IN THE BELLY OF THE CONGO, by Blaise Ndala. Translated by Amy B. Reid. (Other Press, paperback, $18.99.) In this novel the story of what happened to a Congolese princess, who disappeared after her forced exhibition at the Brussels World’s Fair of 1958, is unearthed when her niece meets the son of one of her captors 45 years later.
BLOODBATH NATION, by Paul Auster. Photographs by Spencer Ostrander. (Grove, $24.) Auster blends personal narrative, history and political analysis in this moving commentary on American gun violence, punctuated by Ostrander’s harrowing images.
THE HOUSE OF EVE, by Sadeqa Johnson. (Simon & Schuster, $27.99.) The lives of two young Black women living in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., collide as they navigate unexpected pregnancies, social hierarchies and fraught relationships with their lovers’ families.
BLACK ON BLACK: On Our Resilience and Brilliance in America, by Daniel Black. (Hanover Square, $27.99.) A novelist and scholar shares his desire for “Blackness to bloom all over this land” in lyrical essays that cover police brutality, racial integration, queer representation in the Black church and much more.
AFTERGLOW: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors, edited by Grist. (The New Press, paperback, $16.99.) Drawing from literary movements like Afrofuturism, hopepunk and solarpunk, this collection of 12 short stories approaches climate change with hope for the radically different futures humans might create.
BOUNDLESS AS THE SKY: Stories, by Dawn Raffel. (Sagging Meniscus, paperback, $18.) This book’s first section sketches cities, real and imagined. The second part, a novella, follows multiple Chicagoans over a single day during the 1933 World’s Fair.
SAYING IT LOUD: 1966 — The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement, by Mark Whitaker. (Simon & Schuster, $29.99.) In this meticulous history, a journalist recounts the “dramatic shift in the long struggle for racial justice” that the year 1966 ushered in, from Huey Newton and Bobby Seale’s founding of the Black Panther Party to Stokely Carmichael’s vision of “Black Power.”
HIDDEN MOUNTAINS: Survival and Reckoning After a Climb Gone Wrong, by Michael Wejchert. (Ecco, $28.99.) Four climbers attempted to make a first ascent in Alaska’s remote Hidden Mountains. Their chilling accident and rescue process provide a glimpse of “bits of humanity enveloped in wilderness and quiet.”
