American Literature

Mischievous and manipulative, 18-year-old Red is an expert at deception with a provocative femininity. She employs her dirty ways - even faking a pregnancy with her boyfriend - to win a closetful of Gucci bags, a deluxe condominium full of baby accessories, a new car, and a book deal. But when one of Red's scams backfires and she winds up truly pregnant by her inmate ex-boyfriend, Bacon, she finds herself in more trouble than she's ever known.

Her name is Renee Blackbear, but what most people call the 19-year-old Ojibwe woman is Cash. She lived all her life in Fargo, sister city to Minnesota’s Moorhead, just downriver from the Cities. She has one friend, the Sheriff Wheaton. He pulled her from her mother’s wrecked car when she was three. Since then, Cash navigated through foster homes and at 13 was working farms, driving trucks.

This fictional recreation of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862 is a stunning work of imaginative history, from Shelby Foote, beloved historian of the Civil War. Shiloh conveys not only the bloody choreography of Union and Confederate troops through the woods near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, but the inner movements of the combatants' hearts and minds.

Judith Russel is devastated by the death of her fiance and vows to never again trust her feelings toward a man. Gil Trapper is the wagon train scout and owner of several freight wagons. Freighting is going to give him the future he'd thought he lost. He has no interest in love after the woman he intended to marry broke his heart. Judith and Gil are forced to marry after they spend a night alone together saving a lost child. Their marriage of convenience doesn't change anything. Judith can't trust Gil, and Gil will never open his heart to Judith.

A man is murdered in Seattle's Pioneer Square. The killer is caught just blocks away, blood still on his hands. When it's discovered that both killer and victim belong to the same Native American tribe, the tribe asserts jurisdiction, and homicide DA Dave Brunelle has to prosecute the case in their tribal court. It's bad enough when the defense attorney claims the killing was justified under the ancient custom of "blood revenge". It gets worse when blood revenge turns into a blood feud.

As a 14-year-old, he was Malcolm Little, the president of his class and a top student. At 16, he was hustling tips at a Boston nightclub. In Harlem, he was known as Detroit Red, a slick street operator. At 19, he was back in Boston, leading a gang of burglars. At 20, he was in prison. It was in prison that Malcolm Little started the journey that would lead him to adopt the name Malcolm X, and there he developed his beliefs about what being Black means in America: beliefs that shook America then and still shake America today.

All he ever wanted to be was a good son. Shai Clark was an all-American basketball player with aspirations of one day making it to the NBA, but that all changed when his father was viciously murdered and he found himself thrust into the role of the new head of his family's criminal enterprise.

Jada left home at the age of sixteen, running from her own demons and the horrors of physical abuse inflicted by her mother’s boyfriend. She partied hard, and life seemed good when she was with Born, the neighborhood kingpin whose name was synonymous with money, power, and respect. But all his love couldn’t save her from a crack addiction. Jada goes from crack addict and prostitute to survivor and back again before she finds the strength to live for herself and come out on top.

At the celebration of her best friend's wedding, Claudia Stevens is trying to sort out her tumultuous emotions, regarding the groom's best man and brother, Jaden Alexander Rose. What started as a platonic relationship, has turned into a battle of wills whenever they find themselves together. Their heated exchanges have risen to the surface, and desire spills over on contact. However, Claudia fears she is not enough to be on the arm of a prestigious benefactor like Jaden. And Claudia is sure that's why he's friend-zoned her.

Small-business owner and financial advisor Samiyah Manhattan is mourning the death of her six-year marriage when she vows never to trust men again. Alone at a local bar, Samiyah attempts to put her situation in perspective when she is drawn inexorably to the presence of a nearby patron. Celebrity ex-boxer and heavyweight champion turned business mogul Jonas Alexander Rose never takes women too seriously. They only attach themselves to him because of his star-studded status. However, when he meets the beautiful Samiyah Manhattan, Jonas is overwhelmed by the heated attraction.

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

The Man of Property, the first novel in Galsworthy's epic social satire The Forsyte Saga, introduces us to Soames Forsyte, a solicitor and prominent man of his important family. Accustomed to getting whatever he wants, he sets his sights with absolute determination on the beautiful Irene in spite of her pennilessness and her indifference to him.

Having experienced a lifetime's amount of loss and love under the spotlight of her stepfather and stepbrother's rock and roll stardom, London Fields decides now is her time to shine. Leaving for college with a clear focus and big dreams around her musical theater major, she is ready to take on the world...under an assumed name. Protecting her identity will allow her the freedom to experience life and maybe love for the very first time. A horrible accident devastated life as Logan Links and his family knew it.

Every little girl dreams of a happy ending to her story - a home, children, and a man who loves her enough to share his life and last name. When Billy's longtime boyfriend, Marcus, finally pops the question, it's one of the happiest moments of her life. Billy calls on her childhood friends, Reese and Yoshi, to stand with her on her special day. Several years have passed since they'd last come together, and unresolved issues have driven a wedge between the women.

Carson Bradley is the CEO of Bradley Pharmaceutical Corporation, a powerful and influential multi-billion dollar drug empire. His wealth spans beyond anyone's imagination, but is useless to his lonely soul, which has been dormant since the death of his first love to cancer. Every day he strives for the sake of his research because he's determined to eradicate that vile disease forever. Lillian Ly is a young, humble medical student whose compassion for people is boundless.

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.

Three brothers tear their way through childhood—smashing tomatoes all over each other, building kites from trash, hiding out when their parents do battle, tiptoeing around the house as their mother sleeps off her graveyard shift. Paps and Ma are from Brooklyn—he’s Puerto Rican, she’s white—and their love is a serious, dangerous thing that makes and unmakes a family many times.

In this sequel to Something on the Side, two Rubenesque beauties kiss the Big Apple goodbye and launch a new chapter of the Big Girls Book Club in Richmond, Virginia. But this time, the size-14-and-over ladies’ club is welcoming a chunky (and very male) player into its ranks—and plus-size shenanigans are sure to follow.

Before he was considered a CIA superagent, before he was thought of as a terrorist's worst nightmare, and before he was both loathed and admired by the politicians on Capitol Hill, Mitch Rapp was a gifted college athlete without a care in the world...and then tragedy struck.

On the surface, Corinne Thomas has the world at her fingertips. Adventurous by nature, her daring persona allows her the freedom to take risks and live her life, at times, in complete anonymity. But there is something that lingers deep down that, if brought to light, could stir the masquerade Corinne's built for herself. For the past few weeks, exchanges with a certain someone wreaks havoc on her ability to maintain a solid pretense.