American Literature

Little Black Girl Lost Book 4: Captive is the latest episode from the fertile imagination of Keith Lee Johnson's original epic tale. Captive introduces drop-dead gorgeous Lauren Renee Bouvier, a youthful teenager, the African Root of Johnnie and Marguerite Wise. Its survival of the fittest on the mean streets of 18th Century New Orleans. With her life and virtue constantly in danger, how does she survive the ruthless Monarch of Bouvier Hill?

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary. Midcentury writers tended to set their works in their own moment, but for the last several decades critical acclaim and attention have fixated on historical fiction. This shift is particularly dramatic for writers of color.

For Reece and Qwess, being rap superstars was the dream, but in real life, nothing moved without the money. So they formed the Crescent Crew, an outfit of young, ruthless hustlers who locked the Southern drug trade in a stranglehold. They're at the height of their power when Qwess is offered a record deal from a major label. He accepts and makes plans for his whole crew to go legit, but Reece enjoys his position as king of the streets and has no desire to relinquish his crown.

Thanks to James Johnson's ground-breaking technology, the drug game and oil exports are now on life support. His prophecy has been fulfilled. However, the Saudi Arabian Oil King, Shalik Khalid, has unleashed a vicious death squad on American soil. The message is clear, and now the surviving members of the Johnson clan must regroup, while the architect of their movement lies in critical condition. The reigns have been passed down and now there exists one logical decision for the heirs to the throne. "Bring to them what they brought to us!"

When the body of an anonymous young Hispanic woman dressed as Queen Marie Antoinette is dredged from the Detroit River, the Detroit Police Department wants the case closed out fast. Wayne County coroner Dr. Bobby Falconi gives the woman’s photo to his old pal August Snow, insisting August show it around his native Mexicantown. August’s good friend Elena recognizes the woman immediately. Her story is one the authorities don’t want getting around - and she’s not the only young woman to have disappeared during an ICE raid only to turn up dead a few weeks later.

James Baldwin's groundbreaking novel with a new introduction, Giovanni's Room is set in the Paris of the 1950s, where a young American expatriate finds himself caught between his repressed desires and conventional morality. David has just proposed marriage to his American girlfriend, but while she is away on a trip he becomes involved in a doomed affair with a bartender named Giovanni.

Dontay Walker had it rough growing up in the projects with a drug-addicted mother who forced him to become a man at the young age of 15. His father was a rolling stone, having multiple children with many women. Dontay always fought for his father's attention - until taking his spot became more important than gaining his love. Now, at the age of 30, Don is the leader of one of the most successful and most feared drug organizations in the city of Philadelphia.

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.

It's been years since their parents were murdered. Twin sisters Shia and Leigh are trying to readjust to life while caring for their baby sister, Remi. With the exception of Leigh's angry, dramatic mood swings every now and then, everything seems to be going great. That is until Demetri, a mysterious stranger, enters their midst and falls right in the path of the newly single Shia. After dating Trent for so long, she is looking for a man to treat her like a queen, and Demetri is heaven sent...until inexplicable things begin to happen.

In this, the first volume of renowned author and historian Peter G. Tsouras’s alternative history trilogy, Great Britain’s support for the Confederacy takes it to the brink of war with the Union. The escape of a British-built Confederate ironclad finally ignites the heap of combustible animosities and national interests. When the US Navy seizes it in British waters, the ensuing battle spirals into all-out war. Napoleon III eagerly joins the British and declares war on the United States.

Meet the Banks sisters - Simone, Bunny, Tallhya, and Ginger. The four beauties are living under the same roof by force, but they can't stand each other. Their only common denominator is their loving grandmother, Me-Ma. When she's not at work trying to make ends meet, she's home with her girls, trying to keep them from killing each other.

Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola.

If society collapsed, could you survive? When Morgan Carter's car breaks down 250 miles from his home, he figures his weekend plans are ruined. But things are about to get much, much worse: the country's power grid has collapsed. There is no electricity, no running water, no Internet, and no way to know when normalcy will be restored - if it ever will be.

A retired employee of the Illinois Department of Motor Vehicles, Mrs. Washington runs the mean, cold streets of Chi-town messing with all types of young thugs with multiple felonies. A widow for some time now, Vernita is determined to make up for her stale marriage. However, when a major health scare sets her back, she finds herself losing everything. Reality sets in that her time on Earth is about to come to a close. Now faced with a death sentence, Vernita seeks to live out her remaining days being the biggest old super freak.

This story is told in the words of a tragic figure in American history - a hook-nosed, hollow-cheeked old Sauk warrior who lived under four flags while the Mississippi Valley was being wrested from his people. The author is Black Hawk himself - once pursued by an army whose members included Captain Abraham Lincoln and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis. Perhaps no Indian ever saw so much of American expansion or fought harder to prevent that expansion from driving his people to exile and death.

Rage. It’s toxic. It poisons you. Corrupts you. Smothers your heart until it no longer beats. You can’t run from it. There’s no escape. Once it seizes control, it won’t stop until revenge bleeds the tears of justice. The day he took her, he destroyed my humanity, turning me into a bloodthirsty savage. Now, I’m driven by my hunger to see the snake bleed. To hear his screams and relish his cries.

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.

The British-born Punjabi Shergill sisters Rajni, Jezmeen, and Shirnia were never close and barely got along growing up and now have grown even further apart as adults. Rajni, a school principal, is a stickler for order. Jezmeen, a 30-year-old struggling actress, fears her big break may never come. Shirina, the peacemaking "good" sister, married into wealth and enjoys a picture-perfect life. On her deathbed, their mother voices one last wish: that her daughters will make a pilgrimage together to the Golden Temple in Amritsar to carry out her final rites.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.