African American Literature Fiction

In her fantastically fun new series, Ellis' debut novel introduces a Kardashian-style family of money-hungry women who are determined to have it all. Over three generations, the Gibbons women of Chesterton have built their reputation as a family of shameless - but refined - gold diggers. But now one of them is abandoning the tradition.

All he ever wanted to be was a good son. Shai Clark was an all-American basketball player with aspirations of one day making it to the NBA, but that all changed when his father was viciously murdered and he found himself thrust into the role of the new head of his family's criminal enterprise.

New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe’s God Don’t Like Ugly hit audiences like a thunderbolt, appealing to multiple generations of readers. God Don’t Make No Mistakes concludes the saga begun in that groundbreaking novel. Here, Annette Goode Davis is attempting to reconcile with her estranged husband. However, her appetite for food - and other men - has her world spiraling dangerously out of control.

The queen of the street lit genre, De’nesha Diamond pens tales about the toughest ride-or-die chicks ever to roam the streets of the Dirty South. In Street Divas, four powerful women vie for total control of the Memphis hood, and they aren’t about to let past loyalties get in their way. While Lucifer is hitting the streets to get her revenge for a deadly shooting, Essence is hitting the sheets - with her best friend’s man. And Yolanda knows her path to power lies with her baby’s hustler father, but Queen G Leshelle is dead set on keeping this game all to herself.

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery but possessed a mind and a vision that knew no bounds. So Tall Within traces her life from her painful childhood through her remarkable emancipation to her incredible leadership in the movement for rights for both women and African Americans. Her story is told with lyricism and pathos by Gary D. Schmidt, one of the most celebrated writers for children in the 21st century. This audiobook is just right for introducing this legendary figure to a new generation of children.

Jasmyn and King Williams move their family to the planned Black utopia of Liberty, California hoping to find a community of like-minded people, a place where their growing family can thrive. King settles in at once, embracing the Liberty ethos, including the luxe wellness center at the top of the hill, which proves to be the heart of the community. But Jasmyn struggles to find her place. She expected to find liberals and social justice activists striving for racial equality, but Liberty residents seem more focused on booking spa treatments and ignoring the world’s troubles.

Good Girls Love Thugs tells the story of four young best friends whose lives change dramatically after getting caught up with the extremely sought after “King brothers” Kendrick, Kendreeis, Kendon, and their cousin Kayden. The King brothers run the biggest drug operation in Baltimore, Maryland, where money and women are the least of their worries. Follow innocent Nic, crazy Christy, sensitive Morgan, and feisty Jessica as they deal with thirsty jump offs, vengeful exes, infidelity, and even some shady family members, in hopes of proving good girls can too be with thugs.

Ojasvi "Sin" Sinclair. Fast-forwarding three years after it was finally revealed, what's in a name? Ashira now knows the man she once thought of as a felon laborer is far more than the task she'd bargained for. Yes, he's a convicted felon who works in home-building. He's also convicted in his spiritual walk, a savvy entrepreneur, laboriously supportive, a tad insane, and has possibly run out of patience for her. He's also the father of her three-year-old child.

Successful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi is lured from the US to Sweden by Jonny von Lundin, CEO of the nation's largest marketing firm, to help fix a PR fiasco involving a racially tone-deaf campaign. A killer at work but a failure in love, Kemi's move is a last-ditch effort to reclaim her social life.

From sissies who are brave enough to go search out the men of their dreams, through to those who need a little help from their wives or female friends, this book sees sissies get all dolled up and then down and dirty!

Some secrets will kill you. No one knows that better than Jada, Alex, Miranda, and Candace, who’ve previously lost one of their friends, Stephanie, following a heartbreaking betrayal. Now Stephanie’s boyfriend, Corey, is hitting the streets of Atlanta with a vengeance in an effort to get the haters that took his girlfriend’s life, all while trying to take back his title as the king of the hood. Stephanie may be dead now, but the secrets lingering between the rest of the crew seem to just keep piling up and coming to the forefront.

No one could have predicted even two years ago that an African American would take the oath of office as president of the United States in January of 2009. For many, the occasion marks the climax to the civil rights movement and the fulfillment of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream that Americans could be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. This collection, with about 400 letters from Americans of all walks of life, is being created to stand as a symbol of this exciting moment in history.

Set in the wake of the Mau Mau rebellion and on the cusp of Kenya's independence from Britain, A Grain of Wheat follows a group of villagers whose lives have been transformed by the 1952-1960 Emergency. At the center of it all is the reticent Mugo, the village's chosen hero and a man haunted by a terrible secret. As we learn of the villagers' tangled histories in a narrative interwoven with myth and peppered with allusions to real-life leaders, including Jomo Kenyatta, a masterly story unfolds in which compromises are forced, friendships are betrayed, and loves are tested.

Charles and Mary Bivens have been married for more than 20 years, but after one miscarriage and two children, they are starting to question their union. Their eldest child is out of the house, their youngest is entering his senior year in high school, and the onset of the empty nest is starting to sink in for the both of them. Mary, feeling the tension, has decided to start getting massages to find release. Recognizing that her husband may have a need for the same, she suggests that he try it too.

A city full of lies, deceit, and cold-blooded murder, Detroit plays widow to drug cartel after drug cartel, and the Last Kings are the latest to take over the throne. It seems that nothing can crumble their empire, but when an unexpected series of events take place and blood is shed, everything spirals out of control. Can Sadie and Mocha survive the game as the head women in charge, or will disloyalty and treachery threaten to end them for good?

When their parents are discovered brutally murdered in a ditch, Kenya and London are left orphaned and forced to navigate the unforgiving streets of Detroit. They might be identical twins, but they are as different as night and day. While one of them fights relentlessly to make it out of the ghetto, the other eagerly embraces true hood life and everything their parents believed in - selling drugs, living fast, and even dying young (if it means getting paid!).

A hard-working daddy's girl, Precious Cummings is sure she's going to college. But when her father is murdered, she discovers he lied for years about money they never had - and hid a shocking family secret. Shattered and lost, she starts hangin' with savvy hood chick Keisha - and falls hard for DaVon, LA's most powerful drug dealer. As his new lady, Precious soon gets the best of every luxurious thing - and fast learns the ropes of her lover's lethal hustle.

Jewel used to be content with being a ride or die chick, playing Bonnie while the men in her life played Clyde. But now she realizes that it was her connections and street smarts that helped her man, Calico, rise to the top, and Jewel wants to be the one in control. She's tired of taking orders from men. She's willing to do anything to be queen of the streets, but when a deal she makes with the enemy comes back to haunt her, her dream is turned into a nightmare. Hopeless and struggling to keep her head above water, Jewel meets Misty, who seems to be her savior.

In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls “the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive.”

MEM is a rare novel, a small book carrying very big ideas, the kind of story that stays with you long after you've finished listening to it. Set in the glittering art deco world of a century ago, MEM makes one slight alteration to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method allowing people to have their memories extracted from their minds, whole and complete.