Screamin Jay Hawkins is best-remembered for his crazy R&B tune "I Put A Spell On You" – a wild track from the postwar years – and it turns out that the man himself has had a life that's equally wild over the years, served up here by author Steve Bergsman, pulled from hundreds of interviews with Hawkins, bandmates, and family members too! Screamin Jay would often spin plenty of tales about himself – which can make telling the truth a difficult task – and rather that completely focus on that challenge, the book instead enjoys the play between fact and fiction, life and legend, and really revels in the larger-than-life quality of Hawkins! Book is 252 pages, softcover, with some color images, and a lot more black and white images. Book

A beautiful look at imagined communities in many forms – tracing a legacy through black intellectual life of the 19th century to creative production of the 20th and beyond – with a special focus on the creations of Sojourner Truth, Sun Ra, Octavia Butler, Alice Coltrane, Rebecca Cox Jackson, and Samuel R Delaney – mixing fiction, music, and other work to examine the role of utopia in black intellectual history. Jayna Brown's approach is part history and part literary criticism – but also fully absorbs its influences with an understanding that goes far past gloss and style, to really get at the importance of imagination within a larger political and social context. 212 pages, softcover, with some black and white images. Book