American Literature

A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy and friendship and parents' love. She knows boredom and listlessness and bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world and the raw, amoral power of the ice and sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol and violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her and the immense power that dwarfs all of us. When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this.

Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario, finding a home in a community founded by refugees from the slave-owning states of the American south—whose agents do not always stay on their side of the border. One night, a neighboring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned.

Comprising two distinct short novels - Monroe's Nightmare in Paradise and Bad Luck Shadow from critically acclaimed Victor McGlothin - Borrow Trouble is a hot double-feature that perfectly showcases each author's unique style.

Motherhood isn’t easy, especially when you’re a mother of a Black son. Ten years ago, Cheryl jumped at the chance to send her son, Javonte, to an exclusive boarding school in New England - far away from Atlanta and the violence of the city streets. It was the American dream, or was it? Now settled in Vermont, Javonte is married and well-employed, but Cheryl hardly ever sees him, and when she does, her own son seems like someone she only used to know.

Deep in the night, Matthew paces the house, unable to rest. Though his sixteen-year-old daughter, Holly, lies sleeping on the other side of the bedroom door, she is light years away from him. How can he bridge the gap between them when he can’t shake the emptiness he feels inside? Holly knows her father is drifting further from her; what she doesn’t understand is why. Could it be her fault that he seems intent on throwing everything away, including their relationship?

Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is the luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern Black woman in the 1930s, whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to 70 years.

Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a Pentecostal storefront church in Harlem.

Érase una vez una saga familiar de terratenientes mexicanos y un niño rodeado de abejas. Con estos elementos Sofía Segovia ha creado una historia de amor por la tierra y del poder de la complicidad entre los seres humanos. Una mañana cualquiera un hombre de avanzada edad toma un taxi en la ciudad de Monterrey rumbo a Linares, su ciudad natal. El viaje solo llevará unas horas, pero el viejo habla y no para, como si delante de él se desplegara todo su pasado.

First published in 1956, No-No Boy was virtually ignored by a public eager to put World War II and the Japanese internment behind them. No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys". Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle.

After suffering a horrifying, yet soul stirring death experience, worldwide top bitch Winter Santiaga, of The Coldest Winter Ever, is alive and facing a dilemma that every living person faces: how to respond to the Fear of God, awareness of heaven and hell, while pursuing and satisfying deep desires for sex, fun, love, money, revenge, and fame. In her new novel, Love After Midnight, Sister Souljah delivers a powerful hip-hop hood style, global romantic comedy.

On the Day of the Dead, in 1938, Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic and ruined man, is fatefully living out his last day, drowning himself in mescal while his former wife and half-brother look on, powerless to help him. The events of this one day unfold against a backdrop unforgettable for its evocation of a Mexico at once magical and diabolical.

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku: the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.

Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.

Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home - a brutal dictatorship that produces the world's fastest marathoners - to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy Western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita - who will be executed if he is deported to his homeland - goes underground.

Rosie Graham has a problem. A few, actually. She just quit her well-paid job to focus on her secret career as a romance writer. She hasn’t told her family and now has terrible writer’s block. Then, the ceiling of her New York apartment literally crumbles on her. Luckily she has her best friend Lina’s spare key while she’s out of town. But Rosie doesn’t know that Lina has already lent her apartment to her cousin Lucas, who Rosie has been stalking—for lack of a better word—on Instagram for the last few months.

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?

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore, and Chicago is its beating heart. Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the “wealthiest Negro in America”, whose affluence catapulted his family to the heights of Black society. After the unexpected death of her only brother, Nelly becomes the premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society influence and marriage.

In the business of high-end, no-limits desire, Desdemona Dean is the best there is. She fiercely protects the women who work for her and helps them attain the lives they deserve - especially when it comes to her beautiful, troubled new protege, Portia. But for Desi, having it all is no longer enough. She wants everything her shattered childhood denied her. And as she pursues an education and a normal life, she's falling hard for her handsome tutor - and can't resist schooling him in ways that are turning into more than just passion.

This audio program has all the ingredients of a high-flying adventure story. Unbeknownst to the combatants, the War of 1812 has ended. But Andrew Jackson, a brave, charismatic American general, sick with dysentery and commanding a beleaguered garrison, leads a desperate struggle to hold on to New Orleans and to thwart the army that defeated Napoleon.