An unforgettable novel about race and motherhood from the bestselling author of Before and After Once a Civil Rights activist, Miriam Vener feels trapped in the comfortable upper-middle-class life she leads with her family in Houston in the 1980s. That life suddenly shatters with the appearance, after almost eighteen years, of Veronica (Ronnee), Miriam's biracial daughter born of her passionate affair a generation ago with Eljay, a brilliant black professor at a Mississippi college, who has raised the child. When Miriam introduces her daughter to the utterly white New England town where she summers, and to the Houston society that represents her own compromise of her '60s ideals, the results are complicated. What claim does Miriam have on Ronnee after all this time, and what does Ronnee, no longer a child, want of her mother now? As Miriam desperately and awkwardly invites affection from this stranger who shares her blood, Ronnee--hot-tempered, sensitive, manipulative, and deeply hurt--wrestles with her fury at her mother's mysterious disappearance from her life and searches for reparations. With which family--and which race--does Ronnee identify, and how does that affect her relationships with her newly discovered half sister, her white boyfriend, and the father she is rebelling against? A moving story about estrangement and intimacy, race and privilege, identity and belonging, Half a Heart is a searingly honest novel of public and private ideals betrayed and hopes reignited, in which one of our foremost novelists probes the way history and unyielding love shape our lives.

From bestselling author Karen McQuestion comes a moving novel about broken hearts...and what it takes to put them back together again. At nine years of age, Logan Weber knows the routine. Keep quiet, make the food last, and don't ever cause trouble. He'll do what it takes to evade the rages of his troubled, violent father. Even though he's only a child, Logan already knows too much--has seen too much. So when the opportunity presents itself, Logan runs. He has no idea where his journey will lead, or that the grandmother he's been told is dead is desperately searching for him. Alone with no home of his own, Logan looks for a safe place to hide. Relying on his instincts and the kindness of strangers, the boy manages to touch the lives of everyone he meets. But his innocent heart cannot survive in the adult world without the most basic human need of all: love.

"From the author of The Red Address Book Sofia Lundberg comes a captivating story about overcoming shame and guilt, about finding oneself and the truth-and in doing so, learning how to love"--

The story of biracial twin sisters—one black, one white—and the summer that tests their strong bond, from the author of Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award-winner Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything in It. When Minerva and Keira King were born, they made headlines: Keira is black like Mama, but Minni is white like Daddy. Together the family might look like part of a chessboard row, but they are first and foremost the close-knit Kings. Then Grandmother Johnson calls, to invite the twins down South to compete for the title of Miss Black Pearl Preteen of America. Minni dreads the spotlight, but Keira assures her that together they'll get through their stay with Grandmother Johnson. But when their grandmother's bias against Keira reveals itself, Keira pulls away from her twin. Minni has always believed that no matter how different she and Keira are, they share a deep bond of the heart. Now she'll find out whether that’s really true. "One luminous pearl of a sister story."--RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA, author of the Newbery Honor Award-winner One Crazy Summer Winner of the Skipping Stone Honor Award *"Frazier highlights the contradictions, absurdities, humor, and pain that accompany life as a mixed-race tween. Never didactic, this is the richest portrait of multiracial identity and family since Virginia Hamilton's 1976 novel Arilla Sun Down. An outstanding achievement."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred *"Not only does Frazier raise questions worth pondering, but her ability to round out each character, looking past easy explanations for attitude, is impressive. . . . A novel with a great deal of heart indeed."—Booklist, Starred

Our Hearts Are Restless Till They Find Their Rest in Thee: Prophetic Wisdom in a Time of Anguish from Coleman B. Brown, edited by Michael Granzen and Lisa A. Masotta. The book includes powerful reflections from Chris Hedges, Peter Ochs, and Joshua Brown.