African American English

Cashmere and Demarco are married, own three hair salons, and have a big house in Inglewood, CA, with their timid 13-year-old daughter, Dominique, but things are far from perfect or even normal. Demarco holds deep resentment toward Cashmere and wants out of the marriage. His anger toward his wife makes him unable to have a close relationship with Dominique, who looks for a father’s love elsewhere.

Owning the Stone-Chance Protection Agency has its perks. It’s a profitable company that allows Ramsey and Keilah Stone to enjoy the finer things in life; however, it has also added an element of danger to their otherwise normal lifestyle.

The night Army Specialist Merlin Mills’s identical twin brother, Gavin, slept with his wife, everything changed. Now Merlin must come to grips with the fact that Cojo may be carrying his brother’s child. For Gina Meadows, Merlin’s mother, it’s a brutal reminder of the dysfunction that has always plagued her family. Tension escalates when Gina pops up pregnant after a night of drunken revelry, and an icy finger points to her deviant son as the father. The drama that ensues forces them all to take stock of their lives.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural 21st-century America. An intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle, Sing, Unburied, Sing journeys through Mississippi's past and present, examining the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power - and limitations - of family bonds.

It is impossible to imagine New Orleans, and by extension American history, without the vibrant and singular Creole culture. In the face of an oppressive white society, members of the Société d’Economie et d’Assistance Mutuelle built a community and held it together through the era of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow terrorism. Economy Hall: The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood follows Ludger Boguille, his family, and friends through landmark events that shaped New Orleans and the United States.

As a young man, Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. He wrote three versions of his autobiography over the course of his lifetime and published his own newspaper. His very existence gave the lie to slave owners: with dignity and great intelligence, he bore witness to the brutality of slavery.

This explosive new audiobook challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans and Nazis, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as historic interpreters of American life.

She's smart, gorgeous, and mysterious. For business executive Nathan Carver, a man with everything, Jessica Bolton is the first woman he can't simply charm, buy, or seduce. And even before Jessica gets a taste of his luxurious lifestyle and irresistible moves, she's determined to eliminate the competition and become this handsome bachelor's one and only. But Jessica's deceptive allure is just the beginning.

Essence best-selling author Keith Lee Johnson’s fifth installment in his ongoing "Little Black Girl Lost" series picks up where the fourth book left off by continuing the diary of Josephine Baptiste. As more details about Josephine’s past come to light, the African heritage of modern-day Johnnie Wise is further explained.

Having earned starred reviews and a fervent following for her urban Christian fiction, Leslie J. Sherrod delivers the first in a riveting new series. In Losing Hope, Sienna St. James thinks she’s finally close to getting over her long-lost, globetrotting husband. Or so she thinks. One Tuesday, everything begins to come apart when a succession of strange events - including the mystery surrounding a girl named Hope - brings her past, present, and future into question.

Racquel and Marcella are sisters with very little in common, except that each wants what the other has. Racquel has a beautiful house, a fulfilling career and a loving husband. But driven by her desperate longing for a child, she is alienating her husband and family. Marcella is a single mom, trying to support her two children with a low paying job, food stamps, and occasional child support from a deadbeat ex-husband. She won't allow anyone to interfere with her dream for a better lifestyle, not even her own children.

Enzo and Angel are back and this time with a vengeance. Micah was hell-bent on forcing their hands and pushing them back into the lifestyle they'd left behind after Damien Orlando's demise. With time ticking away along with Enzo's desire to keep his career and family intact, he will become the monster Micah accused him of being. Enzo will embrace the darkness that flows freely through his veins and make Micah rue the day he awakened the sleeping giant.

Between the fallout from his father's latest shady business dealings and his wife Charisse's alcoholism, Evan Murdoch has his hands full. But he should be most concerned about the scandalous affair Charisse is having right under his nose - with his half brother. Evan's being pushed to the edge, and no one knows that better than Leila Hawkins....

The compelling account of how two heritages united in their struggle to gain freedom and equality in America. The first paths to freedom taken by runaway slaves led to Native American villages. There, black men and women found acceptance and friendship among our country's original inhabitants. Though they seldom appear in textbooks and movies, the children of Native and African American marriages helped shape the early days of the fur trade, added a new dimension to frontier diplomacy, and made a daring contribution to the fight for American liberty.

Even as feminism has become increasingly central to our ideas about institutions, relationships, and everyday life, the term used to diagnose the problem - patriarchy - is used so loosely that it has lost its meaning. In Vexy Thing Imani Perry resurrects patriarchy as a target of critique, re-centering it to contemporary discussions of feminism through a social and literary analysis of cultural artifacts from the Enlightenment to the present.

Winter Santiaga hit time served. Still stunning, still pretty, still bold, still loves her father more than any man in the world, still got her hustle and high fashion flow. She’s eager to pay back her enemies, rebuild her father’s empire, reset his crown, and ultimately to snatch Midnight back into her life no matter which bitch had him while she was locked up. But Winter is not the only one with revenge on her mind.

Oreo is raised by her maternal grandparents in Philadelphia. Her black mother tours with a theatrical troupe, and her Jewish deadbeat dad disappeared when she was an infant, leaving behind a mysterious note that triggers her quest to find him. What ensues is a playful, modernized parody of the classical odyssey of Theseus with a feminist twist, immersed in seventies pop culture, and mixing standard English, black vernacular, and Yiddish with wisecracking aplomb.

Lieutenant Stuart Lyons is a single father and a well-respected veteran law enforcement officer. In addition, he serves as head of security at the ever-popular New Hope Church in Atlanta and above all, he loves the Lord. When sudden pandemonium strikes his “normal” life and he begins receiving threats from an unknown person who only identifies himself as “Dr. A. H. Satan”, Stuart’s life is turned upside down.

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle-class peers. After a messy breakup from her White long-term boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places...including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.