American Literature

Welcome to The Manors of Harrington Point; enter at your own risk. These mansions are home to the elite, the famous, the successful, and the eccentric. From the millionaire mega-pastor and his wife to the former child star turned porn star, this neighborhood is filled with old money, new money, and everything and everyone in between. The tale of what goes on behind these gates is as entertaining and unforgettable as the neighbors themselves.

When a Western star is gunned down at a rodeo, Ellery Queen saddles up to solve the mystery.

Buck Horne has roped thousands of cattle, slugged his way out of dozens of saloons, and shot plenty of men dead in the street - but always on the back lot. He's a celluloid cowboy, and his career is nearly kaput. The real box-office draw is his daughter, Kit, a brawling beauty who can out shoot any rascal the studio has to offer. Desperate for a comeback, Buck joins Wild Bill Grant's traveling rodeo for a show in New York, hoping to land one last movie contract.

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.

“Imparting some piece of yourself—any part—is arduous and warrants some kind of commendation,” writes guest editor Wesley Morris in his introduction. Both personal and personable, the essayists in this volume use their own vulnerability to guide listeners on excursions that unfold on uncomfortable edges. From contemplating the nuances of memory to exploring the complexities of family, romance, gender identity, illness, and death, Morris’s selection of essays presents a roundup of the thinkers who masterfully grapple with the issues of our time.

Eat Pray Love meets American Psycho in a seductive and sinister debut literary thriller. Food critic Dorothy Daniels indulges in her homicidal urges by murdering her lovers and devouring their organs in this intense, visceral, and lushly told tale of food, sex, power, and the pursuit of a very particular taste set between New York and Italy. Please Note: A Certain Hunger contains adult language and depictions of violence. Discretion is advised.

In this stirring audiobook, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Veteran authors Ashley and JaQuavis offer up their first solo efforts, and they're hotter than ever! Along with Ayana Ellis, they introduce listeners to some "real sistas" who know how to get what they want at all costs. For these women, if it's dangerous it just means the payout will be that much sweeter.

After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state. There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate

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.

For a thousand years, Doro has cultivated a small African village, carefully breeding its people in search of seemingly unattainable perfection. He survives through the centuries by stealing the bodies of others, a technique he has so thoroughly mastered that nothing on Earth can kill him. But when a gang of New World slavers destroys his village, ruining his grand experiment, Doro is forced to go west and begin anew. He meets Anyanwu, a centuries-old woman whose means of immortality are as kind as his are cruel. Now they begin a struggle that will last centuries.

A domineering force in Miami’s volatile criminal underworld, Brad Black is respected. Feared. His deadly accurate trigger finger and indestructible persona has earned him his intimidating reputation and, up until six months ago, hookers, drugs, and protecting the Black empire was the sum of his life’s purpose. Until he saved her.

I knew he had the power to make me feel, but he also had the power to break me. To pull my heart outside of my chest and stomp on it. I knew falling for a man like Capone came with more than I was ready for. He wasn't feared for no reason. Timmy never meant Jaiden any good, and I knew it from the first time I met him. I've never wanted someone dead as much as I wanted him dead. Timmy needed to go, and I didn't care how he went as long as he wasn't breathing. Capone put it on his life that he would always protect me and mine.

Tormented as a child for being dark-skinned and the son of a womanizer, Ken Ferguson longed for that feeling of being loved. He promised himself that he wouldn't be a manipulating, deceitful man like his father, but after he is cheated on and dumped by the girl he thought he would one day marry, he begins his transformation. Fueled by anger and tired of being the "nice guy", Ken drowns himself in one-night stands, threesomes, and affairs with married women. He meets his match with Ashley. But Ashley turns out to do even more damage, wounding him deeply. Ken spirals out of control.

Ever since he was a child, the only thing Cyril Anderson wanted was to be down with his brother Cane's crew. Cane Anderson, leader of the notorious Bankroll Crips, was invincible - or so Cyril thought. On the night of Cyril's initiation, things take a terrible turn and leave Cane lying dead in a pool of his own blood. Now the leader of a blood-thirsty gang, there is only one thing that Cyril wants to do: seek revenge.

Eighty centuries ago, in the frozen land that is now Alaska, a clubfooted male child had been left to die, when a woman named K’os rescued him. Twenty years later and no longer a child, Chakliux occupies the revered role as his tribe’s storyteller. In the neighboring village of the Near River people, where Chakliux will attempt to make peace by wedding the shaman’s daughter, a double murder occurs that sends him on a harsh, enthralling journey in search of the truth about the tragic losses his people have suffered, and into the arms of a woman he was never meant to love.

In Choosing Sides, Malek became affiliated with the North Side's biggest kingpin, and Halleigh was manipulated into the streets by his South Side adversary. North versus South, love versus loyalty, and lies versus truth. Now the saga continues in Working Girls, as we are introduced to the Manolo Mamis, the baddest chicks in the game. They're playin' for keeps, and their services come with a price - an expensive one.

One man finds himself torn between two cultures in this sweeping tale of frontier life in post–Civil War era Texas. In the years following the American War Between the States, the once vacated military presence in west Texas is on the rise to protect the waves of settlers moving into the region. Living peaceably with the Mescalero Apache, half-breed former military scout Holton Lang promotes the tentative harmony between the US cavalry and the Native American population.

I forget things too. It makes me sad. Or it makes me the saddest. The sadness is not really about George W. or our American optimism; the sadness lives in the recognition that a life can not matter. The award-winning poet Claudia Rankine, well known for her experimental multigenre writing, fuses the lyric and the essay in this politically and morally fierce examination of solitude in the rapacious and media-driven assault on selfhood that is contemporary America.

In a time before time at the top of the world, in a harsh and unforgiving age of ice, courage will sustain three remarkable souls through trials as bitter as the chill winds of the eternal winter. Claimed by a brutal, despised enemy, Kiin must sacrifice her love for the sake of her tribe and the safety of her children. Left widowed and helpless among the Whale Hunters, Kukutux now faces the impossible challenge of surviving alone. While Samiq, wounded and a hunter no more, must take up the mantle of leadership and guide a devastated people abandoned by their gods.

In 1809, at the age of 18, Henriette Faber enrolled herself in medical school in Paris - and since medicine was a profession prohibited to women, she changed her name to Henri in order to matriculate. She would spend the next 15 years practicing medicine and living as a man. Drafted to serve as a surgeon in Napoleon's army, Faber endured the horrors of the 1812 retreat across Russia. She later embarked to the Caribbean and set up a medical practice in a remote Cuban village, where she married Juana de León, an impoverished local.