African American Historical Fiction

Long before moving away from The Bottom, the poor black district of Beaumont, Arkansas, David and Mary Green yearn to escape the rural south and find a better life. The family steals away in the night, seeking a new beginning in St. Louis, Missouri. Even though St. Louis is more than they hoped for, their son, Otto, succumbs to the draw of the streets; he's lured into the dangerous world of bootlegging alcohol at the height of Prohibition.

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.

In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock - the "Widow of the South" - has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee. But when her ambitious, politically minded grown son, Theopolis, is murdered, Mariah - no stranger to loss - finds her world once more breaking apart. How could this happen? Who wanted him dead?

On a sweltering summer night in 1925, beauties in beaded dresses mingle with hepcats in dapper suits on the streets of Harlem. The air is thick with reefer smoke, and jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways. Ben Charles and his devoted wife, Angeline, are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear jazz and drink bootleg liquor. For aspiring poet Ben, the swirling, heady rhythms are a revelation. So is Baby Back Johnston, an ambitious trumpet player who flashes a devilish grin and blasts jazz dynamite from his horn.

Olivia's marriage to an African-American man was unacceptable to her mother Emma, Southern-bred descendant of prominent South Carolina slaveholders. Olivia assumed that bigotry was the product of her mother's loyalty to long-dead relatives, an allegiance to maintain the family's white blood line. After Emma's death though, Olivia finds a letter and an old journal among her belongings.

Among these biographies, listeners will find aviators and artists, politicians and pop stars, athletes and activists. The exceptional men featured include artist Aaron Douglas, civil rights leader John Lewis, dancer Alvin Ailey, filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, musician Prince, photographer Gordon Parks, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, and writer James Baldwin.

It’s 1776 in the American colonies, and revolution is in the air. Richard Pierpoint, torn from his home in Africa as a young boy and sent across the sea as a slave, hears the word “freedom” repeatedly, and yearns for a better life. When the British offer freedom to any slave who joins the British Army, Richard, and the beautiful and mysterious Shenandoah who has stolen his heart, escape from their masters and begin a quest in the pristine forests of the Mohawk Valley to join the British guerilla unit, Butler’s Rangers.

Charles thought he had it all - until a devastating betrayal and the shattering loss of his family drove him to living on the streets. Beatrice is the first person who's truly cared about him in a long time. Little by little, he's finding reasons to care about rebuilding his life. Drawn to Charles and the temptation of a second chance, Beatrice is faced with the hardest of decisions. But his insight, secrets - and the reminder of a profound past encounter - will give her unexpected inspiration, gratitude, and the strength she needs to find her way - perhaps in time for Christmas.

Despite being a straight-A student and voracious reader, eight-year old Sandrine Miller is treated as little more than a servant by her mother, who forces Sandrine to clean house, do chores and take care of her younger half-sister, Yolanda. On top of the despair of her life at home, Sandrine must confront growing up against the harshness of life in 1970s-era New Orleans, where men in cars follow her home from school and she is ostracized because she is a light-skinned black girl.

Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. Blending the truth of American history with the fruits of Bernice L. McFadden's rich imagination, this is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.

Brilliantly portrayed by a novelist with "a talent for hyperbole and downright yarning unequaled since Mark Twain", (Saturday Review), this slave's-eye view of the Civil War exposes America's racial foibles of the past and present with uninhibited humor and panache. Mixing history, fantasy, political reality, and comedy, Ishmael Reed spins the tale of three runaway slaves and the master determined to catch them.

Freeman, the new novel by Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee's surrender, Sam - a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army - decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all "belonged".

Cow Tom, born into slavery in Alabama in 1810 and sold to a Creek Indian chief before his 10th birthday, possessed an extraordinary gift: the ability to master languages. As the new country developed westward, and Indians, settlers, and blacks came into constant contact, Cow Tom became a key translator for his Creek master and was hired out to US military generals.

Timbuktu, western Africa, 1706. Folashade, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a professor of linguistics, is sent south with her older sisters, Bibi and Adaeze, to endure the painful ceremony that a girl on the cusp of womanhood is expected to. In Djenné, on the banks of the Niger, the sisters’ fate and that of their fellow Bambara are changed forever when they’re kidnapped, marched toward grueling indignities on Gorée Island, and eventually hauled aboard an English slaver bound for the Americas.

Kate, a recent college graduate, is still reeling from the deaths of her beloved parents when the discovery of hidden letters forces her to re-examine everything she knew about her family. Tacker, a young engineering student and all-around boy-hero, has returned from a West African odyssey where he fell in love with the local culture but was sent home in shame. Kate's and Tacker's stories come together when, on the same day and in different moments, they encounter a young African American man named Gaines. The relationship that develops between the three is complicated, as each one searches for love, freedom, and new beginnings.

Evelyn is a Creole woman who comes of age in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Her family inhabits the upper echelon of black society, and when she falls for no-name Renard, she is forced to choose between her life of privilege and the man she loves. In 1982, Evelyn's daughter Jackie is a frazzled single mother grappling with her absent husband's drug addiction. Just as she comes to terms with his abandoning the family, he returns, ready to resume their old life.

A sus veintiséis años, Jean Louise Finch —«Scout»— vuelve a casa desde la ciudad de Nueva York para visitar su anciano padre, Atticus. En el contexto de las tensiones por los derechos civiles y de los disturbios políticos que estaban transformando el Sur, el regreso de Jean Louise a casa se torna agridulce cuando descubre verdades perturbadoras acerca de su querida y unida familia, de la ciudad y de las personas que más quiere. Los recuerdos de infancia la invaden y ve cuestionados sus valores y fundamentos.

Francis Barber, a Jamaican forced into slavery as a child, becomes the manservant and friend of literary legend Dr. Samuel Johnson. Randy Turpin beats Sugar Ray Robinson in 1951 to become, for a short time, middleweight champion of the world. David Oluwale, stowed away on a ship bound for England from West Africa, has dreams of becoming an engineer. Each man soon falls from grace, becoming just another face with the wrong color skin.

A revolution has swept through the islands of Hans Lollik, and former slave Loren Jannik has been chosen to lead the survivors in a bid to free the islands forever. But the rebels are running out of food, weapons, and options. And as the Fjern inch closer to reclaiming Hans Lollik with every battle, Loren is faced with a choice that could shift the course of the revolution in their favor - or doom it to failure.

Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky - but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem.