Welcome to the New Lang Verhaal!

Welcome to our new website! Why did we make these changes? Well, for a couple reasons.

One: throughout the pandemic we've noticed that people are more comfortable with going online to shop than they ever have before. It's no longer just Millennials and Gen Xers but also Boomers and the Gen Z folks who are starting to come into their own careers. This has led people to be afraid of losing the traditional bookstores (well, losing every traditional space) to the internet. We're not afraid of that, however. Instead we wanted to take the bookstore online, giving people a space to peruse our titles and find out where they can buy, and more, at the best price possible.

While we were at it, though, we wanted to do a bit more than just provide a place to find a good book; we wanted to find a place where folks can find themselves in the stories we've all known and loved. That's where the second reason comes in. We started working with artists to launch a new project, one where we can take our favorite classic novels and "modernize" them a bit. It's simple, really: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland shouldn't be just for little white girls to pretend they go off to a new world chasing rabbits, having tea with a hatter and standing up to a queen. Black girls should be able to see themselves, too. And Pride and Prejudice shouldn't just be about aristocratic white men and women falling in love. Japanese women and non-binary folks also deserve to have their story told. 

As you visit our website, you'll start to see us adding book covers featuring well-known literary characters who are as they once were (see: cis, straight, and white) and are now a part of the beautiful variety of identities that make up the human race. As time goes on, you'll see more and more of these characters showing up, each of them representing different races, sexualities, and gender identities. 

But these aren't just so we can sell items featuring a Black Sherlock Holmes or the all-female Musketeers. That's just the beginning. By purchasing these items, you'll be helping us commission non-white and LGBTQIA+ writers to create adaptations of these classic novels to feature these characters as you see them on the covers. Because we are asking them to write a novel in a new way, we feel it's important to make sure we fund the project ahead of time instead of promising royalties on sales afterwards (though we are still going to pay royalties for their work). 

It's our way to help a new generation of readers discover themselves in the classic novels and start imagining that they, too, can have the adventure of a lifetime.