April showers bring more than May flowers. They also bring gray days that make us want to curl up with a good book and mull over our relationships — though not necessarily at the same time.

In honor of this dreary season, InTheFray invites you to predict what the future holds for love in the midst of conflict. Please take a couple moments to complete Maureen Farrell’s relationship survey, which is sure to leave you laughing — and asking some questions of your own.

And don’t worry. We’ve got a place for you to take all of that inquisitive energy — Off the Shelf.

Off the bookshelf, that is. Beginning in May, our editors will share some of their favorite books with you. Think of it as a book club in cyberspace — with a dash of identity and community, of course!

As part of our special issue commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, the first book we’ll feature will be Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth. The critique of this novel will be published next month on Monday, May 17. Once you finish reading Juneteenth, the intriguing books will keep on coming. Each month an ITF editor will review a book concerning identity and/or community. The featured works will be a mix of old and new, fiction and nonfiction.

We’ll keep our Bookshelf at Powells.com updated so that you can purchase the books we’ll be reviewing in subsequent months a month or more in advance. And don’t worry, if you prefer to shop at Amazon, just click here. You’ll be taken right to the Amazon site, where you can purchase those books and start reading. (Of course, if you already have a dog-eared copy of the book sitting on your bookshelf somewhere, more power to you.)

While we’ll make the book reviews available to all ITF readers, only those who register on our site (membership is free!) will have access to all the special features of Off the Shelf. Members get access to exclusive interviews with the authors of selected books. They can take part in online discussions with other ITF readers and editors about the books. And they can submit their own reviews of the Book of the Month for publication on our site. (Did we mention that membership is free?!)

So don’t just sit there — get your copy of Juneteenth now!  You can even stock up and save on other books we’ll be reviewing later this summer. But beware: there aren’t CliffsNotes for most of the books we’re reviewing. So it’s probably a good idea for you to get your hands on — and read — our featured books ahead of time.

Happy reading!

Laura Nathan
Managing Editor
Austin, Texas

Laura Nathan-Garner