7 Books Published by Union Square & Co., LLC. on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

An ode to being active and dramatic play. For fans of I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss and The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires, this picture book will inspire young readers to get moving and start imagining!

Simple, engaging rhymes will encourage little ones to jump, run, and explore the limitless possibilities of their imagination in this energizing ode to movement by award-winning author Carole Boston Weatherford.

Raised in Appalachia, native daughter Ashleigh Shanti, a queer Black woman and acclaimed chef, knows Southern Black cooking means more than we've come to believe. While hot buttered cast-iron-pan cornbread and crunchy, juicy, lard-fried chicken have their roles to play, they are far from the entire story.

The key to understanding how Black influence has defined foodways and cultures in the South is to explore its microregions, each with its own distinct flora and fauna, dialects, traditions, and dishes. In Our South, Ashleigh takes you through the five regions closest to her heart, beginning with a glimpse of mountain life in the Backcountry through recipes like Fish Camp Hush Puppies and quail spiked with black pepper. A swing over to the coastal Lowcountry fills your plate with smoky grilled oysters and benne seed-topped crab toasts. Seasonal produce shines in the Midlands, where bountiful stone fruits enrich dishes from shortcakes to salads. Lowlands nods to the diversity of food cultures that meet in the region, where Ashleigh grew up eating noodle dishes like Virginia yock alongside Southern classics like Brunswick stew. The book culminates in Homeland, with foods that share what it's like to cook—and live—as a Black Southern chef now.

Long before competing on Top Chef and earning a coveted James Beard Award Rising Star Chef nomination for her cooking at Asheville, North Carolina's Benne on Eagle, Ashleigh shelled boiled peanuts and coveted the jars of pickles in her great-aunt Hattie Mae's larder. In high school, she pored over food and travel magazines and marveled at how her mother never failed to put a hot meal on the table, whether instant grits or slowly cooked celebration dishes. After spending a gap year in Nairobi and graduating from culinary school, Ashleigh entered the restaurant world, bartending, catering, teaching, and staging. She rekindled her connection to the cuisine of her roots before opening her own restaurant, Good Hot Fish, named for a phrase her ancestors would shout to draw in customers.

Our South takes readers on a mouthwatering journey through Appalachia and beyond, revealing the depth and diversity of Southern cooking through the eyes of a rising culinary star. Perfect for fans of other regional Southern cookbooks like the Mosquito Supper Club cookbook or soul food cookbooks like Jubilee, Our South stands as a testament to the rich tapestry of Black culinary traditions, offering a contemporary exploration of Black Southern foodways that's both personal and universal.

A modern-day writer and a Harlem Renaissance artist are connected by a painting with a deadly secret in this gripping dual-timeline gothic thriller.

Shanice Pierce knows better than to heed bad omens. But she has a hard time ignoring the signs when she finds herself newly single and out of a job on the same seemingly cursed day.

Then, while cleaning out her grandmother’s house, Shanice comes across a painting she hasn’t seen in years. Drawn to the haunting portrait in a way she can’t explain, Shanice accepts her grandmother’s offer to keep the family heirloom.

She soon uncovers the story of the artist, a Harlem Renaissance painter named Estelle Johnson. The young woman was taken under the wing of the wealthy art patron Maude Bachmann—or “Godmother” as she insisted her artists call her—and vanished shortly after Bachmann’s brutal murder a century ago.

As Shanice digs deeper, a paranoia that’s haunted her for years returns. She becomes convinced she’s being stalked, and that the deaths happening around her are connected to the staggering offer she turned down for the painting.

But the truth hiding in plain sight is even more shocking—and deadly—than Shanice could possibly have imagined …

One fateful encounter upends the lives of two women in this tense domestic thriller, a modern spin on Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train that flips the script on race and gender politics.

"I’m a big believer that women should help each other, Tasha," she says. "Don’t you think?"

Tasha Jenkins has finally found the courage to leave her abusive husband. Taking her teenage son with her, Tasha checks into a hotel the night before their flight out of D.C. and out of Kordell Jenkins’s life forever. But escaping isn’t so easy, and Tasha soon finds herself driving back to her own personal hell. As she is leaving, a white woman pounds on her car window, begging to be let in. Behind the woman, an angry man is in pursuit. Tasha makes a split-second decision that will alter the course of her life: she lets her in and takes off.

Tasha and Madison Gingell may have very different everyday realities, but what they have in common is marriages they need out of. The two women want to help each other, but they have very different ideas of what that means …

They are on a collision course that will end in the case files of the D.C. MPD homicide unit. Unraveling the truth of what really happened may be impossible?and futile. Because what has the truth ever done for women like Tasha and Madison?

Master of psychological suspense L.S. Stratton has written a gripping murder mystery about two perfect strangers whose lives become dangerously entangled, a must-read for fans of crime thriller books.

Something cool happening in Ferrous City? Not a chance.

Until one day … when self-proclaimed genius inventor Ethan Fairmont runs into an abandoned car factory to avoid a local bully and accidentally stumbles across his ex-best friend Kareem, new kid Juan Carlos, and an extraterrestrial visitor. Cheese (the alien) is stuck on Earth in need of some serious repairs, spicy snacks—and absolute, total secrecy. That’s easier said than done when mysterious agents descend on Ferrous City to search for Cheese. With time running out and their family and friends in potential danger, can Ethan, Kareem, and Juan Carlos pull off an intergalactic rescue before they’re all found out?

E.T. meets Stranger Things in the kickoff to Nick Brooks’s middle-grade series that weaves contemporary issues of racial profiling, industrial community struggles, and everyday life in a fast-paced out-of-this-world adventure.

With bold, colorful graphics and poetic rhyme, this is a stunning tribute to every kind of hair, perfect for fans of Hair Love.

Covered hair,
Bun Hair,
Party Hair…
No matter your hair—YOU are welcome anywhere!

Author and lifestyle blogger LaTonya Yvette makes her children’s book debut with a must-have gift purchase for any occasion, alongside art from award-winning illustrator Amanda Jane Jones.

An acclaimed anthology receives a new design and cover! Award-winning writer, historian, and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou is a true American icon. Twenty-five of her finest poems capture a range of emotions and experiences, from the playful “Harlem Hopscotch” to the prideful “Me and My Work” to the soul-stirring “Still I Rise.” Award-winning artist Jerome Lagarrigue masterfully illustrates each verse, and renowned academic Dr. Edwin Graves Wilson, a longtime colleague of Dr. Angelou, has written the books introduction, introductions to the poems, and annotations.