African Urban

He set out to be the good son, but the streets had a different plan. Born to one of New York City's most notorious crime families, Shai Clark has always managed to be a good kid. A college hoops star, Shai shunned the world that his father had created and focused on his dreams of going pro. Tommy, Shai's trigger-happy older brother, is next in line for the throne and rules under his father through brute force. But Poppa has bigger plans for Shai.

Following a chilling winter of revelations and newfound relationships, sunshine breaks through, and Koya Priest finds herself basking in its rays. Before truly enjoying them, dark clouds warn her of a brewing storm. Coming to terms with what she didn't want to accept, the fearless beauty despises that she may be more like her father, Duke, than she realized. Having been referred to as intimidating and downright ruthless, Parish Sneaux doesn't let the opinion of others worry him. Parish makes no exceptions regarding his respect, family, and the gang. That's until he gets a rude awakening.

Robyn and Aries are "The Murder Mamas", contract killers from Los Angeles who take no prisoners. It doesn't take them long to link up with Hollywood's biggest drug kingpin, who hires them to take out a snitch and a judge. But the plans backfire, and they complete only half the job. Robyn is caught and put on death row, and Aries goes on the run. She winds up in the islands, where she takes up a new life as a mother and wife and tries to forget who she once was.

A man’s quest to escape his past life is an uphill battle. After seeking a Cuban voodoo doctor to receive a spiritual advantage on his upcoming court case, Saint opens up Pandora’s box. The Santeria voodoo seemed to work, but at what cost? His dangerous visit to Cuba came with much more than he anticipated. He entered an underground secret society of high stakes gambling. He also gets tangled in a web of heinous crimes, money games, and backstabbing.

Angela grew up in an all-black upper-class neighborhood in Virginia Beach. Being raised by conservative parents, street life was almost nonexistent. Her college years at Hampton University would truly educate her; not only in school, but also in life. She never imagined the attention her body and beauty would bring her. Angela finds herself torn between Mac, a successful real estate broker, and Damien, a young Jamaican hustler from Brooklyn. Both show Angela love in their own way, and her choice will be her destiny.

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.

Jake Billings is usually cool under pressure, but when two stick-up kids rob his record store, Jake opens fire on them, landing him in prison. Five days in, he receives an anonymous letter telling him that his days are numbered. But before he can find out who's behind the threats, Jake is stabbed and ends up in a coma. When he wakes in a hospital bed two years later, things have changed: His prison sentence has been commuted, his girlfriend is fiercely independent, and his side piece has gotten out of the street life altogether. But one thing remains: Jake's enemy still wants him dead and is powerful enough to track him down....

Forced to flee Detroit, ruthless and rotten Kenya and her identical twin, London, have dodged the bullets of a vicious hired hitman and endured the pain of a brutal rape. Now, due to mistaken identity, the girls must deal with Storm's strange disappearance and his partner's heinous murder before it's too late and they're next. Once again the sisters' lives are turned upside down. This time, the consequences could land them both in jail - or dead and unclaimed in the county morgue.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

Big, bold, and beautiful are three adjectives that describe Erika to a tee. Named after her mother’s favorite soap opera vixen, Erika Kane is self-assured, headstrong, and opinionated. But she’s also unlucky in love. Whenever Erika thinks she’s found everlasting love, it always ends up being short-lived - literally. She has three dead husbands to prove the point, and it’s earned her the title “The Black Widow”. But just when Erika is about to give up on true love, she learns that, just like in the soaps, love sometimes shows up when you least expect it.

Lamont "Hood" Mason is a fearless 19-year-old gangsta who was born and raised in the projects of Brooklyn, New York. He was an abandoned child who roamed the city streets and fought hard for survival. The only thing constant in his young life was the safety of a Brownsville barbershop owned by a father figure called Fat Daddy. The barbershop is where Hood comes of age, but cutting hair isn't the only thing Fat Daddy has going on.

Aphrodite Greer was born and raised in the bricks—projects in Jagoda Bay. She met the love of her life, Baguette, on that very soil. The ghetto goddess had her entire life mapped out for her, and just like most life plans, things took a turn for the worse. Infidelity, losing her baby girl Athena, and constant fights with her lover's mistress turned her from a rigid, dope boy's queen to a soft, put-up businesswoman. With five years between their failed relationship, Baguette and Aphrodite remain best friends, and since Baguette has moved on, his current girlfriend has also joined their circle.

A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces. In this book, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level.

Meet Ceazia, a very attractive, very good girl who has just left the safety of her parents' home and entered into the world of bad boys and fast money. Ceazia thinks the world belongs to her when she meets Vegas, one of the Tidewater, Virginia, area's most notorious drug dealers. Even though a relationship with Vegas goes against everything her parents taught her, she still can't resist his bad boy persona.

Life can be cruel. Sometimes it's hard to play with the cards you've been dealt. Growing up in the ghetto can be hell; good or bad, everybody has a story. Toni is young and sexy, but her life story is limited with her mother's drug addiction and her older brother, Sheek, doing life in prison. She struggles day by day, stripping and sometimes doing more in underground clubs to support herself and her family. Toni eventually befriends a rich pretty boy from Long Island, whose life was sheltered from poverty since the day he was born.

New York Times best-selling authors Ashley and JaQuavis have returned with the much-anticipated final installment in the epic Murderville series. Taking up where the previous book left off, we're thrown back into the international street chronicle. Lives and money are on the line, and tough choices will have to be made between love and loyalty. In the final installment of this breath-taking trilogy, the characters will have to learn that, in this game of power, sometimes you have to give up the glory to survive.

Raised in complete poverty, 14-year-old Banks Wales' world is rocked when his mother is murdered. If not for his best friend Mason, the son of a kingpin, Banks would be alone. One rich, the other poor, the two do their best to stay alive and navigate the murderous streets of Baltimore. There's one problem. Banks' father sees the young king's affluent lifestyle as a reminder that he is lacking as a father and a man. So he makes a vicious move. One that puts his and Banks' life in extreme danger.

Out of all the divas at New Day Temple of Faith, Unique has to be the most colorful one - she and her mother, Lorain, that is. Never one to hold her tongue in the name of keepin' it real, it's no surprise that Unique has not been saved all her life. It's safe to say that Lorain wasn't born on the church pew either. Let the church folk tell it, the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree when it comes to Unique.

Knowledge Toussaint was exposed to a fast life of grittiness. Being forced to maneuver through a life based on survival at the tender age of ten, he depended on a mother whose life was driven by addiction. All it took were two bullets to change Knowledge's life forever. When he was forced to leave his mother behind, he was taken in by one of the most prestigious hit men in Miami, Booney. As Booney leads Knowledge through an underworld of darkness, he also shines light by teaching him how to play the game of life called 'Chess.'

In the final installment, the brothers must deal with issues that have plagued their life and personal relationships for a while now. Their biggest issue though is dealing with their ruthless, irrational, and overbearing father Stony. Will the Quinton crime family fall to pieces, ripping apart the boys' personal relationships as well? Will their father get his way, using forceful physical harm? Or will the Quinton brothers be able to come out on top without their father no longer being with them but against them?