Lower ed : the troubling rise of for-profit colleges in the new economy
by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Drawing on her personal experience as a former counselor at two for-profit colleges and interviews with students, senior executives and activists, a renowned sociologist reveals how for-profit schools have become so successful and deciphers the benefits, credentials pitfalls and real costs of a for-profit education.

Thick : and other essays
by Tressie McMillan Cottom

A collection of essays from the author of Lower Ed sheds light on the trait of being "thick," both in form and in substance, while dissecting society and culture from beauty to Obama to pumpkin-spice lattes.

Waste : one woman's fight against America's dirty secret
by Catherine Coleman Flowers

Catherine Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers's life's work. It's a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets, and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America's dirty secret. In this powerful book she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions, not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. Flowers's book is the inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative. It shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards, and not only those of poor minorities.

Ghost work : how to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass
by Mary L Gray

Reveals the vast human network responsible for the successes of such internet giants as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Uber, sharing cautionary insights into how an absence of labor laws is enabling massive labor exploitation. 

The hundred thousand kingdoms
by N. K. Jemisin

After Yeine Darr is summoned to the majestic city of Sky and named an heiress to the king of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, she is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had, drawing ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history.

The fifth season
by N. K Jemisin

A first entry in a new trilogy by the award-winning author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms finds the sole continent of the earth threatened by murder, betrayal, a super-volcano and overlords who use the planet's power as a weapon.

How long 'til black future month?
by N. K Jemisin

Offers a collection of the author's short fiction, including "The City Born Great," where a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

The city we became
by N. K. Jemisin

This first book of an exciting new series by a Hugo Award-winning author takes readers into the dark underbelly of New York City, where a roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars. 

All That Beauty
by Fred Moten

A pathbreaking new volume of poems from Fred Moten, All That Beauty, combine's Moten's penchant for lyrical prosody, radical thought, and African American theory to produce writing unlike any other poetry in the world: "What is it to reside without settling? Is that is or is that ain't like being stuck in sweetness, held in life?"

The taiga syndrome
by Cristina Rivera Garza

Hired to track down a client's ex-wife, Ex-detective, travels to the Taiga, an inhospitable forest province bordering the tundra, where an unsettling set of interviews send her into the hostile forest.

Dreams and daggers

The juxtaposition of dualistic concepts like love and anger, joy and heartache, and the way these emotions are inextricably linked in our romantic psyches inform all of Cecile McLorin Salvant's virtuosic, urbanely produced fourth album, 2017's Dreams and Daggers. Recorded live at the Village Vanguard (yes, you can sometimes hear the enthusiastic audience) and in studio at New York's DiMenna Center, the double-disc set features Salvant on a thoughtfully curated selection of standards and several originals, all touching upon the themes of romance and heartbreak. 

Brown girl dreaming
by Jacqueline Woodson

In vivid poems that reflect the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, an award-winning author shares what it was like to grow up in the 1960s and 1970s in both the North and the South.

Harbor me
by Jacqueline Woodson

When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world.

Another Brooklyn : a novel
by Jacqueline Woodson

Torn between the fantasies of her youth and the realities of a life marked by violence and abandonment, August reunites with a beloved old friend who challenges her to reconcile her past and come to terms with the difficulties that forced her to grow up too quickly.

Red at the bone
by Jacqueline Woodson

As Melody celebrates a coming of age ceremony at her grandparents’ house in 2001 Brooklyn, her family remembers 1985, when Melody’s own mother prepared for a similar party that never took place in this novel about different social classes.