African American Mystery Thriller Suspense

A prequel to Ashley and JaQuavis' New York Times best-selling Cartel series, this story follows the rise of notorious gangster Carter Diamond, taking listeners through his days on the mean streets of Michigan to his becoming the biggest drug lord Miami has ever seen. Before the cartel was ever created, he stood alone.

Gabriel Reid has led a life of good luck, and holds an important office in a prominent Atlanta construction company. But good fortune doesn't always last. Isaiah Battle arrives from the slums of Chicago, where he grew up in poverty, surviving by his wits and a hidden inner power. Isaiah is Gabriel's half-brother, and now he wants to claim the life he believes is rightfully his. The stage is set for an epic battle between brothers: a battle that will leave only one man standing.

Vegas Duncan's release from prison is right on time for his older brother Junior's engagement to the voluptuous Sonya Brown. Unfortunately Junior's attempt at happiness comes to a screeching halt when Sonya's husband, the mysterious Brother X, and his army of Muslim hit men declare war on the Duncan clan. Duncan family patriarch LC Duncan has gone up against many foes in his time.

Persia Chandler has managed to get her life back on track. Things are calm at home, she's preparing to leave for college, and she is even feeling confident enough to start dating again. More importantly, she's drug free and plans to stay that way - until Chucky slithers back into her life. He's determined to make Persia his again, and he isn't willing to take no for an answer. When trying to woo her doesn't work, Chucky plays hardball and gives Persia an ultimatum: go along with his latest twisted plot, or have her junkie past exposed to the new man in her life, Philadelphia Eagles rookie quarterback, Vaughn Tate.

New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber and award-winning novelist Eric Pete team up to deliver the first in a much-anticipated new trilogy. The Family Business features two times the heat, two times the fun, and two times the drama as the members of an unforgettable family (not to mention their lovers and hangers-on) find their way in and out of trouble. As their many fans will attest, Weber and Pete share a talent for penning juicy fiction that their audience can’t get enough of.

It’s 1986, the heart of the Cold War, and Marie Mitchell is an intelligence officer with the FBI. She’s brilliant, but she’s also a young Black woman working in an old boys’ club. Her career has stalled out, she’s overlooked for every high-profile squad, and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. So when she’s given the opportunity to join a shadowy task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes.

Three years after narrowly escaping a one way trip to the gas chamber, the fugitive known only as Animal finds himself drawn back to the scene of the crime: Harlem. Throughout his entire time in exile, the only thing that kept Animal going was the thought that he would one day be reunited with his soul mate, Gucci - but one bullet changed everything. When his enemies tried to murder Gucci, they crossed the line, so he vowed to cross them all.

Trick Baby tells the story of White Folks, a blue-eyed, light-haired con artist whose pale skin allows him to pass in the streets as a white man. Folks is tormented early in life, rejected by other children and branded a "trick baby," a child conceived between a hooker and her trick. Refusing to abandon his life in the ghetto and a chance at revenge, Folks is taken under the wing of an older mentor, Blue. What happens next is unbelievable.

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

Blanche White is working as a temporary cook and housekeeper for a right-wing Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate, Alistair Brindle, when someone tries to blackmail him. It's an ugly mess that Brindle's political team is eager to sweep under the carpet and that Blanche can't resist cleaning up herself...especially after a young black man is killed who knew too much about Brindle's dirty laundry. Her investigation raises dark secrets involving sex, environmental contamination, and political corruption, difficult stains that someone is trying to remove with murder.

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Ray Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably priced furniture, making a decent life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger all the time.

Two children from Sierra Leone, Liberty and A’shai, are brought together by chance, only to be forced apart by the most inevitable and tragic fate. Ashley & JaQuavis bring us this classic love story set against modern life’s most horrifying realities.

Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block - her neighbor, Theo. But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear.

Animal, the gentle and kind-hearted family man, is still infamous for turning at any moment into a cold-blooded killer. Animal is the product of ruthless abuse and the unforgiving streets - he is the product of the world we all live in. Is there anything that could push you to the breaking point of murder? Are you absolutely sure there isn't? After all, there's an Animal in all of us.

Ashley Antoinette, of the Ashley & JaQuavis writing duo, steps out on her own once again with the next installment of her scandalously sexy Prada Plan series! When you've been labeled crazy all of your life, it's easy to commit a murder, and now street fiction's most infamous bad girl, Leah Richards, holds the fate of an entire family in her hands. After coming insecond place to YaYa in the race to win Indie's affection, Leah decides that enough is enough and kidnaps the loving couple's baby girl.

Momma drama takes over the Duncan clan, as there is still uncertainty about who has fathered the Duncan sisters' new babies. Meanwhile, Orlando Duncan, the family's new CEO and a man with his own baby momma problems, has just developed a new product that may make the millionaire Duncans into billionaires. Orlando only has one obstacle in front of him, and it's not law enforcement or one of his family's many rivals. It's his mother, because she's making the family take sides. Can a civil war within the Duncan family be averted before it tears them apart?

LC Duncan, patriarch and leader of the Duncan clan is alive and well after being shot by a mysterious gunman. His near death experience has caused him and his wife Chippy to reflect on both the past and present, and together they decide that it's time to return to Waycross, Georgia for a long overdue family reunion. But wherever the Duncans go, trouble and drama are never too far behind, and this time it comes in the form of longtime Duncan enemy Vinnie Dash, and Ruby, the mother of Orlando Duncan's baby who disappeared before the child was born.

After a reunion with an old friend goes wrong in a Long Island nightclub, Kasheef Williams is forced to protect himself by any means necessary. The only problem is that prying eyes see everything. Those eyes belong to Alija Bell. She runs, but Kasheef sees her face, and he tells her that it's best for her to get temporary amnesia. Afraid for her life and the safety of her daughter, she keeps her mouth shut, but when a tape of the murder surfaces, the only face that is visible is Alija's. Now the police are looking for their eyewitness.

Los Angeles, 1948: Easy Rawlins is a black war veteran just fired from his job at a defense plant. Easy is drinking in a friend's bar, wondering how he'll meet his mortgage, when a white man in a linen suit walks in, offering good money if Easy will simply locate Miss Daphne Money, a blonde beauty known to frequent black jazz clubs.

While Dena Jones definitely has what it takes to succeed, she wants out. She's determined to make it out of "Crooklyn" by any means necessary and doesn't have a problem manipulating men to get what she wants.