African American Family Fiction

Tina Justice burst into the club like she owned the joint. Heads quickly turned and murmurs rose amid lively applause. Newspaper photographers and reporters scurried ahead of her, frantically snapping pictures and shouting questions while her security team cleared the way. She ignored it all. Restaurant patrons jumped to their feet, applauding in roof-raising adulation and admiration of her, sounding like hundreds of geese rising from a lake, noisily squawking and honking, wings loudly beating the air.

Wesley Greenfield, aka Ice or the Iceman, a self-professed "corner boy" has no intention of stepping up to Dr. Rosalyn Hunter, his high-school heart throb, even though she has stepped up to help him protect three abandoned neighborhood kids. As the principal of the local elementary school, in his view, she ranks too far above his lowly position as the owner and operator of a struggling community center.

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.

Daquan loves his wife, Aviana, more than words can explain. Their life isn’t perfect, but it’s theirs, and he wouldn’t change any of it. That is until Aviana doesn’t return home from work one night. Daquan seeks out to find the love of his life, only to find out his wife has a secret life he knew nothing about. Is their love enough to save their marriage? Will it stop Daquan from taking their son and moving on with his life? Only time will tell.

A powerful story about love, courage, sacrifice, resilience, and hope, True Grace, set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties, chronicles the journey of an immigrant, mixed-raced woman from the Congo, England, and Jamaica, fighting for her family's survival. Inspired by real people and events, Grace must navigate the misogyny and racism of the courts, banks, child welfare system, and bad actors to hold her family together. Calling on her grit, determination, and grace, she must overcome harrowing circumstances.

Love wasn’t supposed to be a part of the deal… Even a famed matchmaker like Nolan Madaris’s great-grandmother can’t get it right every time. Nolan, the notorious fun-loving ladies’ man, could never connect with someone as straitlaced as tech whiz Ivy Chapman. Yet the scheme Ivy proposes is tempting - they can pretend to be a couple, just long enough to satisfy their families. But someone forgot to clue in their hearts. What happens, though, when Ivy’s plan to get her relatives off her back has an unexpected side effect: getting her into Nolan’s bed?

The third in a series starring the heartbreaking Strong brothers, Give Me Fever takes the game to another level. A quiet accountant, Kaeden Strong is blown away when he meets Jade Prince—a tomboy nature guide with the body of a goddess. Despite his allergies, Kaeden agrees to go on a camping trip, which Jade is hired to lead. And while stranded one night, the two share a rowdy tumble in a sleeping bag.

Patricia Ryan is a woman on a mission: rescuing the community center that serves as a lifeline for local kids. But when Mac Carter steps into her world, he’s more than just a gorgeous face—he’s the rich CEO whose business threatens to demolish everything she’s fighting for. Yet, the way he looks at her, the way his presence ignites her senses, Patricia can’t help but wonder: Can a man like Mac be trusted, or is he the enemy in disguise? With every encounter, Patricia’s resolve to keep her emotions and her life’s goal separate–weakens.

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.

Walker Jareau prided himself on being a player. Women came a dime a dozen, and he was like a revolving door... until he met the one woman who threatened to swipe his player card—Jorja Sandifer. The beautiful dancer captivated him from the moment he laid eyes on her. It didn’t take long for the friends with benefits to migrate into an unconventional relationship, laced with a bit of toxicity. Feelings developed, and neither wants to come clean until Jorja has had enough.

Cartel Jareau has always been the protector of his siblings. The handsome chef has a bit of a roughness to him. Aside from his family, very few people get to witness his sensitivity. When he met Adina Harold a year ago, he had no idea that intervening in an embarrassing exchange would lead to falling in love with a woman he could never truly have. She was spoken for. Forbidden, yet during turmoil brewing within her home, they somehow fell in love.

It’s a brave new world as Dr. Loretta Collins lectures her eager class in Sociology 201: An Examination of the Black New World Order. She details three case studies that demonstrate the Black/white dynamics of society, where we are, and how we got there. The case studies involve submissive white male sissy maids, hot wives, chastity, cuckolding, wicked Mothers-in-Law, cuck Queens, and more.

Vanessa Reed had been at odds for years with Evelyn Underwood. Despite the woman's affair with her husband, Vanessa had moved on and forgiven Justice Reed. She's even accepted Jax Reed, the son born of the affair as if he were one of her own children. As Vanessa prepares to bring her family together for the holidays, she contemplates one of her greatest tests of faith and the consequences.

For Dana, what should be the happiest day of her life becomes the day her world falls apart. Her daughter is born beautiful and healthy, but no one can help noticing the African-American traits in her appearance. Dana's husband, to her great shock and dismay, begins to worry that people will think she has had an affair. Now Dana has to track down the father she never knew and explore the possibility of African-American lineage in his family history.

Throughout his life, Cleveland Robeson has shouldered life's challenges and traumas without asking for help. Whether it is because of his age, his gender, or because he is black, he has survived by putting his head down, plowing ahead, and never acknowledging the well-being of his mental health. But when he suggests therapy for his wife, what follows could change their marriage and his life.

In the world of children's literature, Louise Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy and The Long Secret are widely recognized as epoch-making. They have been received by young learners, year after year, with excitement and love. Nobody's Family Is Going to Change - the story of an African American family in New York in the 1970s - shares the vigorous sense of comedy and unflinching fidelity to the real world that has made Fitzhugh's other books into classics.

Sexy high-school teacher Matthew Lassiter has found the woman of his dreams. She loves and understands his desire for the simple life of mentoring teens. The larger-than-life siblings who surround him excel in just about everything they do. While that is financially beneficial for them, his choice to teach is not as profitable. When the opportunity for a different career is put on the table, planning a life with Leah has Matt questioning his decision.

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions: Why couldn't she drink from a whites-only fountain? Why couldn't she feel safe beyond home - or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter - and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

Walking Gentry Home tells the story of Alora Young’s ancestors, from the unnamed women forgotten by the historical record but brought to life through Young’s imagination; to Amy, the first of Young’s foremothers to arrive in Tennessee, buried in an unmarked grave, unlike the white man who enslaved her and fathered her child; through Young’s great-grandmother Gentry, unhappily married at fourteen; to her own mother, the teenage beauty queen rejected by her white neighbors.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.