The Top Trending Books by BIPOC Authors This Month

Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel is set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, where people are living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made—and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa, led by a brave young woman, decide to fight back. Their struggle will last for decades and come at a steep price.

This Good Morning America Book Club pick is a remarkable work of historical fiction about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, a Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library, a lasting legacy that enriched our nation immeasurably.

Author of the New York Times bestselling duology The Wrath & The Dawn, Renée Ahdieh is back with this latest installment of the bestselling quartet that began with The Beautiful. In it, Pippa journeys to the treacherous and beguiling world of the fey in search of answers but instead falls in love. The Righteous is the can’t-miss lead-in to what will be a much-anticipated finale of the quartet.

The breakout poetry collection by presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning.

The Academy Award-winning director of Free Solo and National Geographic photographer presents the first collection of his iconic adventure photography, featuring some of the greatest moments of the most accomplished climbers and outdoor athletes in the world, and including more than 200 extraordinary photographs.

In this jaw-dropping finale of Sabaa Tahir’s beloved bestselling An Ember in the Ashes fantasy series, which picks up just a few months after A Reaper at the Gates left off, the Nightbringer and his jinn are wreaking bloody havoc while Commandant Keris Veturia is calling for the heads of Blood Shrike and her remaining family. Laia of Serra, allied with the Blood Shrike, struggles to recover from the loss of the two people most important to her. Determined to stop the approaching apocalypse, she throws herself into the destruction of the Nightbringer. In the process, she awakens an ancient power that could lead her to victory—or to an unimaginable doom.

Upon the original publication of Beloved in 1987, John Leonard wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “I can’t imagine American literature without it.” Nearly two decades later, The New York Times chose Beloved as the best American novel of the previous fifty years. The magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning work brings the wrenching experience of slavery into sharp focus and enlarges our comprehension of America’s original sin.

From celebrated national leader and bestselling author Stacey Abrams, a gripping legal thriller set within the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court—where a young law clerk finds herself embroiled in a shocking mystery plotted by one of the most preeminent judges in America.

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother to cancer at 25, and forging her own identity shaped by family, food, grief, music, and endurance.

Named one of the best new cookbooks of the year by Eater and Food52, The Korean Vegan Cookbook is the dazzling debut from Joanne Lee Molinaro, the home cook and spellbinding storyteller behind the online sensation @thekoreanvegan, who has captivated millions of fans with her powerfully moving personal tales of love, family, and food. Here, she shares a collection of her favorite Korean dishes, some traditional and some reimagined, as well as poignant narrative snapshots that have shaped her family history.

Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love?

Many of us respond to the pressures of life by turning inward and ignoring problems, sometimes resulting in anxiety or depression. Others react by working harder at the office, at school, or at home, hoping that this will make ourselves and the people we love happier. But what if being yourself is enough? Just as we are advised on airplanes to take our own oxygen first before helping others, we must first be at peace with ourselves before we can be at peace with the world around us. Zen Buddhist monk Haemin Sunim turns his trademark wisdom to the art of self-care, arguing that only by accepting yourself — and the flaws that make you who you are — can you have compassionate and fulfilling relationships with your partner, your family, and your friends.

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. Cash is tight, especially with all those installment-plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace, Ray doesn’t ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweler downtown who doesn’t ask questions, either. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa—the “Waldorf of Harlem”—and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence. The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do. Now Ray has a new clientele, one made up of shady cops, vicious local gangsters, two-bit pornographers, and other assorted Harlem lowlifes. Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he begins to see who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Sadly, Archbishop Desmond Tutu died on December 26, 2021, and readers flocked to this incredible work as a way to honor his life. The Book of Joy is the product of five days that His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu spent together in April of 2015. The two spiritual giants looked back on their long lives to answer a single question: How do we find joy in the face of life’s inevitable suffering? They traded intimate stories, teased each other, and shared their spiritual practices. By the end of a week filled with laughter and punctuated with tears, these two global heroes had stared into the abyss and despair of our time and revealed how to live a life brimming with joy.

Named one of the best books of 2021 by The Washington Post and NPR, this dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

Best friends since second grade, Fiona Lin and Jane Shen explore the lonely freeways and seedy bars of Los Angeles together through their teenage years, surviving unfulfilling romantic encounters, and carrying with them the scars of their families’ tumultuous pasts. Fiona was always destined to leave, her effortless beauty burnished by fierce ambition—qualities that Jane admired and feared in equal measure. When Fiona moves to New York and cares for a sick friend through a breakup with an opportunistic boyfriend, Jane remains in California and grieves her estranged father’s sudden death, in the process alienating an overzealous girlfriend. Strained by distance and unintended betrayals, the women float in and out of each other’s lives, their friendship both a beacon of home and a reminder of all they’ve lost.

From the author of the classic A Little Life—a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss, and the elusive promise of utopia. The great power of this remarkable novel is driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of the aching desire to protect those we love—partners, lovers, children, friends, family, and even our fellow citizens—and the pain that ensues when we cannot.