In Jason Mott's Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott's novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters' stories build and build...

Every generation has its military genius. Hannibal of Carthage, Ghengis Khan, General Patton... each shaped by his time. What if the second coming of Alexander the Great wasn't a privileged diplomat or a battle-hardened soldier, but a teenage girl from South Central L.A. named Destiny? Orphaned at birth and a perpetual victim of police brutality, this incomparable strategic genius finds herself uniting the city's organized criminals, gangs, thieves,...