In 2016, Morrison delivered the Norton lectures at Harvard University about race, human nature, and other-ness. This is the book form of those addresses; because they were first delivered as lectures they are exceptionally easy to read, although the themes themselves are hard. I especially enjoyed Morrison's discussions of her own popular works, like Beloved and Paradise, and her references to authors like Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and William Faulkner. With a foreword by Ta-Nehisi Coates. Publication date: September 18.

Morrison delivers one of the most unsettling, haunting, and macabre stories in the American canon. The story begins in a haunted Ohio home where we meet Sethe, a woman who escaped slavery and fled north. Followed around every corner by the ghost of her baby, Sethe’s attempts to begin a new life are thwarted at every turn—most of all when a young woman shows up at her door bearing the same name as the ghost baby's headstone: Beloved. Since Toni Morrison narrates her own iconic work, I enjoyed simultaneously listening to the audiobook and reading the physical copy, simply to catch the brilliance of the author’s craft. Content warnings apply.

From the publisher: "Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing."

Toni Morrison might be known for her fiction but her nonfiction is just as worth reading. This collection includes meditations, her takes on much debated issues, and commentary on other works. It offers a new perspective on an esteemed writer but also invites readers to see the world in a different light, leaving them better for it.

The only short story Toni Morrison ever wrote. She described it as “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” It's an ingenious little puzzle of a story about two young girls named Twyla and Roberta; one is black and the other white. They meet in a shelter when they are eight years old, wards of the state because one mother "danced all night" and the other mother was sick. They became fast friends during the four months they lived there and their paths intermittently cross during the following decades. Morrison never answers the question she poses, leaving it to the reader to decide which is black and which is white. A book club could wrestle with the story forever. My bound version contains a wonderful introduction by Zadie Smith, but because the essay gives an awful lot away I urge you to read the story first. 83 pages, though the story itself is only 40.

From the publisher: "Nel and Sula's devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life."

From the publisher: "In the 1680s the slave trade in the Americas is still in its infancy. Jacob Vaark is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh North. Despite his distaste for dealing in 'flesh,' he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives."

This coming-of-age family saga has an unforgettable opening scene. The day before Milkman Dead was born, a neighbor leaps off the hospital roof in the mistaken belief that he will fly across Lake Superior. Milkman’s father is a wealthy Black man, the only Black person to own a car in their town and a practitioner of respectability politics. The women in the family, by contrast, are kind and nourishing. Despite their care, Milkman winds up entitled and rootless, culpable to swindlers and the like, as he leaves the rustbelt city in search of his family’s origins. Morrison’s masterpiece is set in an unnamed city in Michigan that is widely believed to be Detroit. Content warnings apply.

From the publisher: "A ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary reinvention of the love story by the legendary Nobel Prize winner. Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women."