Category: Riot Rundown

Sponsored by Nightfire

Nothing But Blackened Teeth is a gorgeously creepy tale, steeped in Japanese folklore and full of devastating twists.

A Heian-era mansion stands abandoned, its foundation rests on the bones of a bride, its walls packed with the remains of the girls sacrificed to keep her company.

It’s perfect for a group of thrill-seeking friends reunited to celebrate a wedding.

A night of celebration spirals into a nightmare as secrets are revealed and relationships are tested.

The house holds secrets, too. Lurking in the shadows is the ghost bride with a black smile and a hungry heart.

And she gets lonely down there in the dirt.

Sponsored by Algonquin Young Readers

“This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.” —Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist

Black history began long ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on a journey across Africa to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built a continent and shaped the world. Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson’s brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for middle-grade readers to return to again and again.

Sponsored by HarperCollins

After Marya makes a terrible mistake, she receives a letter from Dragomir Academy—a mysterious school for wayward young girls. Soon she is a hundred miles from home, surrounded by girls she’s never met.

Dragomir Academy promises Marya and her classmates a chance to make something of themselves in service to one of the country’s powerful sorcerers. But as they learn how to fit into a world with no place for them, they begin to discover things about the magic the men of their country wield, as well as the things that threaten the precarious balance of their society.

Sponsored by Bad Girls Never Say Die by Jennifer Mathieu with Fierce Reads

From the acclaimed author of Moxie comes a gripping gender-flipped reimagining of The Outsiders that explores the deep bonds of female friendship and what it takes to be a “bad girl.”

Evie Barnes and her friends are bad girls. Above all else, they protect their own against the world. So when Evie is saved from a sinister encounter by a good girl from the “right” side of the tracks, every rule she’s always lived by is called into question. Now she must redefine what it means to be a bad girl and rethink everything she knew about loyalty.

Sponsored by Welcome Back, Maple Mehta-Cohen by Kate McGovern

Maple Mehta-Cohen has been keeping a secret: she can’t read all that well. She has an impressive vocabulary and loves dictating stories into her recorder—especially the adventures of a daring sleuth who’s half Indian and half Jewish like Maple herself—but words on the page just don’t seem to make sense to her. Despite all Maple’s tricks to hide her reading troubles, her teacher is on to her, and now Maple has to repeat fifth grade. Maple is devastated—what will her friends think? Will they forget about her? An engaging read for anyone who has ever felt different.

Sponsored by Sankofa, an Amazon Books Editors' Pick

If you read just one book this month, the Amazon Book Editors recommend “Sankofa” by Chibundu Onuzo. With wit, humor, and heart, Onuzo spins a page-turner of a woman in search of her past. Searching through her mother’s belongings one day, Anna finds clues about the African father she never knew. Anna discovers that he eventually became the president—some would say dictator—of a small nation in West Africa. And he is still alive. Now to discover herself, she must find him. Read what happens next, order it now on Amazon.

Sponsored by Nightfire

From international bestselling author Catriona Ward comes The Last House on Needless Street, a shocking and immersive read perfect for fans of Gone Girl and The Haunting of Hill House. In a boarded-up house on a dead-end street lives a family of three. An unspeakable secret binds them together, but what is buried among the birches may just come back and haunt them all…

Sponsored by The Keeper of Night by Kylie Lee Baker

Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can. When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death . . . only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy.

Sponsored by Karma: A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny

Who really understands the concept of karma? Half the time when people are referencing it, it sounds like some form of revenge. But karma is a much deeper and richer concept than that.

As explained by Sadhguru, yogi & mystic, karma means action. Sadhguru turns the tables by showing us clearly that karma is an empowering possibility for taking charge of our lives by choosing how we respond to what is happening to us. With celebrity fans from Will Smith to Tom Brady, this enlightening book offers in depth insights on the concept of Karma and shows how to achieve true happiness.

Sponsored by Avid Reader Press, publisher of Infinite Country

In this Reese’s Book Club Pick and New York Times bestselling novel, award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel—herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants—gives voice to a family that occupies two different countries. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is as much an all-American story as it is a global one.