Contemporary African American Fiction

August Drake, the family’s black sheep, is the last person his father wants as a CEO of the company he’s built with his bare hands. However, when his older brother, the golden child, falls ill, he’s left with no other choice. In order to maintain his position, the most eligible bachelor must complete two tasks: marry and produce a few heirs to the throne.

Down on her luck and broke, Jennifer Dudley long ago traded dancing in the chorus line for swinging from a stripper pole to make ends meet. She’s hoping an offer to come back home and teach dance at her old performance academy will be the opportunity she needs to fix her life. When she moves in with—and falls for—a fine software developer with brains and a boyish smile, she decides she might be well on her way to a second chance at success—and love. But her X-rated past may come back to haunt her, compromising her newfound happiness and hurting the ones she loves the most.

Monique Starr’s music career is at an all-time low: she’s in danger of losing her label contract and an embarrassing event has her front and center in all the gossip blogs—for all the wrong reasons! She decides to head back to D.C. and the MacLaine Academy of the Performing Arts to revamp her image, give her career a badly needed boost, and get her groove back. But she comes home to find her old Academy ailing financially, her mentor battling cancer, and her ex—whom she left behind to seek fame and fortune—very angry and unwilling to give her a second chance.

Sheryl and Grayson have been best friends a long time, and they grow stronger and stronger. Katrina and William are married, but things take a different path. Angela has a difficult time telling something to her son Grayson.

After being shot and nearly killed, Celess imagined she’d put her habit of courting danger behind her. But a chance meeting with fellow daredevil Sienna quickly changes Celess’s plans. She jumps back into the fire of risky enterprise, putting her life on the line in pursuit of big bucks and high-style living, but Celess can’t help but wonder how much longer she can elude the dire consequences. Picking up where Never Enough left off, Celess is thrust back into the sex trade, guided by her friend Sienna.

Rachel Merrell goes into shock when her ex-boyfriend, Jeffery Williams, begins dating her half sister Marlene Draper. At first, Rachel swears Jeff is feigning interest in Marlene just to get back at her for breaking up with him. Rachel pretends Jeff’s interest in Marlene doesn't bother her, but when they unexpectedly hit it off and love begins to blossom, Rachel can't bear to watch the happy couple. Suddenly, Rachel wants Jeff back and she is determined to get him no matter what the cost - including Marlene's happiness.

In every sense of the word, Santiago Acevedo is a boss. Men respect and fear him, and women worship and desire him. But not all is well within the Acevedo family. Santiago learns of his wife Melanie's affair from his second in command, Basim. Murder then becomes his motive, and every move he makes thereafter proves detrimental to his precious daughter, Eva; his troubled son, Tariq; and his moneymaking empire.

G-money is back, but this time he's on a mission. Not only is he running things all by himself now, but he still has unfinished business that needs to be settled, with Detective Nelson, Rell, and Big Mel. When an unstoppable force meets an immovable object the outcome isn't pretty. Also find out what happens to Ali, Nancy, and the rest of the gang.

Abide with Me moves between the worlds of New York City, where Nicole has recently settled in order to pursue her dream of returning to the Broadway stage, and Seattle, where a late-night phone call from a US senator is about to change Raymond's life dramatically. Relationships and ambitions are tested as author E. Lynn Harris deftly guides us toward this entertaining novel's conclusion.

Ari and Kelly are two girls who don't know what hit them after they meet the love of their lives one night after graduation, Ari falls head over heels for Amir, a big time dope boy who has it all except love, the moment he saw Ari he knew he had to have her, but with temptation comes other problems in Amir's life. Amir's ex-girlfriend Chavaughn won't allow him to just leave her and be great with someone else, especially after everything she's done for him in the past to bring his business up.

After Rose college boyfriend ends their two-year relationship, she returns to the only place she knows where she could find solace as she tries to mend her broken heart. After taking a break from college and not wanting to return home, she finds herself on her family ranch with Aunt Annie, Uncle Sledge, and her cousin Claude. There she learns the true meaning of love and family as she falls in love again.

It can be really hard to find the right person to settle down with. People have sex with each other all the time, yet there is always that special someone who makes the difference makes you want to make the decision to settle down for good. The author shows how that can happen by suing two different sets of characters in two different stories. The yin and the yang, perfectly joined. Total opposites coexisting in harmony and love....

Dareese "Dollar Bill" Blake is one of those bad guys that women love to hate. In an effort to escape the hood life and dabble in the good life, Dollar quickly grows from a small pup to a big dawg. After carefully critiquing the game, he chooses a concrete type of hustle that he's sure will offer him an early retirement from the workforce. If you ask his home girl, Thomasena, she'd say it's been nothing but love for Dollar since day one. In Dollar's eyes, however, Thomasena is just one of the boys.

From the time Brooke Green was seven years old, she has lived with the pain of losing her mother. Her father has done the best job he could in raising her, but a piece of her always felt empty. On the day of her father's funeral, her grandmother breaks the shocking news: Her mother, Sarah, is very much alive. She abandoned her family because she claimed she wasn't fit for motherhood. After doing some research, Brooke discovers her mother is living in Atlanta, enjoying a great career...and a brand-new family.

The third in a series starring the heartbreaking Strong brothers, Give Me Fever takes the game to another level. A quiet accountant, Kaeden Strong is blown away when he meets Jade Prince—a tomboy nature guide with the body of a goddess. Despite his allergies, Kaeden agrees to go on a camping trip, which Jade is hired to lead. And while stranded one night, the two share a rowdy tumble in a sleeping bag.

Fired from her prestigious job, journalist Allison Wakefield is now working for a tabloid newspaper, and she's desperate to find a way to get her career back on track. Her new assignment, an explosive story involving mysterious bestselling author Jacob Covington, could be the answer. When Allison first encounters the author while visiting her aunt's home on Idlewild Lake in Michigan, she realizes that Jacob is one subject she wouldn't mind getting to know more intimately.

The coauthor of Desperate Hoodwives, Meesha Mink set out on her own with the street-fiction hit Real Wifeys: On the Grind. The series’ second installment, Get Money, finds Harriet “Luscious” Jordan in serious need of scratch after her hubby Make$ is put behind bars. A natural-born hustler, Luscious jumps into the party-promotion biz and begins pulling in big-time cash. But she can’t let go of a grudge against her old rival Goldie, and it may be her undoing.

Jacqueline E. Luckett’s debut novel was heaped with critical acclaim and selected as a “recommended read” by the Essence Book Club. Set in the City of Light, her second novel, Passing Love, is a tender tale of love and discovery. After Nicole-Marie Handy leaves a marriage proposal behind to travel to Paris, she discovers that her father had a secret affair with a woman there many years before.

Haunted by sensual memories, Joseph can't accept their short-lived liaison as a onetime fling. And when a chance encounter reunites him with the Florida beauty, the Cole heir vows she won't get away a second time. Even after discovering Crystal's secret, Joseph knows nothing can dim his desire. He'll prove it with sweet words of love that could make this a Christmas to remember. If she'll just say yes.

Tamina's childhood revolved around one person, her best friend, Markus. Ever since he moved across the street, she had been fascinated by him. They played ball together, went to school together, and hung out at the corner store all the time. Everyone at school would say they were together, but Markus never said anything. Tamina wanted to be with him, even if it was against her mother's wishes. Markus' father was a big time gangsta, but Tamina was sure Markus was nothing like him, until she came home from school one day and saw him getting put in the back of a police car.