In celebration of Black History Month, I have put together a list of the most anticipated new books by Black authors coming out in 2025. Currently, this list encompasses January through July. As the publishing calendar solidifies for the second half of the year, I will be adding books for those months, too.
January
Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what makes us human. This is a story unlike anything you’ve read before.
Aardvark Book Club | Amazon | Bookshop.org
The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North
Michelle Adams
The epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools―and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution. Adams chronicles the devoted activists who tried to uplift Detroit’s students amid the upheavals of riots, Black power, and white flight―and how their efforts led to federal judge Stephen Roth’s landmark order to achieve racial balance by tearing down the walls separating the city and its suburbs.
Good Dirt
Charmaine Wilkerson
The daughter of an affluent Black family pieces together the connection between a childhood tragedy and a beloved heirloom in this moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake.
Amazon | Bookshop.org | Book of the Month
I Think They Love You
Julian Winters
With his funny, big-hearted adult rom com debut, bestselling, award-winning YA author Julian Winters shows sometimes fake dating your ex can turn into a second chance.
Isaac’s Song
Daniel Black
The beloved author of Don’t Cry for Me and Perfect Peacereturns with a poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance, for fans of The Great Believers and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.
Amazon | Bookshop.org | Book of the Month
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
Imani Perry
A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry. Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.
I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free
Lee Hawkins
A 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Wall Street Journal writer exhaustively examines his family’s legacy of post-enslavement trauma and resilience, in this riveting memoir—a soulful, shocking, and spellbinding read that blends the raw power of Natasha Tretheway’s Memorial Drive and the insights of Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed.
Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America
Bernadette Atuahene
In the spirit of Evicted, a property law scholar uses the stories of two grandfathers—one white, one Black—who arrived in Detroit at the turn of the twentieth century to reveal how racist policies weaken Black families, widen the racial wealth gap, and derive profit from pain.
February
A Season of Light
Julie Iromuanya
For fans of Behold the Dreamers, comes a compelling novel about a tightly bound Nigerian family living in Florida and the wounds that get passed down from generation to generation, from the author of the acclaimed Mr. and Mrs. Doctor.
Amazon | Bookshop.org | Book of the Month
Code Noir: Fictions
Canisia Lubrin
Canisia Lubrin’s debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure, deceptively simple, is based on the infamous Code Noir, a set of real historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire.
The Edge of Water
Olufunke Grace Bankole
Set between Nigeria and New Orleans, The Edge of Watertells the story of a young woman who dreams of life in America, as the collision of traditional prophecy and individual longing tests the bonds of a family during a devastating storm.
The Stained Glass Window: A Family History as the American Story, 1790-1958
David Levering Lewis
National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize David Levering Lewis’s own family history that shifts our understanding of the larger American story.
Harlem Rhapsody
Victoria Christopher Murray
She found the literary voices that would inspire the world…. The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance, written by Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Personal Librarian.
Memorial Days: A Memoir
Geraldine Brooks
A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Horse. A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
Junie
Erin Crosby Eckstine
A young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost, navigating truths about love, friendship, and power as the Civil War looms. When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?
Aardvark Book Club | Amazon | Bookshop.org
Listen to Your Sister
Neena Viel
For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, Listen To Your Sister is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.
Fearless and Free: A Memoir
Josephine Baker
Published in the US for the first time, Fearless and Free is the memoir of the fabulous, rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker, the iconic dancer, singer, spy, and Civil Rights activist. At last we can hear Josephine in her own voice: charming, passionate, and brave. Through her own telling, we come to know a woman who danced to the top of the world and left her unforgettable mark on it.
The Sable Cloak
Gail Milissa Grant
Jordan Sable, a prosperous undertaker turned political boss, has controlled the Black vote in St. Louis for decades. Sara, his equally formidable wife, runs the renowned funeral establishment that put the Sable name on the map. When tragedy bursts their carefully constructed empire of dignity and safety, the family rallies around an unconventional solution. But at what cost?
People of Means
Nancy Johnson
From the acclaimed author of The Kindest Lie, a propulsive novel about a mother and daughter each seeking justice and following their dreams in 1960s Nashville and 1990s Chicago; perfect for readers of Brit Bennett and Tayari Jones.
Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History
Rich Benjamin
A piercingly powerful memoir, a grandson’s account of the coup that ended his grandfather’s presidency of Haiti, the secrecy that shrouded that wound within his family, and his urgent efforts to know his mother despite the past.
The Grand Scheme of Things
Warona Jay
Two unlikely friends hatch an extraordinary scheme to expose the theater world in this wildly entertaining and sharply observed debut novel exploring perception, redemption, and how success shapes us all.
Original Sins: The (Mis)education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
Eve L. Ewing
Why don’t our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they’re actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America’s classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to maintain the nation’s inequalities. It’s a task at which they excel.
The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories
André M. Carrington
A cutting-edge collection of the best short stories in contemporary Afrofuturist fiction—from Hugo, Nebula, and Stoker award-winning Black authors. Reclaiming histories of racism and oppression and seizing the day, these writers are forging kaleidoscopic new senses of Black identity, community, and imaginative freedom.
Mainline Mama: A Memoir
Keeonna Harris
In this triumphant memoir, Keeonna recalls her challenging journey as a mainline mama, from learning to overcome the exhausting difficulties of navigating the carceral system in the United States to transforming herself into an advocate for women like her—the predominantly Black and Brown women left behind to pick up the pieces of their families and fractured lives. A powerful exploration of self-resilience, family, and community from activist and prison abolitionist Keeonna Harris.
March
Universality
Natasha Brown
Remember—words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of power. Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language. It dares you to look away.
A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class, and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to Covid-19
Edna Bonhomme
A deeply reported, insightful, and literary account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body.
The Love Simulation
Etta Easton
A passionate vice principal and a guarded science teacher compete for a grand prize, only to realize their budding relationship might be the real jackpot.
Theft
Abdulrazak Gurnah
In his first new novel since winning the 2021 Nobel Prize, a master storyteller captures a time of dizzying global change.
First-Born Girls
Bernice L. McFadden
From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.
One in a Million
Beverley Kendall
World-famous Whitney “Sahara” Richardson is at the top of her game. With four Grammys, an Oscar nod, and a billion-dollar clothing line, her career is skyrocketing. She’s got everything planned—including when she’ll have kids. Until something completely unplanned turns her world upside down.
Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children
Noliwe Rooks
A powerful, incisive reckoning with the impacts of school desegregation that traces four generations of the author’s family to show how the implementation of integration decimated Black school systems and did much of the Black community a disservice.
April
Happy Land
Dolen Perkins-Valdez
A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.
Flirting Lessons
Jasmine Guillory
Avery Jensen is almost thirty, fresh off a breakup, and she’s tired of always being so uptight and well-behaved. She wants to get a hobby, date around (especially women), flirt with everyone she sees, wear something not from the business casual section of her closet—all the fun stuff normal people do in their twenties. One problem: Avery doesn’t know where to start. Enter Taylor Cameron, Napa Valley’s biggest flirt and champion heartbreaker.
Zeal
Morgan Jerkins
The New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing and Caul Baby returns with an epic, multi-generational novel that illuminates the legacy of slavery and the power of romantic love.
Fugitive Tilts: Essays
Ishion Hutchinson
Ishion Hutchinson turns his poetic sensibility to questions of home, displacement, and memory in his beautiful and searingly brilliant prose debut. These essays, varied in their forms and ranging across time and place, allow Hutchinson to build a space from which the suffering of the past and the present can be reckoned with and survived.
Somadina
Ekwaeke Emezi
From the National Book Award finalist and author of Petcomes a novel set in a magical West African world, about a teen girl who must save her missing twin while learning to navigate her own terrifying new powers.
Black Power Scorecard: Measuring the Racial Gap & What We Can Do to Close It
Andre M. Perry.
From the creator of a unified field theory of racism, a dollars-and-cents reckoning of the state of Black America and a new framework to close the power gap. An expansive take on power supported by documentation and data, Black Power Scorecard is a fresh contribution to the country’s reckoning with structural inequality, one that offers a new approach to redressing it.
May
The Dark Maestro
Brendan Slocumb
From the author of The Violin Conspiracy and Symphony of Secrets comes a mesmerizing page-turner about a musical virtuoso who’s forced into hiding when his family runs afoul of a ruthless criminal organization—and how he uses music to bring his enemies to justice.
Can’t Get Enough
Kennedy Ryan
Hendrix Barry lives a fabulous life. Your vision board? She’s probably living it. She’s a woman with goals, dreams, ambitions–always striving upward. And in the midst of everything, she’s facing her toughest challenge yet: caring for an aging parent. Who has time for romance? From her experience, there’s a low ROI on relationships. She hasn’t met the man who can keep up with her anyway. Until…him.
Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Brilliant thoughts on modern African literature and postcolonial literary criticism from one of the giants of contemporary letters.
Esperance
Adam Oyebanji
A whip-smart thriller in the vein of Blake Crouch, Andy Weir, and Neal Stephenson, Esperance plumbs the depths of a seemingly impossible crime rooted in racism, intergenerational trauma, and an inhuman concept of justice.
Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine: Reform, White Supremacy, & an Abolitionist Future
Emile Suotonye Deweaver
A powerful personal investigation of the insidious ways white supremacy compromises criminal justice reform, from the award-winning, formerly incarcerated activist and Soros Justice Fellow.
Give Me a Shot
Gia De Cadenet
Sparks fly between an amateur blacksmith and an outspoken professor with a passion for archery in this heartfelt contemporary romance from the author of Getting His Game Back and Not the Plan.
This Is Your Mother
Erika J. Simpson
From “a writer who’s absolutely going places” (Roxane Gay), a remarkable, inventive debut memoir about a mother-daughter relationship across cycles of poverty, separation, and illness, exploring how we forge identity in the face of imminent loss.
Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
Tourmaline
Black transgender luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQIA+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy.
The Devil Three Times
Rickey Fayne
A debut of enormous ambition” spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil. Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.
The Battle for the Black Mind
Karida Brown
A gripping chronicle of the relentless fight for Black educational freedom—and the bold strategies to protect, nourish, and empower Black minds. The Battle for the Black Mind explores the battle over educational justice in the U.S. from the end of the Civil War through Brown v. Board of Education, and traces how oppressive educational models were exported to colonial Africa.
June
King of Ashes
S.A. Cosby
Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author S. A. Cosby returns with King of Ashes, a Godfather-inspired Southern crime epic and dazzling family drama.
Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship
Dana A. Williams
An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature.
The Girls Who Grew Big
Leila Mottley
From the author of Oprah’s Book Club pick and New York Times bestseller Nightcrawling, here is an astonishing new novel about the joys and entanglements of a fierce group of teenage mothers in a small town on the Florida panhandle.
Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System
Brando Simeo Starkey
A magisterial new history of the role of the Supreme Court as an ally in implementing and preserving a racial caste system in America. Their Accomplices Wore Robes takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court—even more than the presidency or Congress—aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.
The Catch
Yrsa Daley-Ward
The inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl Books series, The Catch is a darkly whimsical tale of women daring to live and create with impunity. Yrsa Daley-Ward conjures a kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want, exploring the sacrifices that women must make for self-actualization. The result is a marvel of a debut novel that boldly asks, “How can it ever, ever be a crime to choose yourself?”
Great Black Hope
Rob Franklin
A gripping, elegant debut novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.
Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays & Writings
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times.
A Song of Legends Lost
M.H. Ayinde
An unforgettable tale of revenge and rebellion unfolds when an inexperienced king implements a doomed plan to end a thousand-year war in this relentlessly gripping epic fantasy debut.
Too Precious to Lose
Jason Green
A moving and inspiring memoir from a former Obama White House staffer, about his rural Maryland family’s untold history, the merger of three churches—one Black, two white—and how a radical embrace of community became their salvation, and his.
Meet Me at the Crossroads
Megan Giddings
From the award-winning, critically-acclaimed author of Lakewood and The Women Could Fly, a dazzling novel about two brilliant sisters and what happens to their undeniable bond when a mysterious and possibly perilous new world beckons.
Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker & the Harlem Renaissance
A’Lelia Bundles
A vibrant, deeply researched biography of A’Lelia Walker—daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance—written by her great-granddaughter.
The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery
Clarence A. Haynes
In a fast-paced, sexy, ghostly adventure, a publicist at the top of her game must confront her secret mystical past. The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery is a sensuous, funny, mystical adventure that will leave you spellbound as you keep the pages turning.
Plus Size Player
Danielle Allen
Julie Murphy’s If the Shoe Fits meets Talia Hibbert’s Take a Hint, Dani Brown―USA Today bestselling author Danielle Allen brings another steamy, witty novel about finding the perfect partner―and how sometimes what you’re looking for is right in front of you.
July
August Lane
Regina Black
A Black country music star who lied about writing his only hit risks his comeback to reunite with the woman he stole it from, a first love the lyrics won’t let him forget.
The Road to the Salt Sea
Samuel Kolawole
As wrenching and luminous as Omar El Akkad’s What Strange Paradise and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West, a searing exploration of the global migration crisis that moves from Nigeria to Libya to Italy, from an exciting new literary voice.
All the Men I’ve Loved Again
Christine Pride
From Christine Pride, the beloved coauthor of the Good Morning America Book Club Pick We Are Not Like Them, comes a dazzling solo debut novel about a woman who finds herself in the impossible situation of being in love with the same two men who won her heart in her early twenties again as she nears forty.
Coded Justice
Stacey Abrams
A twisty and prescient new thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling Avery Keene series, by nationally renowned author and leader Stacey Abrams, Coded Justicefollows Avery down a dark rabbit hole into the breathtaking—and dangerous—use of AI in the medical industry.
Leviathan Beach
Stacey Abrams
A wild and wildly original debut story collection that explores the present and future, violence and justice, the fantastic and the everyday, from Center for Fiction First Novel Prize-winning author and “writer of incredible gifts” (Justin Torres) Joseph Earl Thomas.
