blood Trials, So Let Them Burn, The Poppy War, Gods of Jade and Shadow, Looking For Smoke, A Blade So Black, Tristan Strong Punches A Hole in the Sky. Those are BIPOC books. Y’all need to get it together and quickly.

Hey, you! I want to tell you about my book, Dreamer!

It's a YA/New Adult novella that's a dark fantasy horror. (What is "dark fantasy"? Think The Labyrinth and you're pretty much there) What is it about? Here's a blurb (because I have never met a soul - or soulless being - that has ever liked seeing reviews from talking heads & pundits instead of what the story is actually about):

Vera has unusual dreams - anything she dreams comes alive. Dream Traveling, her family calls it. Doing it all her life, Dream Traveling doesn't affect Vera as much as it used to. She has her rules and her methods - as long as she follows them, all is fine. 

Until she sees something she discovered she couldn't handle. Now, her dreams are plagued by The Hunter, a deadly character that wants nothing more than to haunt her mind and leave behind a bloody spree. Vera must find a way to get The Hunter out of her head before he makes sure she never wakes up again. 

So much for "sweet dreams".

Audiobook Sample!

Available everywhere books, ebooks and audiobooks are sold!

AUTHOR FEATURE:

﹒Susan Abulhawa﹒

Four Books Written By this Author:

Mornings in Jenin

Against the Loveless World

The Blue Between Sky and Water

My Voice Sought the Wind

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Happy reading!

So as some of you may know, I am writing a book/s. And I've reached a moment of questioning myself in terms of direction with it.

The book is for creative witches. Specifically, art, music, writing, poetry, dance, et cetera et cetera.

My current stumbling block is whether or not I want to include in the book a glamour magic section and a kitchen magic section, because technically they are forms of creativity, but there are already so many books out there existing for them. So do I want to exclude these sections, or include them and just make a giant compendium of creative witchcraft?

Baring to mind that the art section alone is already 15 pages and I still plan on adding more to that section. My insecurity in this is just whether or not people would want a big book like this

Can we get a round of applause for Justina Ireland?

In her book Deathless Divide, she not only tackled the ignorance and immorality of racial discrimination in her alternate history/fiction, but gave the reader a masc bisexual amputee black woman protag AND a femme aroace black woman protag who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. She also sprinkled mentions of other queer characters in her story as well, and most of the cast is bipoc. SHE RAISED THE STANDARDS FOR REPRESENTATION FOR EVERYONE. ROUND OF FUCKING APPLAUSE.