African American Historical Fiction

The son of Maya Angelou, Guy Johnson is a critically acclaimed author and poet in his own right. Echoes of a Distant Summer is the story of Jackson St. Clair Tremain, a San Francisco civil servant who thought he had left his old life far behind. In 1982, Jackson is summoned to Mexico to confer with his dying grandfather, the brutal hustler King Tremain. When King dies, Jackson inherits $50 million - and the unwanted attentions of a malevolent bayou crime lord named Pug DuMont.

The 28 days of Black History Month are commemorated with descriptions of the men, women, and events that have been vital in defining our understanding of African American history. From Crispus Attucks to Barack Obama, Harriet Tubman to Malcolm X, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, the entries move chronologically from 1770 to the present and encompass all walks of life, from the armed forces and performing arts through sports and civil rights activism.

In the early 1900s an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea, just as the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule. Orphaned by the sunk vessel are two sisters and their half-brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them. Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic.

Twelve Years a Slave is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of twelve years. Northup's account is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar plantation and the daily routine of slave life during the first part of the 19th century.

At first glance, Geniece’s story sounds like that of a typical young woman: she goes to college, has romantic entanglements, builds meaningful friendships, and juggles her schedule with a part-time job. However, she does all of these things in 1960's San Francisco, while becoming a militant member of the Black Panther movement. When Huey Newton is jailed in October 1967 and the Panthers explode nationwide, Geniece enters the organization’s dark and dangerous world...

Millions of Africans were enslaved during the transatlantic slave trade, but few recorded their personal experiences. Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano is perhaps the most well known of the autobiographies that exist. Using this narrative as a primary source text, authors Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge share Equiano's life story in "found verse," supplemented with annotations to give listeners historical context.

In this audiobook we discuss the greatest US marshal of all time: Bass Reeves, the Texas Ranger that the character The Lone Ranger was based off of. Did you know that he was a real person? Learn about the man who was the real Lone Ranger! Share this and more amazing stories with your children! Give them a true historical foundation and a sense of belonging.

Set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance, The Color Line uncovers the long buried story of The Harlem Hellfighters, one of the many African-American units that served in the first World War. By focusing on the personal journey of Serval Rivard, from his wedding day to the trenches of the Western Front and home again, the story reveals not only the Hellfighters’ history, but that of two families and their place in Harlem’s most glorious era.

Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens. But the ghosts from her past are always by her side - and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most. Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community? Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel - a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

It is 1910, and Philadelphia is burning. The last place Spring wants to be is in the run-down, colored section of a hospital surrounded by the groans of sick people and the ghost of her dead sister. But as her son Edward lays dying, she has no other choice. There are whispers that Edward drove a streetcar into a shop window. Some people think it was an accident, others claim that it was his fault, the police are certain that he was part of a darker agenda. Is he guilty? Can they find the truth? All Spring knows is that time is running out.

The Roux in the Gumbo is an emotional and inspirational drama, telling the story of a Louisiana family spanning the generations from the era of slavery to the present day. You will hear of the romances, challenges, and adventures they experience as their lives are intertwined by one common goal - basic survival during the Reconstruction era in Louisiana.

In 1937, a young trumpet player called Doc leaves Harlem with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Eight hundred miles away, a little girl named Pearl is fighting a child's war against poverty and paternal abuse in a Chicago tenement. Spain's defeat leads directly to World War II. For the honor of Spain and self, Doc heads off to fight another war. Meanwhile, Pearl discovers the power of her voice and begins her own odyssey. By 1946, the war's over. Doc returns to find peace in the music, but everything changes when the band's new singer walks into the club.

From the acclaimed author of Corregidora, The Healing follows Harlan Jane Eagleton as she travels to small towns, converting skeptics, restoring minds, and healing bodies. But before she found her calling, Harlan had been a minor rock star’s manager and, before that, a beautician. Harlan retraces her story to the beginning, when she once had a fling with the rock star’s ex-husband and found herself infatuated with an Afro-German horse dealer.

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.

This story takes place in 1912, with the narrator being a young girl named Heattie. Her memories take her to the times when the Sisterhood, one who is her grandmother, would sit on the front porch and tell stories, past and present. Even though the stories are being told on the front porch, Heattie's life gets caught between the stories and the mysteries of real life. In the midst of the stories and the mysteries, Heattie and her best friend, Luceen, have several adventures while trying to solve certain mysteries of lost identities.

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.

If you loved Detroit and the Motown sound, you will love Graylin Brown! A heartwarming and triumphant story of an African American soul singer who was cut down in his prime by a debilitating disease. The fictional story spans from 1965 Detroit, Michigan to Hollywood, California in the early 90s. After the onset of the disease in 1965, he went into a nine-year remission. He did the best he could as he struggled with the possibility of a relapse

Leo Love, and his only son, Michael, navigate their way through the cultural limitations and divisions that afflict American life. Starting from the 1950s and into the new millennium, their lives at times, cross with the lives of some of history's greatest icons. Joining their intellects and talent together, they become beacons for the doomsday clock. As champions for human rights, they wage war on ignorance through love and wisdom.

This book contextualizes the history of the Mormon migration with other events in American and particularly African American history. Few are aware that several black Mormon converts played important parts in the beginnings of Civil Rights issues from 1930 onward. Any listeners who want to broaden their understanding of African American history in the days from the American Revolution until just before the Civil War will find this book unique and full of information unavailable elsewhere.

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.