Sena, known as Sister, is a beautiful girl. Her skin is like butter, light and smooth, and her hair is long, shiny and wavy. Her sister, Rose, is just the opposite. Her skin is dark, and her hair is short and kinky. Two daughters from Mama’s womb, the same womb treated so differently in their home because of it. Sister could not understand why Rose resented her so. Rose could not understand why Sister could not see what was going on and what had gone on for many years. The only clue was a key belonging to a trunk in their grandmother’s attic. The girls love their Grammy. She spoke with an old Southern drawl their mama hates. Rose and Sister had to learn on their own how to love each other in a world where confusion, betrayal, drug addiction, and mental illness is their reality until they learn there is no love like sisterly love.

Two suns govern life on the desert world Barrûn: violent Yukhara, which burns down mercilessly and makes the desert brutal and violent, and gentle Gajhavita, which restores the balance of life. Like the suns, those who live in the desert are violent and kind, searching for balance between the two extremes. A boy must find his true purpose and destiny in the desert he was born in, which leads him on a journey of discovery during which he encounters six alien races. To unlock the mystery of why the Six came to the desert, he must solve the riddles left by the ancients and finds that his own origin is a part of the mystery of the riddles.

A collection of classic texts and new black feminist scholarship that traces the crucial developments and debates of the last twenty years. It is the first volume entirely dedicated to the writings of black women in a British context.

The Great Lie of the Civil War If you think the Civil War was fought to end slavery, you’ve been duped. In fact, as distinguished military historian Samuel Mitcham argues in his provocative new book, It Wasn’t About Slavery, no political party advocated freeing the slaves in the presidential election of 1860. The Republican Party platform opposed the expansion of slavery to the western states, but it did not embrace abolition. The real cause of the war was a dispute over money and self-determination. Before the Civil War, the South financed most of the federal government—because the federal government was funded by tariffs, which were paid disproportionately by the agricultural South that imported manufactured goods. Yet, most federal government spending and subsidies benefited the North. The South wanted a more limited federal government and lower tariffs—the ideals of Thomas Jefferson—and when the South could not get that, it opted for independence. Lincoln was unprepared when the Southern states seceded, and force was the only way to bring them—and their tariff money—back. That was the real cause of the war. A well-documented and compelling read by a master historian, It Wasn’t About Slavery will change the way you think about Abraham Lincoln, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the cause and legacy of America’s momentous Civil War.