Ariel Blake

"When a high school student started a private Instagram account that used racist and sexist memes to make his friends laugh, he thought of it as "edgy" humor. Over time, the edge got sharper. Then a few other kids found out about the account. Pretty soon, everyone knew. Ultimately no one in the small town of Albany, California, was safe from the repercussions of the account's discovery. Not the girls targeted by the posts. Not the boy who created...

"1950s Philadelphia: fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright. Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride...

"When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions. A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty's affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty's journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could--and between...

"In 1846, a young surgeon, J. Marion Sims ("The Father of Gynecology"), began several years of experimental surgeries on a young enslaved woman known as Anarcha ("The Mother of Gynecology"). This series of procedures-performed without anesthesia and resulting in Anarcha's so-called "cure"-forever altered the path of women's health. Despite brutal practices and failed techniques, Sims proclaimed himself the curer of obstetric fistula, a horrific condition...

REESE'S BOOK CLUB MAY 2023 PICK
BOOK OF THE MONTH MAY 2023 PICK
A multigenerational saga that traverses the glamour of old Hollywood and the seductive draw of modern-day showbiz
When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions.
A celebrity in her own right,

...

"Sixteen-year-old Beau Willet has dreams of being an artist and one day leaving the Chicago projects she's grown up in. But after her older sister, Katia, is killed by an off-duty police officer, Beau knows she has to clear her sister's name by finding the only witness to the murder -- Katia's no-good boyfriend, Jordan, who has gone missing. If she doesn't find him and tell the world what really happened, Katia's death will be ignored, like the deaths...

"In AN ABOLITIONIST'S HANDBOOK, Cullors charts a framework for how everyday activists can effectively fight for an abolitionist present and future. Filled with relatable pedagogy on the history of abolition, a reimagining of what reparations look like for Black lives and real-life anecdotes from Cullors AN ABOLITIONIST'S HANDBOOK offers a bold, innovative, and humanistic approach to how to be a modern-day abolitionist. Cullors asks us to lead with...

"Chef and writer Klancy Miller found her own way by trial and error--as a pastry chef, recipe developer, author, and founder of For the Culture magazine--but what if she had known then what she knows now? What if she had known the extraordinary women profiled within these pages--entrepreneurs, chefs, food stylists, mixologists, historians, influencers, hoteliers, and more--and learned from their stories? Like Leah Penniman, a farmer using Afro-Indigenous...

"Each story is voiced by one or several narrators who match the gender expression of the main protagonist, giving the audiobook a robust collection of distinct performances. Every tragedy, romance, and comedy is narrated with the ideal amount of enthusiasm, high energy, or relaxed pacing and allows listeners to savor each shortened interpretation. A delightful listen for Shakespeare fans looking for a more contemporary approach." — AudioFile

...