CT Book Club

Perfect Peace

Daniel Black’s Perfect Peace is the heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family’s attempt to grapple with their mother’s desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have―“a complex, imaginative story of one unforgettable black family in mid-twentieth century Arkansas” (Atlanta Magazine).

When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, “You was born a boy. I made you a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. So, from now on, you gon’ be a boy. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.”

From this point forward, Perfect’s life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events―while the rest of his family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment.

“A morality tale of the consequences of letting our selfish needs trap the ones we love into roles they weren’t born to play. The characters here are as flawed, their sins numerous, as any living human being held under the lens, but the author brings a compassion and understanding to their plights.”―Mat Johnson, award-winning author of Invisible Things

“Part cautionary tale, part folk tale, part fable, Daniel Black’s Perfect Peace is a complete triumph…In Emma Jean Peace, Dr. Black has created a character as complex, equivocal and unforgettable as Scarlett O'Hara.”―Larry Duplechan, Lambda Literary Award-winning author of Got ’Til It’s Gone

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage.

In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.

In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.

Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.

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Before I Let Go

A Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick!
Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn’t solve or save everything.

It couldn’t save their marriage.

Yasmen wasn’t prepared for how her life fell apart, but she’s is finally starting to find joy again. She and Josiah have found a new rhythm, co-parenting their two kids and running a thriving business together. Yet like magnets, they’re always drawn back to each other, and now they’re beginning to wonder if they’re truly ready to let go of everything they once had.

Soon, one stolen kiss leads to another…and then more. It's hot. It's illicit. It's all good—until old wounds reopen. Is it too late for them to find forever? Or could they even be better, the second time around?

Award-winning and bestselling "powerhouse" author Kennedy Ryan is at her absolute best in this compelling, scorching novel about hope and healing, and what it truly means to love for a lifetime (USA Today).

Book of the Month Club selection
NPR Best Books of 2022
Entertainment Weekly Best Romances of 2022
Washington Post 10 Best Romances of the Year
Women's Health Best Books of the Year
Publishers Weekly Best Romance Books of 2022

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I Always Knew: A Memoir

The extraordinary life story of the celebrated artist and writer, as told through four decades of intimate letters to her beloved mother

Barbara Chase-Riboud has led a remarkable life. After graduating from Yale’s School of Design and Architecture, she moved to Europe and spent decades traveling the world and living at the center of artistic, literary, and political circles. She became a renowned artist whose work is now in museum collections around the world. Later, she also became an award-winning poet and bestselling novelist. And along the way, she met many luminaries―from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder, James Baldwin, and Mao Zedong to Toni Morrison, Pierre Cardin, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Josephine Baker.

I Always Knew is an intimate and vivid portrait of Chase-Riboud’s life as told through the letters she wrote to her mother, Vivian Mae, between 1957 and 1991. In candid detail, Chase-Riboud tells her mother about her life in Europe, her work as an artist, her romances, and her journeys around the world, from Western and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, Africa, the Soviet Union, China, and Mongolia.

By turns brilliant and naïve, passionate and tender, poignant and funny, these letters show Chase-Riboud in the process of becoming who she is and who she might become. But what emerges most of all is the powerful story of a unique and remarkable relationship between a talented, ambitious, and courageous daughter and her adored mother.

Sis, Don't Settle: How to Stay Smart in Matters of the Heart

By day, Faith Jenkins is the host of Oxygen's Killer Relationship and former host of the nationally syndicated relationship show Divorce Court; by night, she’s a happily married new mother who navigated these dating streets for years before learning how to attract the love of her dreams. When she turned 35 without a wedding ring in sight, like most women, she started getting tons of questions about not being married. But she made a decision: I. Will. Not. Settle.  
 
As an attorney and arbitrator, Faith has presided over hundreds of cases, and has helped couples avoid and resolve a wealth of drama. And she’s seen it all! In Sis, Don’t Settle, she’s gathered an arsenal of love, wisdom and advice for women on how to play it smart.
 
Modern culture would have women believe they can’t have it all—and be smart, successful, strong women with authentic love to boot. Wrong.  Told in her signature style—sometimes salty and sometimes sweet—Faith provides real solutions that will teach you how to thrive in relationships while avoiding common missteps and pitfalls. She delivers it straight, with no chaser, to show us how to level up, and reminds you that how you live single will set the tone for your success in relationships.

Smart, illuminating, and, often laugh-out-loud funny, Sis, Don’t Settle is the essential playbook that will help you build your confidence, generate better results in love, and land a high-value relationship once and for all.

Black Girls Must Die Exhausted: A Novel 

“It’s a good thing that this is only the first book of a trilogy, because after getting to know Tabitha, you won’t want to leave her at the end. . . . Written intimately as if you’re peering into the mind of a close friend, this book is a true testament to the stresses on women today and how great girlfriends (and grandmothers) are often the key to our sanity.”  — Good Morning America

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The first novel in a captivating three-book series about modern womanhood, in which a young Black woman must rely on courage, laughter, and love—and the support of her two longtime friends—to overcome an unexpected setback that threatens the most precious thing she’s ever wanted.

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Tabitha Walker is a black woman with a plan to “have it all.” At 33 years old, the checklist for the life of her dreams is well underway. Education? Check. Good job? Check. Down payment for a nice house? Check. Dating marriage material? Check, check, and check. With a coveted position as a local news reporter, a "paper-perfect" boyfriend, and even a standing Saturday morning appointment with a reliable hairstylist, everything seems to be falling into place.

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Then Tabby receives an unexpected diagnosis that brings her picture-perfect life crashing down, jeopardizing the keystone she took for granted: having children. With her dreams at risk of falling through the cracks of her checklist, suddenly she is faced with an impossible choice between her career, her dream home, and a family of her own.​