From brilliant new voices to seasoned icons, many of the past year’s breakout works are by Black authors. In June, Great Black Hope, a coming-of-age story reckoning with privilege and belonging, made first-time author Rob Franklin a household name. And in July, Stephanie Wambugu’s gorgeous debut novel Lonely Crowds, which explores the intimacy and frustration in the relationship between two lifelong friends, climbed bestseller lists.
Several beloved writers have returned with new work. Brandon Taylor, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020, released Minor Black Figures — an intimate portrait of a queer painter grappling with the expectations placed on Black artists — in October. And this month, a posthumous work of literary giant Toni Morrison was published, reflecting her enduring legacy on the American literary tradition and the ways literature shapes our lives.
From highly acclaimed debuts to long-awaited returns, from thriller to romance, these are the 10 best new books to read during Black History Month and beyond. The following titles can be purchased from Reparations Club, a Black-, woman-, and LGBT-owned concept bookshop and creative space in Los Angeles.
Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon by Toni Morrison
From 1989 to 2006, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison served as the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University, delivering lectures to hundreds of students over the course of her tenure. Now, more than a decade after her final novel, God Help the Child, readers can return to Morrison through a newly published collection of her Princeton lectures. It examines the portrayal of Black characters in the American literary canon and connects fiction with the construction of American racial identities. Through Morrison’s lens as both a writer and teacher, readers are invited to reconsider the power of language itself and how true liberation requires the dismantling of structures embedded within it.
Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu
In her debut novel, Wambugu grapples with ambition, intimacy, and the pursuit of creativity. Ruth grows up in Rhode Island as the daughter of Kenyan immigrants and earns a scholarship to a Catholic school where she meets Maria, who has been raised by a cold and distant aunt after her mother’s suicide. Lonely Crowds traces the two women’s relationship — in all its intensity, tenderness, and complexity — from the rigidity of New England society to the unbridled freedom of New York’s art world.
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy
This sweeping work of literary fiction unfolds through the shifting perspectives of four friends. Spanning 20 years and moving from Los Angeles to New York, the novel follows Desiree, Nakia, Monique, and January as they navigate through “the wilderness” of adult life with its limitless possibilities and destabilizing uncertainties. Against the backdrop of economic, political, and personal disarray, Flournoy’s sophomore novel is a beautiful reflection on the ties that bind.
Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin
Franklin’s debut opens with Smith, a privileged Black queer Stanford grad, being arrested at a party in the Hamptons for possession of cocaine. Moving between the dimly lit rooms of New York City’s nightlife scene, court-mandated treatment rooms, and his hometown of Atlanta, the novel tracks Smith’s highwire act of living between worlds.
Minor Black Figures by Brandon Taylor
Taylor’s third novel centers on Wyeth, a 31-year-old painter at a creative impasse, who meets Keating, a former seminarian, in a New York bar. When the two begin arguing about religion and sex, their charged debate evolves into an on-again, off-again relationship. Meanwhile, through an odd job working for an art restorer, Wyeth becomes fixated on the work of a long-forgotten Black artist.
The Love Lyric by Kristina Forest
From bestselling romance author Kristina Forest comes the story of Iris Green, a recently widowed beauty executive with a 6-year-old daughter. When the smoldering R&B singer Angel Hughes signs a brand deal with Iris’s company, their attraction is palpable. But can the two make it work in harmony or will their respective baggage make them hit a sour note?
Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson
This multi-generational saga stars Ebby Freeman, the daughter of a wealthy Black family with deep Massachusetts roots. At 10, she heard a gunshot, and discovered her brother’s body surrounded by fragments of a stoneware jar made by an enslaved ancestor. Eighteen years later, following Ebby’s broken engagement, she flees to France and finds that she’s unable to outrun her past.
The Catch by Yrsa Daley-Ward
Poet Yrsa Daley-Ward’s first literary thriller introduces us to twins Clara and Dempsey. After their mother disappeared into the River Thames, the infants were adopted into separate families: Clara by an upper-class couple, and Dempsey by an unloving elected official. Years later, when Clara encounters a woman who looks exactly like their mother — seemingly unaged — the sisters are forced to face the truth of their shared past, and, ultimately, one another.
Dead and Alive: Essays by Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith returns with a highly-anticipated new collection of more than 30 essays grouped by five themes: “Eyeballing,” “Considering,” “Reconsidering,” “Mourning” and “Confessing.” With her unique precision, Smith toggles between the personal and the abstract, making incisive social commentary about the way we create and consume art, literature, and film.
My Train Leaves at Three by Natalie Guerrero
Xiomara is a young Afro-Latina woman grieving the loss of her sister. She lives at home in New York City with her mother, works at a print shop and as a singing waitress at Ellen’s Stardust Diner, and dreams of making it to Broadway. When her big break arrives just as her relationship with her coworker Santi deepens, her ambitions start to clash with the people she loves most.
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