Top Fave Books from Black authors and/or Black MCs (2025)

Happy Black History Month from WWC!

In honor of BHM, we've compiled a list of some of our top favorite reads (thus far) that are either by Black diaspora authors and/or the main character is Black. Feel free to add your own to this list!

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Colette’s picks

For my recommendations, I've focused on escapism and/or black woman romances only, because we all can use a bit of joy. These are adult reads by Black authors.

Honorable mentions at the top of my to-read list

Melanie’s picks

A mix of fictional narratives, memoir, and politics/culture. All adult reads. 

SK’s picks

Jaya’s picks

Meir’s picks

This is a two-part series taking place in a sometimes uncomfortably realistic near-future climate apocalypse. Lauren Olamina is a young woman with a hyperempathy disorder who is determined not only to survive, but to make sure her loved ones, her greater community, and humanity as a whole survive as well. To do this, she will have to found a settlement and a religion.

I’m still in the middle of reading this one, but it’s already a compelling and suspenseful story of dynastic succession and powerful but unpredictable magical beings. Don’t spoil it for me!

Jess’ picks

Buy local when you can!

We recommend buying your books at your local bookshop (esp. BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ friendly spots) when you can, smaller online bookstores or checking them out at your local library (the Libby app is great for ebooks and audiobooks) or of course at the author's first preference. Also: if a store doesn't have a book, sometimes they can order it for you.

As for online book trackers, The StoryGraph is Black-woman founded!

Happy reading!

~WWC

“Books are an amazing human invention. They allow instant access to information simply by turning pieces of paper. They are much faster to use than computers. Surprisingly, humans invented books before computers. They do many things backward.” Animorphs, #8 The Alien, pg. 61

the most annoying stage of burnout is when i want to write, and i have the urge to write, and somewhere in my skull are the words that want to be written, but they have to get through the cursed minotaur maze first and nobody remembered to bring string

Do you have the Libby library app?

If not, download it to your phone, and under "Add library card" select the button to search for a library and start typing in "queer"...

Sign up with an email, no actual address required, and you are good to go 🏳️‍🌈

Self reblog, especially important for USA friends today !

Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook.

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here in paperback or here on Kindle.

Wild daisies down the side of the street... this may need to happy all around our house 🌱💚

Let me reiterate something: what someone does with THEIR OWN BOOKS is their business and theirs alone. Do they want to rip the pages? GOOD. Do they want to highlight? FINE. Do they want to dog ear pages? AWESOME. Do they want to write on the book, fold pages, doodle, make paper mache, origami, sacrifice books to the gods of literature? YES YES YES BECAUSE THOSE BOOKS ARE THEIRS OH MY GOD WHY DO WE STILL NEED TO HAVE THIS CONVERSATION IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 2018

These actions are only reprehensible when they’re done to books that are borrowed from friends or a library. That’s it. If a person owns a book, it’s their right to do what ever the fuuuuuck they want with it.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.

i love a small independent bookstore sm 🤍

featuring one of my fav ya novels, the selection by kiera cass, i highly recommend if you haven’t read it!

Stephen Vincent Benét (b. 22 July 1898)

Stumbled upon this gorgeous book shop in Brighton, England 📚

Billy Collins, from ‘Winter Syntax’  Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems (via a-ramblinrose)

book club with plants

And suddenly you know: that was enough.

And you wait. You wait for the one thing that will change your life, make it more than it is— something wonderful, exceptional, stones awakening, depths opening to you. In the dusky bookstalls old books glimmer gold and brown. You think of lands you journeyed through, of paintings and a dress once worn by a woman you never found again. And suddenly you know: that was enough. You rise and there appears before you in all its longings and hesitations the shape of what you lived.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, “Remembering,” The Book of Images: Poems (North Point Press; June 1, 1994) (via Year with Rilke)