Our history in St. Louis pairs with The Broken Heart of America by Walter Johnson

"From an award-winning historian, a groundbreaking portrait of pervasive exploitation and radical resistance in America, told through the turbulent history of St. Louis. From Lewis and Clark's 1804 expedition to the 2014 uprising in Ferguson, American history has been made in St. Louis. And as Walter Johnson shows in this searing book, the city exemplifies how imperialism, racism, and capitalism have persistently entwined to corrupt the nation's past. St. Louis was a staging post for Indian removal and imperial expansion, and its wealth grew on the backs of its poor black residents, from slavery through redlining and urban renewal. But it was once also America's most radical city, home to anti-capitalist immigrants, the Civil War's first general emancipation, and the nation's first general strike -- a legacy of resistance that endures. A blistering history of a city's rise and decline, The Broken Heart of America will forever change how we think about the United States."

Our Jazz Subscription Series pairs with Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

"Like Golden Hill, Cahokia Jazz inhabits a different version of America, and like Golden Hill it has a propulsive and brilliantly twisty plot set within a fully imagined world. Only this world is full of fog, cigarette smoke, dubious motives, danger, and dark deeds. And in the main character of Joe Barrow, we have a hero of truly heroic proportions, and a troubled soul to fall in love with. One snowy night at the end of winter, Barrow and his partner find a body on the roof of a skyscraper. Down below, streetcar bells ring, factory whistles blow, Americans drink in speakeasies and dance to the tempo of modern times. But this is Cahokia, the ancient indigenous city beside the Mississippi living on as a teeming industrial metropolis containing every race and creed. Among them, peace holds. Just about. But the corpse on the roof will spark a week of drama in which this altered world will spill its secrets and be brought, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets, either to destruction or to rebirth".

We Each Hold Stories pairs with There There by Tommy Orange

"[O]ffers a kaleidoscopic look at Native American life in Oakland, California, through the experiences and perspectives of 12 characters. An aspiring documentary filmmaker, a young man who has taught himself traditional dance by watching YouTube, another lost in the bulk of his enormous body--these are just a few of the point-of-view characters in this astonishingly wide-ranging book, which culminates with an event called the Big Oakland Powwow."

We Each Hold Stories also pairs with Living Nations, Living Words by Joy Harjo

This companion anthology features poets including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier—among others—to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship. In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering. 

Ladysmith Black Mambazo pairs with She Plays with the Darkness by Zakes Mda

"In a remote mountain village, the beautiful Dikosha lives for dancing and for song. Her twin brother, Radisene, works in the lowland capital of Maseru, struggling amid political upheaval to find a life for himself away from the hills. As the years pass, Radisene's fortunes rise and fall in the city, while Dikosha remains in the village, never leaving and never aging. And through it all, the community watches, comments, and passes judgment"

Way Out West: Songs of the Cowboys with Hot Club of Cowtown and Dom Flemons pairs with Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

"That girl's got more wrong notions than a barn owl's got mean looks."Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda. The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing". 

The Sunny 60s: West Coast Swing & Bossa Nova pairs with Two by Two by Eve Babitz

"Two by Two is a fast-paced swirl through the dancing scene in L.A., where Leonardo DiCaprio has been known to swing at The Derby and Sandra Bullock salsas at El Floridita. Eve Babitz, a writer known for her hip, off-the-cuff, idiosyncratic style, spends two years of her life, ruins nine pairs of shoes, and goes through countless dance partners learning to appreciate and master all the hot dances from foxtrot and two-step to lindy, tango, salsa, and swing. Along the way she meets obsessed dancers and listens night after night as they pour out the secrets of their style - who the best teachers are, where to find the perfect dancing shoes, and how to fall in love with your partner."

Arianna String Quartet pairs with The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

"Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise. Then with the international Tchaikovsky Competition-the Olympics of classical music-fast approaching, his prized family heirloom is stolen. Ray is determined to get it back. But now his family and the descendants of the man who once enslaved Ray's great-grandfather are each claiming that the violin belongs to them. With the odds stacked against him and the pressure mounting, will Ray ever see his beloved violin again?"

The Klezmatics pairs with The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker 

Chava, a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi, who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic and dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899. Ahmad, a jinni made of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York City, though still not entirely free. Ahmad and Chava become unlikely friends and soul mates with a mystical connection on the streets of New York until a fateful choice changes everything.