How do you design a system of government from scratch when you've lost faith in government itself?Carrie Davenport, a renowned constitutional law professor, has the career opportunity of a lifetime. Project Mars, the brainchild of a billionaire tech tycoon, has ambitious plans to establish the first human settlement on Mars. And Project Mars selected her—a Black, queer, publicity-shy professor in North Carolina—to design a system of government for the colony.Carrie eagerly researches how to craft a suitable constitution for space. But when she is stopped by the police one evening in a case of mistaken identity, the filmed encounter thrusts Carrie into a spotlight she never asked for, putting her at the center of the discourse on racial justice in the US. Suddenly, American democracy doesn’t seem like a shining beacon to carry into space. Carrie must decide whether to speak up—against the police brutality she endured, the tech-bro culture of Project Mars, and an even deeper underbelly of corruption behind the mission.Can Carrie regain faith in herself and in society to craft the “government of the future” and prevent the prejudices of Earth from tainting human life beyond?An inventive and thought-provoking work of contemporary fiction exploring social justice, law, and moral courage.

Arc of the Universe

Welcome to Rivers Solomon's dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel.. The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things―the strange and the unexplainable―began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.. As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?. Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.

Model Home: A Novel

I am the beginning and the end.The darkness that creates and devours.The virgin, the mother, and the barren one.The sacred whore.I am the stillness from which chaos emerges.Meera is one of five women who each hold a part of the defeated goddess of death and chaos within them. When the group’s high priestess is murdered, Meera and her three remaining spirit sisters must undergo the Waning ceremony for the second time. Only one of them will be chosen to serve as a vessel for the goddess again. She will become high priestess and mother of witches. The other three women will die trying.As Meera strives to survive the ceremony, she must also contend with the greed of the noble class and the faith her fellow Endzone laborers have put in her. Will she be able to kill the king and end his oppressive regime or will the king be successful in his quest to birth a new evil into the world? With only three months left until the Waning, time is not on Meera’s side.Set in the desert kingdom of Ile-Oja, the waning reimagines aspects of Yoruba culture and spirituality to create a dazzling world unlike any other.

The Waning: Age of Realignment I

One of TIME Magazine's Top 100 Fantasy Novels of All Time -- Now in Paperback!. Locus Award Winner—Best First Novel  . A National Indie Bestseller. Nebula Award Finalist. Lodestar Award Finalist. Ignyte Award Finalist. TIME’s Best 100 Fantasy Books of All Time. NPR Best of the Year. Booklist’s Top 10 First Novels for Youth. A BookPage Best of the Year. Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best". PNBA Bestseller . Publishers Weekly Best of the Year. Buzzfeed's Best YA SFF of the Year . Shelf-Awareness Best of the Year. AICL Best YA of the Year. NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection. NEIBA Award Finalist . Tor Best of the Year. Kirkus Best YA of the Year. Publishers Weekly Flying Start. American Indian Youth Literature Award Finalist. “Groundbreaking.” —TIME. “Deeply enjoyable from start to finish.”—NPR. “Utterly magical.” —SyFyWire. “Atmospheric and lyrical...a gorgeous work of art.”—BuzzFeed. “One of the best YA debuts of 2020. Read it."—Marieke Nijkamp. ★ “A fresh voice and perspective.”—Booklist, starred review. ★ “A unique and powerful Native American voice.”–BookPage, starred review . ★ “A brilliant, engaging debut.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review. ★ “A fast-paced murder mystery.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review. ★ “A Lipan Apache Sookie Stackhouse for the teen set.” —Shelf-Awareness, starred review. A Texas teen comes face-to-face with a cousin’s ghost and vows to unmask the murderer.. Elatsoe—Ellie for short—lives in an alternate contemporary America shaped by the ancestral magics and knowledge of its Indigenous and immigrant groups. She can raise the spirits of dead animals—most importantly, her ghost dog Kirby. When her beloved cousin dies, all signs point to a car crash, but his ghost tells her otherwise: He was murdered.. Who killed him and how did he die? With the help of her family, her best friend Jay, and the memory great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Elatsoe, must track down the killer and unravel the mystery of this creepy town and it's dark past. But will the nefarious townsfolk and a mysterious Doctor stop her before she gets started?. The breathtaking debut novel from Darcie Little Badger features an asexual, Apache teen protagonist -- and combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, and fantasy elements, in one of the most-talked-about books in years.

Elatsoe

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERMost Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of 2025 by Pride • Best New Books of Spring 2025 by Bustle • Most Anticipated Books of 2025 by LitHub • Biggest Books of March by Book Riot • Most Anticipated Books of March by GoodreadsFeaturing two new songs written for the audiobook and performed by Bob the Drag Queen!“Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is magnificent! I want to send to the folks who do the Nobel Prize for Literature. I don’t know them, but I want them to read this!” —Whoopi Goldberg“It’s a knockout.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)“An emotional exploration of religion, external and internalized homophobia, the pressure of progressing Black liberation, and the importance of revisiting the past.” —New York magazineFrom RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, Traitors contestant, and host of HBO’s We’re Here comes an inventive, wondrous novel about American hero Harriet Tubman that remixes history into a fresh, dynamic novel about love, freedom, salvation, and hip-hop.In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say.Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way. Harriet wants to create a hip-hop album and live show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her.She calls upon Darnell, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed on a BET talk show. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have a short period of time to write a legendary album she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only create music that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts, and learn to find a way to a better future.Original, evocative, and historic, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is a landmark achievement that will burrow deep into our hearts (and ears).

Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert: A Novel

A bold, inventive, and fiercely original debut novel that begins with an uncle dead and his tween niece’s private confession to the reader—she and her sister killed him, and they blame the British.Summer, 1986. The Creel sisters, Georgie Ayyar and Agatha Krishna, welcome their aunt, uncle and young cousin—newly arrived from India—into their house in rural Wyoming where they’ll all live together. Because this is what families do. That is, until the sisters decide that it’s time for their uncle to die.According to Georgie, the British are to blame. And to understand why, you need to hear her story. She details the violence hiding in their house and history, her once-unshakeable bond with Agatha Krishna, and her understanding of herself as an Indian-American in the heart of the West. Her account is, at every turn, cheeky, unflinching, and infectiously inflected with the trappings of teendom, including the magazine quizzes that help her make sense of her life. At its heart, the tale she weaves is: a) a vivid portrait of an extended family b) a moving story of sisterhood c) a playful ode to the 80s d) a murder mystery (of sorts) e) an unexpected and unwaveringly powerful meditation on history and language, trauma and healing, and the meaning of independenceOr maybe it’s really: f) all of the above.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder: A Novel

The New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones, brings readers a spine-tingling journey through a young boy's haunted home. Winner of the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Long Fiction!"A triumph. So emotionally raw, disturbing, creepy, and brilliant."―Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror MovieWalking through his own house at night, a young boy thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. The figure reminds him of his long-dead father, who drowned mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows, it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he ever knew. The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his younger brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at a terrible cost."Brilliant." ―The New York TimesAlso by Stephen Graham Jones:Night of the Mannequins

Mapping the Interior

Since the dawn of time, life has been comfortable and predictable. The gods have wrested pockets of Creation from Chaos, formed civilizations, and built entire realities. Now, the nature of Creation is changing and the Divine are losing their divinity.Rosemary, daughter of the God of Creation, can no longer deny this when a strange delegation from Dawnland braves the paths through Chaos and survives. Come to negotiate trade and protection agreements with the Divineof Meadowsweet, it is the butterfly woman who so captivates Rosemary. The weight of her sorrow, the heaviness of her secrets.For the soul is a battleground. Clouds are massing along the horizon, and Rosemary...She must survive the storm.

The Necessity of Rain

A romantic standalone fantasy set in the world of Raybearer, from New York Times bestselling author Jordan Ifueko . The smallest spark can bind two hearts . . . or start a revolution.. In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, Small Sade needs a job—preferably as a maid, with employers who don’t mind her unique appearance and unlucky foot. But before she can be hired, she accidentally binds herself to a powerful being known only as the Crocodile, a god rumored to devour pretty girls. Small Sade entrances the Crocodile with her secret: she is a Curse Eater, gifted with the ability to alter people’s fates by cleaning their houses.. The handsome god warns that their fates are bound, but Small Sade evades him, launching herself into a new career as the Curse Eater of a swanky inn. She is determined to impress the wealthy inhabitants and earn her place in Oluwan City . . . assuming her secret-filled past—and the revolutionary ambitions of the Crocodile God—don’t catch up with her.. But maybe there is more to Small Sade. And maybe everyone in Oluwan City deserves more, too, from the maids all the way to the Anointed Ones.

The Maid and the Crocodile: A Novel in the World of Raybearer

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!. A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.. New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!. Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.. London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.. After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.. Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.. A Chicago Public Library 'Best of the Best' BookA Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the YearA BCCB Blue Ribbon Book!A Booklist Editors’ ChoiceA Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year!A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

A spellbinding and lyrical modern fairy tale about a girl who journeys to an enchanted world to find the twin she’s never met, filled with lavish illustrations that bring the magic to life, perfect for fans of the Chronicles of Narnia.. After her mother passes away and her father retreats into his grief, 11-year-old Anne Applebaum is afraid the only happy endings she’ll ever have are in The World to Come, a collection of fairy tales about the flying forest of Bei Ilai. In its pages, children outsmart demons, girls train as knights, and songs come to life. But even these stories can’t stop Anne from feeling alone. So when a raven tells her that she has a long-lost twin brother named Rainer, she sets out to find him. Anne soon learns that Bei Ilai is a real place—and she must step through the door into this magical realm to seek her brother.. But the dangers in the flying forest are just as real as its beauty. To overcome the challenges and monsters she faces, Anne must lean into the magic contained within her and her Jewish faith—especially when she discovers Rainer is locked away by a being more frightening than any dragon.. Because the most terrifying villain of all is one who used to be a hero.

Tale of the Flying Forest

The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.. The hardcover edition features beautiful interior illustrations.. "Half delicious murder ballad, half beguiling love story." ―Holly Black • "An absolute must-read." ―T. Kingfisher • "Every sentence sings!" ―Sarah Beth Durst • "Utterly enchanting." ―Fonda Lee • "A story that outlasts itself." ―Alix E. Harrow • "Truly exquisite." ―Zoraida Córdova "A beautiful, musical, and loving story." ―Emma Törzs. “Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”. In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.. There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…

The River Has Roots

Celestial

Hi friend! I’m Steph – let’s devour some otherworldly stories together.

Steph

During this phase, we're reviewing manuscripts and deciding which book we want to publish. At the end of this phase, we offer an author a book deal.

Consideration

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Reading is better in community, and I’m grateful to welcome you to mine! I’ve been a content creator most of my life & an avid reader my entire life. Celestial is our home base to celebrate imaginative stories from galaxy-wide voices. (Think: fantasy, horror, sci-fi, magical realism & beyond.) I love being playful with my recommendations, but I always read with intention – this is a discerning and deliberately diverse space. Join my chaotic community … and let’s have fun while uplifting all voices. 

steph ✨ 📚 ✡︎ (@starrysteph)

Hi! I'm Steph. You can mostly find me on booktok (@starrysteph). I love reading & sharing book reviews and recommendations.

book reviews & recs 📚 • animal lover 🐇 • actor & content creator 🎭
