African American Fiction Mystery

Life is supposed to be easy and carefree when you are young, but if you live in Washington, DC, that's not always the case. Flashing back to the 1990s, listeners enter the lives of four black men looking to gain money, power, and respect. These four brothas come from different walks of life, but they have one thing in common: They are trying to make fast money in the harsh inner city. However, when the money comes too easily, there's usually a price attached...the ultimate price.

It's a few weeks before her 40th birthday, and Sienna finally has the life she's dreamed of: a husband who loves her, a private practice that's flourishing, and an extended family that has finally put its skeletons to rest. However, when a homeless woman named Sweet Violet comes under Sienna's care, with nothing on her but broken memories and a pocket watch stopped at 5:11, Sienna knows the peaceful life she's been enjoying will come to a screeching halt.

Pat G’Orge-Walker injects healthy doses of humor into her faith-based fiction tales of church-going folks and their many adventures. Holy Mayhem stars down-on-their-luck cousins Patience Kash and Joy Karry as they attempt to turn themselves into crime-solving, miracle-working private detectives. Their first cases are doozies - someone’s stolen a precious family Bible, and church funds have disappeared without a trace. And as these two amateurs work to solve these mysteries, they manage to stir up all manner of trouble in the congregation.

It's been months since Angel and Pastor Justus Too-Hot-To-Be-Holy Morgan announced their engagement. Yet Angel's barely begun wedding planning. It's not that she's having doubts. She just wants to make sure the past doesn't interfere with their future. For Angel, that means clearing up a kiss-tastrophe with U.S. Marshal Maxim West and facing off with her ex-fiancé's assassin. Angel wants to share her plans with Justus, but before she can do it, a new complication arrives....

Sent to prison, Tyrone Stokes left his wife to raise their son, Marcus, alone. Now Tyrone is free, but 17-year-old Marcus is on Louisiana's death row for the murder of a young white girl. Convinced of his son's innocence, Tyrone will sacrifice everything to keep Marcus alive. Cry Me a River offers the distinctive blend of emotional power, vivid imagery, and rich characters that has brought its author national acclaim.

With Dylan now dead, Kira has no one else to look to for protection but Nick. Unfortunately for Kira, though, Nick doesn't want that responsibility and makes other plans.

Black rookie cop Trevor “Finn” Finnegan aspires to become a top-ranking officer in the Los Angeles Police Department and fix a broken department. A fast-track promotion to detective in the coveted Robbery-Homicide Division puts him closer to achieving his goal. Four years later, calls for police accountability rule the headlines. The city is teeming with protests for racial justice. When the body of a murdered black academy recruit is found in the Angeles National Forest, Finn is tasked to investigate.

On a cold December evening, Autumn Spencer's twin sister Summer walks to the roof of their shared Harlem brownstone and is never seen again - the door to the roof is locked, and no footprints are found. Faced with authorities indifferent to another missing woman, Autumn must pursue answers on her own, all while grieving her mother's recent death. With her friends and neighbors, Autumn pretends to hold up through the crisis. She falls into an affair with Summer's boyfriend to cope with the disappearance of a woman they both loved.

Bootlegging was Milton and Yvonne Hamilton's ticket out of poverty, prison time, and plain bad luck. Now they've moved on - to a bigger, richer pool of clientele - right in their own respectable new middle-class backyard. And their growing friendship with seemingly-perfect couple Joyce and Odell Watson is proving golden in more ways than one. As Milton soon learns, Odell is hiding an outside family and dubious business dealings. It's the perfect recipe for a blackmail scheme that will help Milton hide his own dirty secrets - even from Yvonne....

With a drug addict mother and a drug lord father, Aphtan learns how to fend for herself at an early age. Being the princess of an empire has its perks - until her father gets arrested. From stealing clothes and food to committing fraud, Aphtan does what she has to do to take care of her mother and herself. But when her schemes prove problematic, she turns to a new hustle: dancing at Pearl Tongue, the most notorious strip club in Texas.

Sisters from Trinidad, Violet and Lily have never had much in common. Stunning Lily arrives undocumented in New York and makes her way as a stripper. But Harvard-educated Violet is this close to the perfect assimilated life, thanks to a prestigious job, and her rich bougie fiance.... Until she's wrongly accused of helping a notorious strip-club mogul embezzle millions of his workers' earnings. Violet loses everything - except the determination to get her life back. Now Violet's on his track with the help of his vengeful ex-wife and the Lower East Side Women's Health Clinic's resourceful crew - which includes Lily.

A successful businesswoman who used to play by the rules. A cautious single mother who never took chances. A gorgeous rebel out of money and almost out of time. Each loves a man unjustly sentenced to long prison terms by former prosecutor Hammond Grey. They've tried every legal remedy to get justice-only to see Hammond climb ever higher up the political ladder and secure himself behind power and privilege. So when Kim, Jayda, and Harley meet in a support group, they've got no options left. It's time for them to launch Plan B.

For college graduate Sidney Temple, the Roaring '20s bring opportunities even members of his accomplished black bourgeois family couldn't have imagined. His impulsive marriage to independent artist Loretta is a happiness he never thought he'd find. And when he's tapped by J. Edgar Hoover to be the FBI's first African American agent, he sees a once-in-a-lifetime chance to secure real justice.

At 37, Tuesday is eager for a better way of life. That means getting out of the game her gentleman's club has been fronting. Her all-female "business" team has made a fortune using the club to attract, seduce - and rob - wealthy men. But in addition to being squeezed by a corrupt cop, an unfortunate incident has put Tuesday deep in debt to a ruthless gun dealer and is creating dangerous dissent behind the scenes....

In the New England university town of Elm Harbor, a murder begins to crack the veneer that has hidden the racial complications of the town's past, the secrets of a prominent family, and the most hidden bastions of African-American political influence. At the center is Lemaster Carlyle, the university president, and his wife, Julia Carlyle, a deputy dean at the divinity school - African Americans living in "the heart of whiteness".

Miranda Parker’s acclaimed debut introduced sassy bail recovery agent Angel Crawford. In this second tale, Angel is back, and though this brainy part-time sleuth’s been ordered to take a vacation, she’s not slowing down. Determined to catch the killer who murdered her fiancé six years ago, Angel tracks the cold case into the depths of Atlanta’s hidden speakeasy society. And the case isn’t the only thing heating up - sparks are also flying between Angel and a suave U.S. Marshal.

Just weeks after tracking down a killer known as the Angel of Death, Detective Mike Coletti stands at Mary Smithson’s grave, mourning the woman whose betrayal nearly cost him his life. He’s joined there by Mary’s beautiful half sister, Lenore. Moments later, a gunshot splits the air, placing Coletti on a collision course with the Gravedigger, a killer hellbent on deciphering the secret of life and death. As bodies drop and tensions mount, clues are plucked from the victims, and one thing is abundantly clear—Lenore is the killer’s ultimate target.

Although she plans to go far enough away to break free from the streets, Secret may need a Plan B when her estranged father comes back into the picture. Secret is willing to forgive and forget the fact that her father robbed her of being a daddy's girl by not being in her life. In fact, she welcomes him with open arms. But when he sets her up for a fall in which the landing could break her very being, she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to trust men again.

All Enzo aka Shawn Banks, and Bianca "Angel" Smith wanted to do was leave the evidence of their old life behind them, but the past always has a way of coming back to haunt you. When International King Pin, Damien Orlando, was taken down, the streets of Atlanta thought DOA's reign of terror was over, but sometimes even tied up ends can unravel. Step into the underworld of the NFL, where E.N.G.A takes on a whole new meaning, especially for Angel and Enzo.

Two African-American attorneys, the best of friends, find themselves opposing council in the legal battle for African-American slavery reparations from the United States, while navigating the U.S. legal system and wrestling with the resulting personal turbulences in their lives.