African American Crime

“Courageous and compelling…essential and critically important.” —Bryan Stevenson An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case...

Mary DiNunzio is strong, smart, and she's got plenty of attitude. In recent years, she's become a big-time business-getter at Rosato & Associates, but the last person she expects to walk into her office is Trish Gambone, her high school rival. Trish's life has taken a horrifying turn. She's...

A New York Times Best Mystery Novel of the Year In the second installment of the Nanette Hayes Mystery series, Nan is on her way to Paris in search of a missing relative. . . but will she lose more than just her heart in the city of love? Nanette's life is finally getting back to normal when her...

A professional job turns personal for jet-setting contract killer Gideon in this sexy, thrilling page-turner by New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey. As a hit man from the time he was very young, money, women, and danger have always ruled Gideon’s life; but for the first...

Sometimes the power of love . . . A.J. Grayson has come a long way from adopted orphan to fast-rising executive at a cutting-edge technology firm. Now an anti-terrorist agency wants to use the revolutionary artificial intelligence system she developed to thwart a plot against Jafir's...

The welcome return of Leonid McGill, Walter Mosley's NYC-based private eye, his East Coast foil to his immortal L.A.-based detective Easy Rawlins. As the Boston Globe raved, "A poignantly real character, [McGill is] not only the newest of the great fictional detectives, but also an incisive...

In New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline’s electrifying, Edgar nominated, first novel in her Rosato & Associates series, a young lawyer at an all-female law firm must stay one step ahead of a stalker who has a deadly agenda. “A page turner that whips through legal labyrinths and...

Detroit hustlers Free and Six have been together seven years, but their relationship has been nothing but drama. Free hasn't been faithful, and Six has taken out her hurt by physically hurting the other women. Free ends up in jail for three years, and when he's sprung, he's not happy to learn that Six has been living the high life on his dime and has blown through $100,000! Then Six gets entangled in one of Free's schemes and finds herself in a role almost too good to be true.

Smoke Kings is a powerful and propulsive novel with a diverse and unforgettable cast of characters. Like Steph Cha's Your House Will Pay it explores decades of racial tensions through a fictional landscape where the line between justice and revenge is blurred.

One Missing Person. Two Rival Detectives. Infinite Chemistry. This rollicking thrill ride told in alternating “he said/she said” perspectives is an irresistible blend of mystery, sexual tension, and humor. Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham have a lot in common. They are both...

“In this terrific series opener, Afia evokes the women’s lives in all their wayward and beautiful glory, especially the abruptness with which their dreams, hopes and fears cease to exist.”--The New York Times The start of an exciting new historical mystery series set during the Harlem...

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

The first novel from one of the original Kings of Comedy, Cedric “The Entertainer,” an engaging and entertaining crime caper that is a valentine to close-knit black families and tightly woven communities struggling to get by during the Depression and World War II. Babe is a charismatic and...

When two best friends’ hobby of crashing weddings takes a deadly turn, they’re forced to embark on a road trip of survival in this addictive thriller. “The hairpin turns and killer twists of this propulsive bad-girls-gone-worse thriller will have you hanging on for dear life!”—Layne...

New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Elizabeth Peters, brings an exotic world of adventure, intrigue, and danger to vivid life, in a tale as powerful as ancient Egypt. The Emersons have returned to the Valley of the Kings in 1922 and Amelia Peabody and her family look forward to...

One man must prove his innocence while finding which friend betrayed him in this high-drama, action-packed novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the Family Business series. Jay Crawford has spent too long paying for a crime he didn't commit. For ten years, he's been in prison...

Robyn and Aries are "The Murder Mamas", contract killers from Los Angeles who take no prisoners. It doesn't take them long to link up with Hollywood's biggest drug kingpin, who hires them to take out a snitch and a judge. But the plans backfire, and they complete only half the job. Robyn is caught and put on death row, and Aries goes on the run. She winds up in the islands, where she takes up a new life as a mother and wife and tries to forget who she once was.

In the latest and most surprising novel in the bestselling Leonid McGill series, Leonid finds himself caught between his sins of the past and an all-too-vivid present. Seven years ago, Zella Grisham came home to find her man, Harry Tangelo, in bed with her friend. The weekend before, $6.8...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, USA TODAY, AND CHICAGO TRIBUNE A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS...

Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black Southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. Chronicling the emergence of deeply embedded notions of black people as a dangerous race of criminals by explicit contrast to working-class whites and European immigrants, this fascinating book reveals the influence such ideas have had on urban development and social policies.