African American Family Fiction

When Bonnie Wilder's husband, Naz, finds an abandoned baby by the river, she thinks her prayers have been answered. But Naz refuses to raise another man's child.

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.

Three siblings, Sydney, Gina, and Rick, each have full lives, complex relationships, and serious personal problems. But when their mother suffers a debilitating stroke, her need for extensive care forces them to examine the strength of the bonds between them. A Blackboard best-selling author, Roby tackles several contemporary issues in this moving novel, including marital violence and childhood abuse.

Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets. But Sherry is determined to know the full story. In a few days' time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them.

Nationally best-selling author Lutishia Lovely spills sin and sizzle in The Eleventh Commandment, part of the Hallelujah Love series. Members of Kingdom Citizen’s Christian Center are up to all sorts of no good. Frieda’s juggling her husband, new baby and boy toy, while Hope is struggling with the return of her husband’s old flame and Stacy’s deciding if joining her ex in a moneymaking scheme will reunite them.

Camille Brousarde is tired and discouraged. She lives in the Watts area of Los Angeles, which has never recovered from the race riots. Her seven grown children seem directionless and adrift. When she decides to open a local restaurant, Camille's Gumbo Kitchen, she hopes that its tasty offerings will pull together not just her family, but her neighborhood, too. Crawfish Dreams is a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick.

An Essence best-selling author, Travis Hunter is acclaimed for the way he honestly confronts the issues facing African-American men. Jermaine Banks is a pot dealer in Philadelphia, father to a three-year-old boy, and committed partner to his pregnant girlfriend. As he approaches his 30th birthday and suffers the loss of a close friend to gang violence, he realizes it's time for some changes.

Sicily Jordan’s worst nightmare has come true! She’s been enrolled in a new school, with zero of her friends and stuck wearing a fashion catastrophe of a uniform. But however bad Sicily thought sixth grade was going to be, it only gets worse when she does her class presentation.

Nikki Turner, Queen of Hip-Hop Lit, is back with one of her gutsiest female characters yet, a glamorous chick with a high-end hustle that can rival any man’s game. As the respected, renowned concierge for a luxury hotel chain, Beijing Lee caters to the wealthy and famous. Whether it’s securing a dinner reservation, a fleet of limos, or a record deal, or protecting her clients from the paparazzi, there’s nothing Beijing can’t do. She’s stacked up an impressive pile of IOUs from the world’s elite - and one day she decides it’s time to start cashing in.

The sudden death of an alcoholic, lying, and manipulative mother sets off a chain of events that forces two worlds to eventually collide, releasing secrets and pain that could change the lives of everyone involved. Janice Williams is finally living the life that she's always dreamed. A respected dean of a university, with an adoring husband, she is finally happy - except for the hole in her heart that remains from a long-ago tragedy. Nicole Henry is enjoying the carefree life of a college student, until her adoptive parents announce they're divorcing and tapped out financially.

Award-winning author Ernest Hill—who Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler called “one of our finest writers”—has drawn favorable comparisons to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison with his powerful novels. Hill’s Family Ties tells the story of D’Ray Reid, who has put prison behind him and wants to repair his broken relationship with his mother. But when D’Ray comes home, lies and legal troubles haunt his every move.

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.

Most people think that money is the key to happiness, but when an ecstatic Nina Lawson wins millions in the Powerball lottery, her world is turned upside down. At first, she and her fiance, Rick, are delighted with the unexpected windfall and immediately begin planning their future. Soon, family members and friends begin coming out of the woodwork to claim a piece of Nina's winnings. But the most unexpected request comes from Todd, Nina's ex-husband.

Most men barely survive one mother, but Terrance Ellis has three: his aunts. His grandmother Essie's sisters - Eva, Dorothy Mae, and Mamie - lovingly raised him after Essie died in a tragic accident. They made sure that troubled young Terrance got on the right path and made something of his life. And now that he's all grown up and the rising pastor of Houston's Lily Grove church, the endlessly argumentative sisters agree on one thing: Terrance needs to find a wife.

When her husband hears God's call to become a preacher, Rachel Jackson Adams is distressed - she grew up a preacher's daughter, and knows how difficult life under the microscope can be for a reverend's family. But hot-headed Rachel has toned down her wild ways, and for the sake of her marriage and her two children, she is now the reluctant first lady of Zion Hill, unafraid to rock the boat with her unconventional ideas for revitalizing the church.

In cosmopolitan Johannesburg, three high-flying couples form the core of the elite Khula Society: part investment group, part social club, with meetings where the champagne flows, the dresses are designer and the one-upmanship is off the scale. Noma, Moshidi, Lerato and their husbands are living the dream—or so it appears from the outside. In reality, the cut and thrust of ‘keeping up with the Khulas’ is taking its toll on all three couples.

In the finale, everyone is battling their own demons. Messiah may have done something that could end her relationship with her daughter and husband. Has she gone too far, or like usual Messiah, did she know what she was doing? Staten is stuck on trying to handle loving Liberty, even after she ended things, be a father to he and Chanel’s daughter, and be there for a pregnant Maliah as well. Can he juggle it all, while trying to be there for his big brother too?

Fourteen years after the end of slavery, Lord Henry Hardin and his wife, Lady Bertha, enjoy an entitled life in Union County, Arkansas. Until he faces a devastating reality: Bertha is unable to bear children. If Henry doesn't produce an heir, the American branch of his family name will die out. So Henry, desperate to preserve his aristocratic family lineage, does the unthinkable.

Michael's wife Dahlia seems to have it all - a successful career, a devoted husband, and a loving daughter. But something sinister troubles her tortured mind. When Michael encounters her eccentric mortician father and the other bizarre characters on the plantation of her estranged family, he becomes convinced that Dahlia's past hides the key to her unstable present.

Blamed as a child for her baby sister's death, Dianne Rucker swore she'd never come back to Dentonville, Texas. But the kind aunt who took her in after her mother abandoned her is getting remarried, and she misses the cousins who came to be sisters, Yolanda and Regina. Going back to Dentonville also means facing her drug-addicted mother, now slipping even farther into schizophrenia. But Dianne isn't the only one struggling, and Aunt Gloria may have the most life-altering secret of all.