African American Families

Lucas has been in the fight against the evil forces in his town since the beginning, but he is tired of feeling like an outsider. When the start of high school presents Lucas with options beyond D&D and being bullied, he wonders if he can be more than invisible. After connecting with one of the few other Black students at school, Lucas starts to learn more about himself apart from his friend group. And he begins to understand himself as a Black teen in Hawkins, which feels unlike anything—in this world or any other—he’s ever experienced.

Billed as the Little Girl with the Big Voice, blues singer Lucille Arnetta Love always dreamed of life under the lights. From traveling family gospel band to lead singer in a riotous vaudeville troupe, Lucille is on the rise. But a devastating family secret, one that’s poised to shatter every dream she’s ever had, casts an inescapable shadow over Lucille’s career. Decades ago, a botched robbery ended in a suspicious death—and all signs point to Lucille’s own father as the culprit. It’s a secret that Lucille’s family is determined to keep buried—even from Lucille herself.

Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing in Southeastern Virginia: His family lived in a trailer park and later a bullet-riddled house across the street from drug dealers. His father was absent; his mother was volatile and abusive. At the age of 12, Ryan was sent to Virginia's juvenile facility of last resort. He was placed in solitary confinement. He was uncontrollable, uncontainable, with little hope for the future. In 2011, at the age of 24, Ryan won a nationwide competition hosted by New York's Metropolitan Opera, beating out 1,200 other talented singers.

Situado en un barrio londinense de inmigrantes, el inmenso fresco humano que dibuja la autora tiene como epicentro las familias de Archie Jones y Samad Iqbal, dos ex combatientes de la Segunda Guerra Mundial que vuelven a encontrarse después de treinta años sin verse. Archie está casado con una jamaicana exuberante y Samad con Alsana, bengalí como él, y con las ideas muy claras.

Joy Okafor is overwhelmed. The recently divorced life coach whose phone won’t stop ringing is also the dutiful Nigerian daughter who has planned every aspect of her mother’s seventieth birthday weekend on her own. As the Okafors slowly begin to arrive, Mama Mary goes to take a nap. But when the grandkids try to wake her, they find that she isn’t sleeping after all. Refusing to believe that her sister is gone-gone, Auntie Nancy declares that she has had a premonition: Mama Mary will rise again like Jesus Christ himself on Easter Sunday.

With The Interruption of Everything, her sixth novel, Terry McMillan takes on the fault lines of mid-life and family life, reminds us once again of the redeeming power of friendship, and turns her eye toward the dilemma of how a woman starts to put her own needs higher on the to-do list while not shortchanging everyone else.

New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber and award-winning novelist Eric Pete team up to deliver the first in a much-anticipated new trilogy. The Family Business features two times the heat, two times the fun, and two times the drama as the members of an unforgettable family (not to mention their lovers and hangers-on) find their way in and out of trouble. As their many fans will attest, Weber and Pete share a talent for penning juicy fiction that their audience can’t get enough of.

After a long Labor Day weekend, 73-year-old Eugene Washington is found dead in his Leimert Park home. At first blush, his death seems unremarkable- heat wave combined with food poisoning from a holiday barbecue. But something in the way Washington died doesn’t make sense. LAPD Homicide Detective Elouise "Lou" Norton is called to investigate the death and learns that the only family Washington had was the 6,000-member congregation of Blessed Mission Ministries, led by Bishop Solomon Tate. But something wicked is lurking among the congregants of this church.

Confronting loss, historical intersections with race and family, and the threshold between childhood and adulthood, Smith gathers courage and direction from the many disparate selves encountered in these poems, until, as she writes, "I was anyone I wanted to be."

When Mildred and Richard Loving wed in 1958, they were ripped from their shared bed and taken to court. Their crime: miscegenation, punished by exile from their home state of Virginia. The resulting landmark decision of Loving v. Virginia ended bans on interracial marriage and remains a signature case—the first to use the words “white supremacy” to describe such racism.

From New York Times best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey comes this sexy novel brimming with the steamy voices of three desperately intertwined lovers. Dickey centers the story on an L.A.-based writer who is obsessed with gorgeous, nubile Nicole - the very same woman who left him at the altar just three years before. Nicole is torn between her ongoing love for him and her passion for the beautiful Ayanna.

This is not how seventeen-year-old Gil imagined beginning his senior year—on the subway dressed in a tie and khakis headed towards Manhattan instead of his old public school in Brooklyn. Augustin Prep may only be a borough away, but the exclusive private school feels like it's a different world entirely compared to Gil's predominately Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn. If it weren't for the partial scholarship, the school's robotic program and the chance for a better future, Gil wouldn't have even considered going.

A fun listen-aloud written in upbeat rhyming verse, Girl Dad is a book that honors the strong men who raise, love, and uplift strong girls.

Will Jawando tells a deeply affirmative story of hope and respect for men of color. As a boy growing up outside DC, Will, who went by his Nigerian name, Yemi, never quite fit in. He was a Black kid with a divorced white mother, a frayed relationship with his biological father, and teachers who scolded him for being disruptive in class. Eventually, he became close to Kalfani, a kid he looked up to. Years after he got the call that Kalfani was dead, another casualty of gun violence, Will looks back on the extraordinary mentors that enabled him to thrive.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and Caesar King feels weighted to the ground. The Five Families are in complete disarray, and Caesar realizes too late that stepping down was the wrong thing to do. It’s up to him to make the puzzle whole again. But when another war comes to their doorsteps and a past mistake comes back for blood, death rips through the boroughs like a tornado. In the end, there might not be any pieces left to put back together.

All of Chenille Abrams' dreams came true the day she married NFL star Brayden Carpenter. He's the down-to-earth, loving, and protective man she never thought she'd find. And with her own successful career, Chenille plans to be more than just a famous athlete's wife. She's determined to balance work, marriage, and motherhood, as the couple awaits their first child.... Until their son is born with a crippling heart ailment. Until a devastated Brayden starts putting his career above everything else. And when tragedy strikes, Chenille struggles to find a reason to go on....

In Clan MacKenzie, we fight for each other. We die for each other. And when I fell for Chevelle, those same rules applied to her. She loves me, but hates the family business. So, I hid the villain in me until today. Today, I need to do what must be done and that requires the help of the same people she would rather us keep our distance from.

One of America's favorite African-American storytellers remembers her childhood in tender, unforgettable new stories. Jackie Torrence, a frequent headliner at the National Storytelling Festival, is known to audiences nationwide as The Story Lady.

Clint Smith’s vibrant and compelling new collection traverses the vast emotional terrain of fatherhood, and explores how becoming a parent has recalibrated his sense of the world. There are poems that interrogate the ways our lives are shaped by both personal lineages and historical institutions. There are poems that revel in the wonder of discovering the world anew through the eyes of your children, as they discover it for the first time. There are poems that meditate on what it means to raise a family in a world filled with constant social and political tumult.

This stirring coming-of-age tale unfolds in 1930s rural Kansas. A poignant portrait of African-American family life in the early twentieth century, it follows the story of young Sandy Rogers as he grows from a boy to a man. We meet Sandy's mother, Annjee, who works as a housekeeper for a wealthy white family; his strong-willed grandmother, Hager; Jimboy, Sandy's father, who travels the country looking for work; Aunt Tempy, the social climber; and Aunt Harriet, the blues singer who has turned away from her faith.