Rhythm & Booze
The Essential Etheridge Knight

The American Daughters

Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history and dreaming of a loving future. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite—and with help from these strong women—Ady learns how to put herself first. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future.

The American Daughters is a novel of hope and triumph that reminds us what is possible when a community bands together to fight for their freedom.

More Adult, Non-Juvenile Books

  • The realities of class and social capital, of strained marriages and the demands of motherhood, serve as constant reminders of how far apart Val and Milly have grown. And no matter how much they try to avoid it, everything comes back to the rift that began all those years ago in France. What they’ve long tried to bury may finally destroy their sisterhood.
  • In Tell Me Everything, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout returns to Crosby, Maine, exploring the complexities of new friendships and old loves amidst a shocking murder investigation. As characters navigate their intertwined lives, they grapple with profound questions about the meaning of existence, highlighting the enduring power of relationships and love in its many forms.
  • Riley's poetry captures the essence of rural American life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and his works continue to be studied and recited to this day.