African American English

Mary Monroe is a New York Times best-selling author who pens tales of life’s emotional tapestry. Lost Daughters follows Maureen Montgomery and her daughter, Loretta, as they strive to make a life after the death of Maureen’s domineering mother. Forever scarred by Mama Ruby’s tyrannical ways, Maureen longs for a quiet, simple life. But Loretta has something far different in mind. Dreaming of fame and fortune, she embarks on a modeling career. Mama Ruby, however, casts a shadow with the power to darken their lives.

All hell has broken loose, and the McPhearson clan is right in the middle of the chaos. After finding out their beloved foster mother, Claudette McPhearson, was anything but the sweet old woman they thought her to be, Javon, Shanelle, and the rest of their siblings hit the ground running in order to keep the Syndicate operating and to keep themselves alive. That also means they have to lose some of the people they love the most.

Angel, Jaz, Tasha, and Kyra are four girlfriends pulling themselves out of the ghetto - and trying to bring their hearts up to higher ground with them. Now Angel has started her own law practice and new life with Kaylin. But when an unwanted guest crashes their wedding, all the rage and bloodlust from the hood comes bustin' out - and Angel's gonna need every prayer in heaven to make it to the altar alive....

It's 1876 and Dr. Viveca Lancaster is frustrated by the limits placed upon female physicians of color. When she is offered the chance to set up a practice in the small all-black community of Grayson Grove, Michigan, she leaves her California home and heads east. The very determined Viveca knows all about fighting for her rights. But she may need more than determination to face down the distractingly handsome Nate Grayson, the Grove's bull-headed mayor.

Demonstrating the same verve for storytelling that rocketed her previous novels onto the best seller lists, Deliver Me from Evil introduces Christine Thurman, a vivacious 31-year-old about to enter a dangerous new phase in her life.

The congregation at the Freedom Temple Church of God in Christ doesn't know what to think when their pastor, Bishop Lance Howell, returns from a vacation in Jamaica with a wife in tow. As if Lady Elect Arykah Miles' false eyelashes, scarlet red fingernails, and fishnet stockings aren't flashy enough, the blond wigs and sky-high stilettos she wears send Mother Gussie Hughes and Mother Pansie Bowak into panic mode.

Essence® best-selling authors Kiki Swinson and De’nesha Diamond are two rising stars in the world of urban fiction. Heist presents two novellas starring young women hustling their way to the top of the game through daring robbery schemes. In Swinson’s The Ultimate Heist, pampered Shannon Marshall is accustomed to a big-money lifestyle. Her world is shattered, however, when her man is thrown into prison for gun running.

Single Ladies is back! Get ready to deal with the drama of baby daddies, side chick issues, divorce, child custody, child support, medical issues, money problems, infidelity, lust, in-laws, jobs, law enforcement, incarceration, and everything else that comes along with being a Single Lady in the hood! Tammy, Falisha, Kim, and Lisa return, with new issues and old relationships threatening each lady's happiness.

Coreen Treadwell heads a prominent social welfare agency, but she is haunted by her past. Raped and impregnated as a teenager, she gave up her baby without ever seeing her. Now the legacy of violence continues in her daughter's life. Abused by her adoptive father, the young woman has vowed vengeance on Coreen for abandoning her.

Chyanne Johnson has finally gotten her act together. She's found a man to call her own and is raising a son. After all of the drama that ensued behind finding out that Aric McHale, former boss, lover, and father to her son, was married, Chyanne finally has it made in the shade...or so she thinks. Stephanie, Aric's ex-wife, may have been found guilty of attempted murder, but she hasn't been sentenced yet and is still free to walk to streets.

In 1994, The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.

To discover the true role of Black women in the creation of American, and especially Southern, cuisine, Toni Tipton-Martin has spent years amassing one of the world’s largest private collections of cookbooks published by African-American authors, looking for evidence of their impact on American food, families, and communities and for ways we might use that knowledge to inspire community wellness of every kind. The Jemima Code presents more than 150 Black cookbooks that range from a rare 1827 house servant’s manual to modern classics.

A luminous figure in both Christian and African American fiction, Vanessa Davis Griggs pens gripping faith-based tales eagerly anticipated by fans. In The Other Side of Goodness, 50-year-old Alabama Congressman Lawrence Rudolph Simmons is facing an uphill battle in his bid for re-election. His chances are further jeopardized when a woman from his past resurfaces with terrible news: the love child they gave up for adoption needs a bone marrow transplant. Helping the child could ruin Lawrence’s career, but that may be the only right thing to do.

Reverend Grayson Young and his wife Chyna seem to have the perfect marriage. Yet despite Grayson and Chyna's public railings against adultery, they're both involved in multiple affairs. And then the lecherous poser catches his wayward wife in flagrante.

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.

Most Americans believe that slavery was a creature of the South, and that Northern states and territories provided stops on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves on their way to Canada. In this paradigm-shifting book, celebrated historian Tiya Miles reveals that slavery was at the heart of the Midwest's iconic city: Detroit. In this richly researched and eye-opening book, Miles has pieced together the experience of the unfree - both native and African American - in the frontier outpost of Detroit.

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie. When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act.

In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all. W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young Black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.