From beloved and bestselling author Roxane Gay, a strikingly fresh cultural critic (Washington Post), comes an exhilarating collection of her essays on culture, politics, and everything in between.

Since the publication of the groundbreaking Bad Feminist and Hunger, Roxane Gay has continued to tackle big issues embroiling society—state-sponsored violence and mass shootings, women’s rights post-Dobbs, online disinformation, and the limits of empathy—alongside more individual topics: Can I tell my co-worker her perfume makes me sneeze? Is it acceptable to schedule a daily 8 am meeting?

In her role as a New York Times opinion section contributor and the publication’s “Work Friend” columnist, Gay reaches millions of readers with her wise voice and sharp insights. Opinions is a collection of her best nonfiction pieces from the past ten years.

Covering a wide range of topics—politics, feminism, the culture wars, civil rights, and much more—with an all-new introduction in which she reflects on the past decade in America, this sharp, thought-provoking anthology will delight Roxane Gay’s devotees and draw new readers to this inimitable talent.

Shred Sisters is a wry and riveting debut novel about family, mental illness, and the hard-won path between two sisters.

It is said that when one person in a family is unstable, the whole family is destabilized. Meet the Shreds. Olivia is the sister in the spotlight, but when her stunning confidence morphs into something erratic and unpredictable, she becomes a hurricane leaving people wrecked in her wake. Put simply, she has no brakes.

Younger sister Amy, cautious and studious to the core, dreams of winning a Nobel Prize and unlocking the mysteries of the mind. Amy believes in facts, proof, and the empirical world. Except none of that can explain what’s happening to Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the bipolar disorder that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed world.

As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, who slips in and out of the Shred family without warning. For all that upends and unsettles these sisters, an inextricable bond always draws them back.

Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss, and love. If anything is true, it’s what Amy learns on her road to self-acceptance: No one will love you or hurt you more than a sister.

Colored Television presents a brilliant dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex. Jane harbors high hopes that her life is on the brink of transformation. After a prolonged period of precarious existence, Jane, her artist husband Lenny, and their two children embark on a journey as house sitters in a friend's opulent abode nestled in the Los Angeles hills—a fortuitous arrangement that aligns perfectly with Jane's sabbatical.

If she can complete her latest work of literature, Nusu Nusu—a sweeping epic that Lenny playfully dubs her 'mulatto War and Peace'—she'll secure tenure, along with a semblance of stability and achievement. However, reality fails to meet expectations. Desperate for an alternative, Jane, like many authors before her, casts a hopeful eye towards Hollywood. A chance encounter with an up-and-coming producer, eager to craft 'diverse content' for a streaming platform, brings a glimmer of hope. He is keen to collaborate with a 'real writer' to produce what he imagines will be the ultimate biracial comedy for television.

Just as things begin to look up for Jane, they take a drastic turn for the worse. Colored Television is not only humorous and incisive but also a compelling read, marking Senna's most timely and insightful novel to date.

Bear is a mesmerizing novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor—a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth. They were sisters and they would last past the end of time. Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life. On the island off the coast of Washington where they were born and raised, they and their mother struggle to survive.

Sam works long days on the ferry that delivers wealthy mainlanders to their vacation homes while Elena bartends at the local golf club, but even together they can't earn enough to get by, stirring their frustration about the limits that shape their existence. Then one night on the boat, Sam spots a bear swimming the dark waters of the channel. Where is it going? What does it want?

When the bear turns up by their home, Sam, terrified, is more convinced than ever that it's time to leave the island. But Elena responds differently to the massive beast. Enchanted by its presence, she throws into doubt the plan to escape and puts their long-held dream in danger. A story about the bonds of sisterhood and the mysteries of the animals that live among us—and within us, Bear is a propulsive, mythical, rich novel from one of the most acclaimed young writers in America.

A triumphant family story and sharply observed exploration of privilege, identity, and love in all its forms, following four estranged siblings whose lives collide in the lead-up to a family wedding, when new clues surface about their long-missing father.

April, May, June, and July Barber don’t have much in common anymore. An upcoming family wedding will place the four siblings in the same room for the first time in years. But shortly before, when April spots their father, who went missing while serving overseas a decade ago, their reunion becomes entirely more complicated.

While the siblings’ search for the truth about their father forces them back into each other’s lives, it also intensifies their private dramas. April loves her husband, but seeks excitement outside their marriage. May had big dreams for the future, but she’s still stuck living at home. June is eager to marry her girlfriend, so why does she need a drink at every wedding-related event? And then there’s baby brother July, whose unrequited love for his straight roommate has him more confused than ever.

Confronting the past together, April, May, June, and July will find not only answers about their father, but new romance, hope, and understanding as they learn to embrace the beauty of their shared history.

James, by Percival Everett, is a brilliant and action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of the enslaved character Jim. This novel is both harrowing and ferociously funny, showcasing Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion in a radically new light.

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold and separated from his wife and daughter, he decides to hide on Jackson Island to plan his next move. Meanwhile, Huck Finn, seeking to escape his violent father, fakes his own death. Together, they embark on a dangerous and transcendent journey down the Mississippi River, facing floods, storms, and scam artists, all while navigating the promise and peril of the Free States and beyond.

With electrifying humor and lacerating observations, James is set to be a major publishing event, redefining a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Tracy Brown crafts a tale about a master manipulator and serial survivor, who will scorch earth to get what she wants. The question isn't who murdered her; the question is who wouldn't?

Brooklyn Melody James has finally gotten the punishment she deserves after leaving a web of lies, heartache, and betrayal behind her. As her life slips away, Brooklyn remembers the events that shaped her into the cold, calculating creature she became.

Brooklyn learned the art of hustling from her parents who used the church to get money. Idolizing her father and despising her mother, Brooklyn's determined to be the type of woman who makes her own rules. When her back's up against the wall, she sacrifices her family, takes the burnt offering that remains, and runs away. In NYC, young Brooklyn charms her way into the inner circle of hustlers and stick-up kids, learning tricks along the way. She catches the eye of a major player in the drug game, Hassan, and they have a breathless love affair. Brooklyn becomes integrated into his operation, earning the trust of Hassan and his associates. But when she gets the keys to the kingdom, driven by unfettered ambition and a ruthless desire to survive, Brooklyn snatches the pot of gold, leaving bitter retribution promises behind her.

From DC to Maryland, Brooklyn burns bridges and breaks hearts. What she doesn't realize is that someone is prepared to end her reign of terror. As she faces her killer and her fate, Brooklyn's stunned that justice comes from the least likely place.

The Survivors of the Clotilda joins the ranks of Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston’s rediscovered classic Barracoon, offering an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil. This compelling narrative is told through the stories of its survivors—the final documented survivors of any slave ship—whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways.

The Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on American soil, docked in Mobile Bay, Alabama, in July 1860—more than half a century after a federal law banned the importation of captive Africans, and nine months before the start of the Civil War. The last of its survivors lived well into the twentieth century, serving as the last witnesses to the final act of a significant and tragic period in world history.

In this epic work, Dr. Hannah Durkin tells the stories of the Clotilda’s 110 captives, drawing on intensive archival, historical, and sociological research. The Survivors of the Clotilda follows their lives from their kidnappings in modern-day Nigeria through a terrifying 45-day journey across the Middle Passage; from the subsequent sale of the ship’s 103 surviving children and young people into slavery across Alabama to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement in Selma; from the foundation of an all-Black African Town (later Africatown) in Northern Mobile—an inspiration for writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Zora Neale Hurston—to the foundation of the quilting community of Gee’s Bend—a Black artistic circle whose cultural influence remains enormous.

An astonishing, deeply compelling tapestry of history, biography, and social commentary, The Survivors of the Clotilda is a tour de force that deepens our knowledge and understanding of the Black experience and of America and its tragic past.