On a damp night in 1722, Babylou Mac and her three siblings witness the murder of their mother at the hands of the local preacher’s son—so Babylou kills him in retaliation. With plantation dogs now on their heels, the four siblings breach the treacherous confines of the Great Dismal Swamp. Deeper and deeper into Dismal they delve, amid the biting moccasins and pitch-black waters, toward a refuge where they can live freely within the swamp’s natural—and supernatural—protection.

Three-hundred years later, college student Atlas comes home to North Carolina for the annual Bornday cookout and hog roast: a celebration of the fact that she and her three cousins were all born on the same day nineteen years ago, sharing a birthday with their Grannylou. But this Bornday, Grannylou’s usual riddles and folktales about a marvelous paradise deep in the Great Dismal Swamp start to take on a tangible quality. Change coming.

When Dismal calls, sucking Grannylou in, it’s up to Atlas and her cousins to uncover the history that the black waters hold. Centuries of family tension, with roots all over Virginia and North Carolina, are about to be dug up. Because Babylou and Grannylou are one and the same, and the power she helped cultivate hundreds of years ago—steeped in Black resistance, familial love, and the otherworldly mysteries of the Great Dismal Swamp—is bubbling back up. But so is a bitterness that runs deep as the swamp’s waters. And some are ready to take what they feel they’re owed.

Ruth Fitz is surrounded by activism. Her mother is a senator, her father is a professor of African American history, and her beloved older sister, Virginia, is a natural activist, steadily gaining notoriety within the community and on social media. Ruth, on the other hand, would rather sit quietly reading or writing in her journal.

When Virginia is killed on the way to a protest, Ruth stops speaking and writing, not believing herself worthy of the power of words. Then her mother is picked as the next democratic vice-presidential nominee and her family must join her on the campaign trail. Ruth can see her family falling apart under the pressure of grief and national, often racist, attention. Suddenly, Ruth begins receiving parchment letters from Harriet Jacobs, the author of the autobiography and 1861 American classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Harriet urges Ruth to find her voice again and join the legacy of scribes who use their words to heal and to change the world.

Ruth wonders if she’s dreaming or going insane, receiving scrolls from a woman long dead. But with the help of Harriet and memories of her sister, Ruth finds the power to speak, to write, and to control her own narrative. In a story that blends present with past, Randi Pink explores two extraordinary characters who channel their hopelessness and find their voices to make history.

ANGEL OF GREENWOOD is a historical fiction novel set in the Tulsa, Oklahoma neighborhood of Greenwood, affectionately known as Black Wall Street, in which sixteen-year-old Angel and seventeen-year-old Isaiah, surrounded by idyllic beauty, passionate intellectualism, and black excellence, fall in love.

After a whirlwind romance, Angel and Isaiah realize that evil has made other plans for them and their thriving community when they find themselves in the midst of one of the worst atrocities in U.S. history: The Greenwood Massacre of 1921. Angel, Isaiah and their friends must do what they can to survive and move forward with strength and resilience in the face of unspeakable racial injustice.

This historical fiction novel set in the summer of 1972, months before the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, is an introspective look into abortion rights. The novel weaves together the lives of three teenage girls from very different backgrounds. 16-year-old Ola, 12-year-old Missippi, and 15-year-old Sue all find themselves pregnant pre-Choice, and must decide, before they become too far along in their pregnancies, how to move forward.

Sixteen-year-old Latoya Williams, who is black, attends a mostly white high school in the Alabama. In a moment of desperation, she prays for the power to change her race and wakes up white. Randi Pink’s audacious fiction debut dares to explore a subject that will spark conversations about race, class, and gender.