African American Literature Fiction

Giselle Doran is a daddy's girl - a sexy 18-year-old siren who's all about the Benjamins. Her father is a king in the drug distribution game, and she views him as the perfect man. When she meets Shawn, she thinks she's found the one. Mimi Gordon is not attracted to drug dealers, until Tony comes along. He provides her with a lavish lifestyle, and once she's had a taste, Mimi is hooked. Giselle and Mimi cross paths in the most unusual way. Eventually, both women will be forced to make life-changing decisions when they find out their men aren't who they thought they were.

When Sheriff Mapes is summoned to a sugarcane plantation to find a dead Cajun farmer, he knows who committed the crime. Mapes finds himself powerless, however, when nearly 20 elderly black men confess to the murder. Can justice be served, or will the dead man's brutish father pass judgment his way?

Only the world's most beautiful models make the roster of Picture Perfect Modeling agency, and they only do shoots for the most elite photographers and magazines. They are fashionista royalty - and the owners, Bentley L. Dean and his beautiful partner Alexandra, know it. But even Picture Perfect isn't immune from hard times; so when Sterling Sneed, a rich, celebrity party planner promises to pay a ridiculously high fee for some models, Bentley finds he can't refuse.

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.

Every territory has a king, and Metro Atlanta is no exception. They have two. Gang Lords Blanket and Guerilla have been ruling the game with iron fists. Long ago they decided that neither would cross into the other's territory, and all would be well. Things change when Guerilla breaks the rules. Blanket retaliates swiftly, causing a turf war like never before. The two madmen leave bloodshed, murder, and mayhem in their wake. Caught in the middle of this battle, from different sides of the track, are London and Saint.

George Washington Carver wasn't just an inventor. He was also a botanist, a farmer, and a professor. Young listeners will discover how this teacher not only improved the way people farmed, but introduced the world to more than 300 uses for the peanut.

He's hard, cold, and stubborn as a bull. He has no right to want to be with her. She's everything he's not. Warm, patient, and attentive. Yet, the two of them find themselves badly wanting each other. Neither of them has ever had the guts to tell each other how they truly feel. Will they get it together, or will she find comfort in the arms of someone else who's brave enough to steal her heart?

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.”

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, 17-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is 21, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth.

J. Sutter is a bonafide junketeer - a freelance writer, travelling from city to city, hungry for free meals and the discarded sales receipts of others to claim on his expense account. Travelling into the backwoods of West Virginia to write a piece on the unveiling of the new John Henry postage stamp and the ensuing John Henry Days festival, J. continues his nearly record-setting, three-month junket binge.

The Preacher's Son captivates with all the intensity expected of a Weber novel. Bishop T.K. Wilson is a pillar of the community, pastor of the largest African-American church in Queens, NY, and has always tended to he needy. Running for borough president, he faces one shocking revelation after another that could not only derail his campaign, but also force him to reevaluate his family values.

You just can't plan for this kind of thing. Diane Tate certainly hasn't. She never expected to slowly lose her talented husband to the debilitating effects of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. As a respected family court judge, she's spent her life making tough calls, but when her 68-year-old husband's health worsens and Diane is forced to move him into an assisted living facility, it seems her world is spinning out of control. As Gregory's memory wavers and fades, Diane and her children must reexamine their connection to the man he once was - and learn to love the man he has become.

Take a trip into theheart of passion as seductive samba rhythms pulse in the warm evening breezes. Escape and savor these three scintillating stories set against the beautifulbackdrop of Brazil.... Two weeks in Rio - surely that's enough time for marketing VP Sydni Lawson to forge a lucrative merger. But instead of sweet-talking real estate mogul Gabriel St. James, she's being swept away by their sizzling and unexpected attraction.

A weekend spent antiquing is shadowed by the colonial atrocities that occurred on that land. A walk at dusk is interrupted by casual racism. A loving marriage is riven by mysterious tensions. And a remarkable cascade of voices speaks out from a pulsing metropolis. We’re invited to experience these events and others through the eyes and ears of Tunde, a West African man working as a teacher of photography on a renowned New England campus.

In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prizewinning poet and author Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout Inciting Joy, he explores how we can practice recognizing that connection, and also, crucially, how we can expand it. Taking a clear-eyed look at injustice, political polarization, and the destruction of the natural world, Gay shows us how we might resist, how the study of joy might lead us to a wild, unpredictable, transgressive, and unboundaried solidarity. In fact, it just might help us survive.

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter. The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric and the essay in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America.

Tiphani Fuller is on the run for her life. This former district attorney, wife of a Baltimore detective, and mother of two has burnt bridges and left dead bodies across the country. Now she has nowhere to turn but to the home she ran from in her youth. As a child, Tiphani did everything to put the bullet-infested and crime-laden streets of Flint in her rearview mirror. Now she finds herself back in the community with people she swore she would never deal with again.

Life has never been easy for Ethic. Since he was a young boy he has battled loss after loss while struggling to navigate through a treacherous world. When he met Alani Lenika Hill, he knew that he had met the woman who would love him back to life. They have weathered a storm together, and their love is so fated that neither wants to let it go, but it seems their bubble of happiness is an illusion, because life around them is falling apart.

Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself; his wife, Neni; and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark demands punctuality, discretion, and loyalty - and Jende is eager to please. Clark's wife, Cindy, even offers Neni temporary work at the Edwardses' summer home in the Hamptons.

Uzoamaka’s miracle baby, Obiefuna, arrives after a series of miscarriages. As a young boy, he brings luck to his family and joy to those in his orbit, from the teachers at his school to the ladies getting their hair braided at Uzoamaka’s salon. But by adolescence, Obiefuna has grown unsure of himself. After his father brings home an apprentice from a nearby village, the lightness Obiefuna feels is quickly dashed when the two are caught sharing a moment of intimacy.