Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder.

A single mom gets a second chance at love with her high school sweetheart. Wary of love after her divorce, Janae Sanders focuses on the best things in her life, her son James, and her friends in the Savvy, Sexy, and Single Club.