African American Family Fiction

Annette Goode has finally found a man who loves her. But at a pre-wedding ceremony, her ugly past is revealed, and her world falls apart. When she reunites with her childhood sweetheart, it seems like everything might be fine - until her long-absent friend, who hides a deadly secret, comes back into Annette's life.

Nationally best-selling author Vanessa Davis Griggs helps spread the Word with powerful fiction for the faithful. In The Other Side of Dare, Paris Simmons-Holyfield finds her marriage of seven years stressed to the breaking point when she works toward adopting nine-year-old Jasmine. Her husband Andrew and her father oppose the adoption. And while Paris has her suspicions as to why, it soon becomes clear that Jasmine is the key to a long-buried secret. Now Paris must overcome tests to her faith and marriage as she searches for the truth.

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.

It’s 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she’d never look back, but Ruth knows that she must make peace with the past. Returning home, Ruth discovers the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism, and despair.

Stanford Solomon’s shocking, 30-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley. And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

Freshly 45, Aja James knows that her life is good, complete with a loving, wealthy husband, well-adjusted children, and a beautiful home. Yet the truth is, she feels painfully unfulfilled, stuck in the present, haunted by a painful past. When a friend suggests a girls' trip to a tropical paradise, Aja hopes a change of scene will also change her perspective. On vacation, filled with fun and freedom, Aja is relieved to find her spirits lifting. But her good time also shines a light on what's troubling her: She's spent nearly her whole life taking care of everyone - except herself.

To keep their family ties strong, the five Reeves sisters meet regularly to give each other a reality check. But explosive family secrets begin to pour out like molten lava and forever change all they treasure most.

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.

A solid marriage, a thriving business, and the esteem of their close-knit Alabama community - Joyce and Odell Watson have every reason to count their blessings. Their marriage has given well-off Joyce a chance at the family she's always wanted - and granted Odell a once-in-a-lifetime shot to escape grinding poverty. But all that respectability and status comes at a cost. Just once, Joyce and Odell want to break loose and taste life's wild side, without consequences.

In the wake of a major loss, five sisters agree to meet on the regular to keep it real. But secrets they never saw coming will challenge them and everything they counted on. Savvy and decisive, Burgundy Reeves feels blessed with a good husband and a successful career. She is the sister everyone envies. Since her beloved mother's death, she's given troubled youngest sister, Elyse, a stable home when she needs it most. And she's taken it on herself to keep her contentious siblings together.

At 72, Johnny Ribkins shouldn't have such problems: he's got one week to come up with the money he stole from his mobster boss or it's curtains. What may or may not be useful to Johnny as he flees is that he comes from an African American family that has been gifted with superpowers that are a bit, well, odd. Okay, very odd. For example, Johnny's father could see colors no one else could see. His brother could scale perfectly flat walls. His cousin belches fire. And Johnny himself can make precise maps of any space you name, whether he's been there or not.

Two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist Bernice L. McFadden has also been twice honored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. One of Library Journal's 25 Key Indie Fiction Titles, this heartbreaking tale follows two damaged but hopeful souls as they struggle to find love despite the ravages of their pasts.

The wedding of Morgan Willis is the buzz around the small town, because Morgan is the prodigal child. She was their pageant queen who moved overseas without looking back. Returning to deal with everyone from her hometown is the last thing Morgan wants to do. She doesn' t need everyone in her business, and she isn' t ready to face her unfinished situation with Henry, her high school sweetheart. She' s also nervous about revealing the identity of the person she's going to marry. All she wants to do is escape from her family and return to her life in London.

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.

Raymond Jaffe feels like he doesn’t belong. Not with his mother’s new family. Not as a weekend guest with his father and his father’s wife. Not at school, where he’s an outcast. After his best friend moves away, Raymond has only two real connections: to the feral cat he’s tamed and to a blind ninety-two-year-old woman in his building who’s introduced herself with a curious question: Have you seen Luis Velez?

When she was twenty-six and broke, Skye didn’t think twice before selling her eggs and happily pocketing the cash. Now approaching forty, Skye still moves through life entirely—and unrepentantly—on her own terms, living out of a suitcase and avoiding all manner of serious relationships. Maybe her junior high classmates weren’t wrong when they voted her “Most Likely to Be Single” instead of “Most Ride-or-Die Homie,” but at least she’s always been free to do as she pleases.

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.

Light-skinned Selina Standish lives a life of emotional pain and torment. In 1906, at the age of eight, she is convinced by her mother, actress Lavinia Standish, the daughter of a slave, to pass as white. Although Selina yields to her mother's insistence to pass, she refuses to cut ties completely with her Negro relatives, including her twin brother, a child her mother deems too dark. However, at age 17, in the year 1915, Selina meets wealthy Southerner Jack Cosgrove, the man of her dreams. Keeping her ancestry a secret, Selina is conflicted by Jack's negative attitude toward her race.

Jordan Gatewood's life is falling apart. Murder, sex, betrayal, suicide--the women in his world are paying him back for all the terrible things he's done, and they're bringing on the drama in spades. And now, with Desi Green bringing Jordan to the attention of the detective investigating his lover's murder, his tenuous grip on control threatens to unravel completely.

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."