African American Historical Fiction

Born Black in the Jim Crow South of the early 1900s, John feels like the rabbits he hunts to feed himself, his mother, and his sisters...always running from White men. The Johnsons, owners of the largest peach farm and just about everything else in town, produce some strange and bitter fruit with their racism. So, when Carolyn Johnson sets her sights on John and his friends, they decide to escape before her vicious threats and well-practiced lies add them to her family’s crop, but things go horribly wrong.

Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter is rooted not only in the horrific reality of institutional slavery but also in the historical fact of Thomas Jefferson’s relationship with the enslaved Sally Hemings (here represented by the character Currer). In William Wells Brown’s telling, Currer has two daughters by Jefferson, Clotel and Althesa. Both become Jefferson’s legal property when they are born, and both wind up at auction - along with their mother - when Jefferson dies.

1978. The year I turned 10 and the year my mama killed herself. She was 35, and dying is the last thing that should have been on her mind. After the death of her mother, Sylvia Butler's father, a man she knows only from an old photo, takes her from Louisville, Kentucky to Ozark, Alabama to live with his family. But his wife resents everything about this intruder. When the wife's younger brother Charles returns from Vietnam, Sylvia thinks she has found a friend and confidante, only to be hurt again, but this time, in a manner she never could have imagined.

Five-year-old Clara Bynum is dead, drowned in the Potomac River in the shadow of a seemingly haunted rock outcropping known locally as the Three Sisters. River, Cross My Heart weighs the effect of Clara's absence on the people she has left behind: her parents; the friends and relatives of the Bynum family; and, most especially, Clara's sister, 10-year-old Johnnie Mae, who must come to terms with the powerful and confused emotions stirred by her sister's death as she struggles to decide what kind of woman she will become.

At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of black power, three coeds from New York City - Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks - pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College. It is the beginning of a journey that will change their lives irrevocably.

Josephine "Jojo" Best has it all figured out. Just 17, she's been to college, she has her own hairdressing shop, and nothing will distract her from her goals. That is, until handsome George Brooks begins to pursue her. Then the return of her childhood nemesis complicates her life even further. No girl is immune to Adam Morgan's charm. But when a wound brings him home from the War Between the States, it's a girl he used to call "Pest" who's turning the tables. All grown up, Jojo is being courted by another soldier, and Adam knows it would be foolish to play with her heart.

Chima is an outcast among outcasts. He's on the verge of giving up on life entirely when he encounters the sacred Biafran lion. Gifted with an incredible power and introduced to a world beyond belief, Chima thinks his life may finally be turning around. When a rival nation kidnaps Chima's father, his world is shattered. To save his family and the Biafran people, he must learn to believe in himself and his newfound power. As he fights back against a secret weapon, he wonders if his efforts to protect his adopted home could doom them all.

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.

Two decades before the Civil War, a middle-class farmer named Samuel Maddox lies on his deathbed. Elsewhere in his Virginia home, a young woman named Kitty knows her life is about to change. She is one of the Maddox family's slaves - and Samuel's biological daughter. When Samuel's wife Mary inherits her husband's property, she will own Kitty, too, along with Kitty's three small children. After Samuel's death, Mary decides to grant Kitty and her children their freedom and travels with them to Pennsylvania, where she will file papers declaring Kitty's emancipation.

Author Lawrence Reid Bechtel has captured the story of Isaac Granger, a slave from Thomas Jefferson's plantation as told through the eyes of amateur historian Reverend Charles Campbell. In 1852, after much searching through the Black districts of Petersburg, Virginia, the amateur historian Charles Campbell finally located Isaac Granger, a former slave of the late Thomas Jefferson.

Neighborhood tensions reach a breaking point in the finale of New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe's captivating series that sweeps listeners back to 1930's Alabama and into the lives of two neighboring couples whose deceitful friendships and imperfect marriages are just the beginning of their troubles...

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.

Daniel is aggravated by the headstrong and much too observant new detective he's paired with, and Janeta is intrigued by the broken but honorable man she is tasked with betraying. As they embark on a mission to intercept Jefferson Davis and thwart European meddling, their dual hidden agendas are threatened by the ghosts of their pasts and a growing affection that could strengthen both the Union and their souls - or lead to their downfall.

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.

Boone Sawyer and his wife, Sharon, have always been Sarita Saint’s best friends. When a dying Sharon asked her best friend to marry her husband, Sarita agreed, never intending to keep her promise. But even from the grave, Sharon is having her say. Sweet, reliable, patient Boone wants Sarita by his side; he’s always loved her - through every bad relationship into which she seems to dive. Now, he wants to take her away from the painful memories in Detroit to a beautiful horse ranch in Texas.

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.

It's 1969 when 15-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City's most prestigious boys' schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey's white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River. But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself facing legal charges.