African American Literature Fiction

Belle Palmer is finally free! Separated from her father on the harrowing escape, Belle is lost and alone until she finds shelter with the Bests, the first free family she's ever known. For the first time in her 16 years, Belle can speak her mind - except for her feelings for a certain dark-eyed young man - The Beau. Educated and handsome, at 18, Daniel Best is engaged to the prettiest girl around. So when the bedraggled girl his parents take under their wing suddenly turns into a vibrant, lovely young woman, his attraction to her is a complete - and complicated - surprise.

When Ava Dunning's mother is killed in a senseless act of violence, it feels like the world has ended. Now on her own, with the bills piling up, Ava is forced to take a job with a company called Maid For You. Trying to clock as many hours as she can, Ava jumps at the opportunity to do some overtime on the side, only to discover that she's bitten off more than she can chew. Just like that, she becomes a cleaner for King Dex, one of the most notorious kingpins on the West Coast. It's nothing for him to pay a couple thousand dollars for her to clean up his dirty work.

Award-winning author Tiffany L. Warren has been celebrated by ReShonda Tate Billingsley for novels delivering “a riveting story and a faith boost.” In The Favorite Son, handsome brothers Camden and Blaine Drake sing God’s praises in their popular gospel group. But as rumors fly about one brother, a heartbreaking betrayal threatens to destroy the group—and their family.

Carmen has gotten her wish. Renee is no longer queen. Being stripped of her title and the power that comes with it, Renee must start from scratch and rebuild what she once controlled. Having turned their backs on one another, Renee's once strong circle is now dismantled, and each individual is after what ripped them apart - Carmen. Carmen's making it hard for them to capture her and doing whatever she must to survive. Renee wants revenge along with everyone else, but will she achieve it, or will she die in battle without the help of Julian and Dane?

After a hurricane of events, so many lies and secrets are left undisclosed between the Borrego brothers and their leading ladies. As Micah fights to regain Risa's trust, she battles against her past with Zo, as well as, for her future as a lawyer. Shortly after Dre discovers Romi's baby is his, he takes another life changing blow that could ruin him and Romi indefinitely.

Risa is a college student who's been trapped in a four-year abusive relationship. After a particularly brutal attack, Risa finally decides she's had enough and leaves for good. When she meets the smart and sexy businessman Micah Borrego, they hit it off almost immediately. Unbeknownst to Risa, Micah battles with a serious sex addiction, and true commitment might be impossible for him.

Derrick. Ricky. Jamal. One's responsible; one's still a player; one's upwardly-mobile. Sentenced to the Branch Avenue Boys' Youth Institute at 12, they grabbed the chance for better futures. They beat the odds and turned their lives around. But now, these three best friends will go head-to-head with ambition, deception - and each other.

Tressie faithfully prays every night that God will send her a thug. It isn't long before her prayers are answered, and she meets a handsome ex-convict named Payce Boyd. He is a fine roughneck, everything Tressie imagined and more - that is until Tressie experiences firsthand the reality of being a thug's girl. Seeking solace and comfort in the sanctuary, Tressie soon learns valuable lessons and shocking truths about herself and others.

Darica's world is turned upside down, as she becomes aware that her desires, her husband's selfishness, and her lover's past created a wrath that sent her knocking on death's door. But, realizing the error of her ways won't turn back the hands of time and undo the unthinkable things she did to get to this point. Rolanda thought she raised her sons to value women, unlike their abusive, cheating father; she even married another man to give them a better life. But, she quickly learned that DNA plays a major role in relationships and family ties are hard to break.

Sylvia Blackwell has it all, or so she thinks. She and her handsome husband, Garrett, are the epitome of success: an immaculate house of their dreams, a beautiful and talented 17-year-old daughter, flourishing careers, and nearly 20 years of perfectly wedded bliss. Just as they are making plans for their vow renewal celebration, a call in the middle of the night interrupts their picture-perfect lives. Now Sylvia has to deal with the reality of Garrett's dead mistress and a love child she never knew about.

In Swag II Jazmine enlists the help of Swag to ensure that her plan for revenge is executed with the precision of a sniper rifle. But with Matson, an overzealous detective determined to expose her, and every crime boss and street soldier on the hunt for Swag, things get deadlier with each day that passes. When demons from Jazmine's past start to resurface it seems as if they were sent from Satan himself.

Isolated from family and friends because of the one man she thought would be her happily ever after, Scotland is depressed, broke, and a shell of the woman she used to be. But when her man does the unthinkable, it is the last straw, causing Scotland to make a huge gamble in the name of revenge. But when that retaliation follows her home, adding yet another problem to her already hefty plate, Scotland must figure a way out of the hell she now calls life.

Nia Simone Bijou is a woman who has it all - and is driven by the desire for more. Born in Trinidad, reared in Los Angeles, living in Atlanta, Nia is a writer, a thinker, and a woman in conflict. She's dealing with two sides of her Gemini self, feeling as if there are two women living inside her, both struggling for domination.

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."

Jacqueline Woodson's first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories. It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them—everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes.

On a rainy day in May 1964, history professor Cecily Bridge-Davis begins to search for the sixty-five acres of land she inherited from her father’s family. The quest leads her to uncover a dark secret: In every generation, one offspring from each Bridge family unit vanishes—and is mysteriously whisked back in time. With only a family Bible and a map marked with the locations of mysterious containers to aid her, Cecily heads to the library, hoping to discover the truth of how this curse began, and how it might be ended.

This chapter-book edition of the number-one New York Times best seller by luminaries Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds is an essential introduction to the history of racism and antiracism in America.

Ever since Draylah Omari was 16 years old, it seemed like life had only dealt her a bad hand. Tragedies and betrayal have taken the people she loved most, including her best friend of more than a decade, Glory. After finding out her boyfriend, Lue, who was once her savior, is nothing but a wolf in sheep's clothing, Draylah decides to lock her heart up and focus only on her half-finished brow bar. But little does Draylah know, a whirlwind is headed her way, it's named Ricky AK, and she's about to get caught up in it.

Like Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place, Sidik Fofana’s electrifying collection of eight interconnected stories showcases the strengths, struggles, and hopes of one residential community in a powerful storytelling experience. Each short story follows a tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone’s mind. We root for these characters and more as they weave in and out of each other’s lives, endeavoring to escape from their pasts and blaze new paths forward for themselves and the people they love.

The LaCroixs are four beautiful Haitian American women bound by money and blood. On the surface, the LaCroix Group is a venture capitalist company, but underneath, it’s so much more. The four sisters run long cons, targeting wealthy, prominent business figures. They have a system: Find the perfect mark, create the problem, then present the solution. For a cost....