African American Families

For the five Reeves women, nothing is more important than keeping their family bond tight and their communication flowing. But honesty isn't so clear cut when it could blow up everything they've fought to build. Already reeling from betrayal, middle sister Coco is fed up with lies - including her own. If she has her way, someone else's neck needs to be on the line for a change. But soon, Coco's in deep trouble with the law, her future hanging in the balance....

A child's concept of race is quite different from that of an adult. Young children perceive skin color as magical - even changeable - and are incapable of understanding adult prejudices. Just as children learn to walk and talk, they likewise come to understand race in a series of predictable stages. Based on Marguerite A. Wright's research and clinical experience, I'm Chocolate, You're Vanilla teaches us that the color-blindness of early childhood can, and must, be taken advantage of in order to guide the positive development of a child's self-esteem.

New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe’s God Don’t Like Ugly hit audiences like a thunderbolt, appealing to multiple generations of readers. God Don’t Make No Mistakes concludes the saga begun in that groundbreaking novel. Here, Annette Goode Davis is attempting to reconcile with her estranged husband. However, her appetite for food - and other men - has her world spiraling dangerously out of control.

In God Don't Play, trouble comes a woman's way just when she thinks she's finally got it all figured out. Annette Goode couldn't be happier with where she is in life. She has a good job, a comfortable home, and a wonderful husband and daughter. But tough times lie ahead. Out of the blue, Annette begins receiving anonymous hate mail and threatening phone calls. It seems her life isn't as settled as she thought, and demons from her past surface in unexpected ways.

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....

Sins from the past have left a lingering stench in the Mitchell family. Amid a tumultuous roller-coaster ride through financial ruin, professional humiliation, personal failure, and marital discord, Joel, the youngest son, who was once considered the most eligible bachelor, has finally come to terms with his shortcomings and self-centered decisions.

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.

Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her 12 Black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.

At the age of 12, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti - to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

Between Freedom and Equality begins with the life of Capt. George Pointer, an enslaved African who purchased his freedom in 1793 while working for George Washington's Potomac Company. It follows the lives of six generations of his descendants as they lived and worked on the banks of the Potomac, in the port of Georgetown, and in a rural corner of the nation's capital. Between Freedom and Equality offers a moving and inspiring look at the challenges that free African Americans have faced in Washington, DC, since the district's founding.

She's generous, kind, and compassionate - yet Delilah Grey will forever be an outcast in the small seaside town of Camden Beach, Maryland. She takes in women shattered by abuse, poverty, illness, or events beyond their control. But no matter how far she's come or how many she's helped find their way back, there is no safe place for Delilah. Acquitted of her rich husband's mysterious death decades ago, she lives in her beautiful mansion consumed by secrets - and mistakes she feels she can never atone for...until she takes in desperate mother Tracey Walters and her two young children.

The Butler family has had their share of trials - as sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian can attest - but nothing prepared them for the literal trial that will upend their lives. Althea, the eldest sister and substitute matriarch, is a force to be reckoned with, and her younger sisters have alternately appreciated and chafed at her strong will. They are as stunned as the rest of the small community when she and her husband, Proctor, are arrested, and in a heartbeat, the family goes from one of the most respected in town to utter disgrace.

One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13, she was pregnant. By 15, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at 16, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive.

So begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, the cul-de-sac in the all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, where her grandparents live, Mika learns important lessons from the people who raise her.

Savannah has awakened to the fact that she's made too many concessions in her marriage. Bernadine has watched her megadivorce settlement dwindle. Robin has an all-American case of shopaholism. Gloria has taken happiness and security for granted. But being at the wrong place at the wrong time can change everything. All four are learning to heal past hurts and to reclaim their joy and their dreams; but they return to us full of spirit, sass, and faith in one another.

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.

Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: Polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage - after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures - Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time - until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife.

Rio Duncan is one of the youngest children of the Duncan clan. With no solid position in the family business like his other siblings, he has been feeling out of place and decides to disappear. Rio leaves his Duncan identity behind and goes on a search for friends and family who can relate to him. His destination is Baltimore, and he is sure to find what he is looking for in the city with a community like no other.

We should have known the end was near. So begins Imbolo Mbue’s powerful second novel, How Beautiful We Were. Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, it tells of a people living in fear amid environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of cleanup and financial reparations to the villagers are made - and ignored. The country’s government, led by a brazen dictator, exists to serve its own interests.

Tabitha Knicely is overwhelmed with sorrow and exhaustion caring for her beloved great-aunt, whose dementia is getting worse. When her neighbor Marcus Whittington accuses Tabitha of elder neglect, he doesn't realize how his threats to have Aunt Tweet taken away add to Tabitha's pain. Then Marcus gets to know the exuberant elderly lady and sees up close how hard Tabitha is fighting to keep everything together. Tabitha finds herself leaning on Marcus more and more. And he's becoming more than happy to share her burdens.