Start Your Reading List Strong

The founders of a popular podcast and financial literacy platform, Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings are back with a book that’s beneficial for the new year. You Deserve to Be Rich is designed to help readers build generational wealth. As two kids growing up in New York playing basketball together, they gained a strong interest in finance, from the stock market to how money moves among systems and pockets. You Deserve to Be Rich is a detailed blueprint requested by Earn Your Leisure fans. In the book, readers will learn to deal with the psychological toll of growing up living paycheck to paycheck, creating income-building strategies outside of their nine-to-five, investing in side hustles, using passive income to control their time and lifestyle, and more.

Dr. Daniel Black is an award-winning novelist, professor, activist, mentor, and public speaker known for his books Don’t Cry For Me and Perfect Peace. He is back with his latest release, Isaac’s Song: A Novel. Isaac’s Song is about a young man at a crossroads. Growing up in Missouri, Isaac was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires that didn’t align with the traditional view of masculinity instilled by his father until he ventured out on his own to Chicago. As he navigates being a queer black man, living through the AIDS crisis, and Rodney King’s beating, his journey leads him to his family history and ancestral home in Arkansas. Issac comes across a discovery that will help fulfill the truth he has been looking for or may threaten the life he fought so hard to claim.

Good Dirt by Charmaine Wilkerson is a moving novel that weaves together generational trauma, past and present. At 10 years old, Ebby Freeman’s life changed when she witnessed her brother killed. Dealing with the loss of her brother and trying to keep her family out of the media following the end of her high-profile relationship, she goes to France for a fresh start. Ebby discovers that the stoneware jar that had been in her family for generations, which broke on that tragic day her brother was killed, is not only just a part of her family history but may be the key to unlocking her future. Charmaine Wilkerson is the New York Times best-selling author of Black Cake, her first novel released in 2022.

Nnedi Okorafor is a multiple award-winning and New York Times bestseller known for her science fiction and fantasy work, such as her Binti Trilogy, Who Fears Death, and Lagoon. Her latest book, Death of the Author follows the life of Zelu, who is a disabled Nigerian American woman trying to figure out her next move after life hasn't been too kind to her. After being let go from her university job and when her novel was rejected, feeling discouraged, she decides to write something new for herself. When Zelu shared her new novel, she didn’t realize the impact it would positively have on her literary career and the future not only for humanity but also for the robots who come next. She calls the new novel Rusted Robots. Readers will be taken on an experience with this book-within-a-book.