Every month, Amazon First Reads offers a collection of titles available a month early to readers. You can select one new pre-release Kindle book each month for $1.99 or one free if you’re a Prime member. The majority of the books are from Amazons own imprints, these are genre specific and the company goes out of their way to sign indie authors who sell a ton of books on the Kindle Store, before they are offered a deal.
Token Black Girl: A Memoir by Danielle Prescod
I inhaled Danielle Prescod’s new memoir, Token Black Girl, starting the moment I got it in my hot little mitts. A fashion insider who’s worked for many of the top fashion and media publications, she’s spent her working life in “the eye of the racist and sexist beauty standard storm.” Growing up in the pre-Black Girl Magic era, she talks vividly and insightfully about what it was like to be one of only two Black girls in her school, “imprinting” herself on white Vanity Fair cover stars because of the utter lack of representation when it came to girls who looked like her. “Conditioned to think that Blackness was a hurdle, something that had to be overcome or conquered,” she starved herself skinny and submitted to the pressure put on Black women to “be both nonthreatening to white people and pleasing to Black people.” But out of the crucible of race, pop culture, social conditioning, and couture, Prescod has fashioned a funny, sharp, candid, and illuminating memoir that I want to hand out like gift bags at the Oscars.
Set in the city that never sleeps, City Dark opens in 1977 NYC, when the electricity went out for more than 25 hours. That night, Joe’s and Lois’s mom disappeared—never to be seen again until forty years later when Joe is called in to identify her body. Like he’s done for years, he drinks to cope, to forget. But when he wakes up another person is dead, and he’s a murder suspect. A twisty thriller that Roger A. Canaff’s editor calls a “fierce cat-and-mouse game that will leave you hoping no one switches off your lights.”
Perfect back-to-school reading for parents, Schooled tells the story of Jack Parker, a stay-at-home dad. When he learns his childhood nemesis is running for president of the school board, he hilariously—and very seriously—mounts his own campaign. By turns heartwarming and funny, Jack handles and settles old scores while also navigating a shaky marriage, and that small thing called being dad.
The Hike by Susi Holliday
Talk about a high-stakes adventure. Four hikers leave to climb a mountain in the alps, but only two return. Was it an accident or was it murder? In this thrillingly dark tale, Holliday unleashes a cast of characters—toxic sisters, fighting spouses—and a web of lies and secrets that will have you breathlessly racing to the end. As Holliday’s editor wrote, “[she] is the queen of the twist, and you’re guaranteed to be kept guessing until the very last page.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
