Urban African American

It is the end of days. A nuclear strike hits New York. Alfie, a young black male, survives but with no memory of what has happened. The only thing he can remember with any clarity is how to play his guitar and a few snatches of old blues and folk songs. Another survivor, Meg, has taken refuge in the hills of Vermont, and she, too, is the victim of near absolute amnesia. Her only hope is to survive these darkest of days.

One night at the club changes everything when Truth and I.E. meet the breathtakingly beautiful Tina, and her equally as beautiful godsister, Ka’mirah. It’s in that meeting that everything in their world begins to change in the blink of an eye.

Party Girl is an evocative story that grabs you until the very end and leaves you wanting more. N’Dea is a self-proclaimed party girl. Each weekend you can find her in the club with her girls, having the time of her life. Young & carefree, N’Dea is ignorant to the shady characters in the club who hide in plain sight. One night N’Dea becomes a target. Someone’s been watching her, hoping to catch her slipping. If N’Dea sticks to her usual party ways, she’ll live to talk about it.

Carl Weber brings the best of urban street lit authors together, all telling their own dramatic tales of life in the streets in known cities across the USA. The second installment continues with Treasure Hernandez telling the tale of the Dirty South.

Detective Houser wants nothing more than his retirement, but when a murder case involving the WMM firm lands on his desk, he can’t avoid it. All of law enforcement knows that WMM Advertising, also known as We Make Millionaires, is one of the biggest and hardest-to-penetrate fraudulent telemarketing firms in the state of Georgia. A tape recording of a man’s death may finally help Houser make a case against the firm. Calling in Alexis Greenspan, a.k.a. Nina Coles, the top sales associate in the company, Houser is determined to use her to find out the company’s secrets.

Life can be cruel. Sometimes it's hard to play with the cards you've been dealt. Growing up in the ghetto can be hell; good or bad, everybody has a story. Toni is young and sexy, but her life story is limited with her mother's drug addiction and her older brother, Sheek, doing life in prison. She struggles day by day, stripping and sometimes doing more in underground clubs to support herself and her family. Toni eventually befriends a rich pretty boy from Long Island, whose life was sheltered from poverty since the day he was born.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

The Romeo and Juliet of the streets are still struggling to find their way back to each other after fate has cruelly separated them. In order to move up in rank on the streets of Flint, Malek knows that he's going to have to deal with some jealous players, but when he's forced to go up against players on his own team, the rules change. Halleigh, on the other hand, learns that everything isn't always how it seems. Those who she thought had a foot on her neck, keeping her held down and imprisoned, are the same ones who might be able to help her escape.

Apparently, I had been naive the entire time that I was with King. Who knew that he had been keeping such a secret from me? Just my luck, as I hid from him to gather my thoughts and deal with the pain, yet another crushing blow to my happiness was revealed. I then realized that I could no longer live for King; it was time to live for Kennedy. Little did I know, Jada was suffering the same heartbreak that I was. Dolla had torn her heart into two. My girl was miserable, but she didn’t run as I did; she was trying her best to inflict the same pain on Dolla as he had on her.

Knowledge Toussaint was exposed to a fast life of grittiness. Being forced to maneuver through a life based on survival at the tender age of ten, he depended on a mother whose life was driven by addiction. All it took were two bullets to change Knowledge's life forever. When he was forced to leave his mother behind, he was taken in by one of the most prestigious hit men in Miami, Booney. As Booney leads Knowledge through an underworld of darkness, he also shines light by teaching him how to play the game of life called 'Chess.'

Robyn and Aries are "The Murder Mamas", contract killers from Los Angeles who take no prisoners. It doesn't take them long to link up with Hollywood's biggest drug kingpin, who hires them to take out a snitch and a judge. But the plans backfire, and they complete only half the job. Robyn is caught and put on death row, and Aries goes on the run. She winds up in the islands, where she takes up a new life as a mother and wife and tries to forget who she once was.

Kenny "Ken-Ken" Greene left his days as a hustler behind him when his wife was killed during a scam gone bad, leaving him with a baby daughter. Now he's a cab driver, doing what he can to put food on the table and give his daughter, Destiny, everything she needs. In spite of his past, or because of it, he's willing to do whatever it takes to keep Destiny off the streets. But when he is shot and paralyzed during a robbery while on the job, Destiny knows that she has to step up to the plate to take care of her father.

While Dena Jones definitely has what it takes to succeed, she wants out. She's determined to make it out of "Crooklyn" by any means necessary and doesn't have a problem manipulating men to get what she wants.

At the time of its publication, Wallace Thurman’s debut novel was deeply provocative. This was due not only to its frank considerations of race and sex, but also to its vivid portrait of a Harlem that few other writers had dared to explore. At the heart of this journey into new terrain is Emma Lou Morgan, a Black woman who leaves her “color-struck” Idaho hometown behind and strikes out, first for Los Angeles and later for Harlem—where, unfortunately, discrimination simply takes on a new form.

Dylan Monroe, our favorite shopaholic, is back! She’s three months pregnant and madly in love with the father of her child, sexy heavyweight champion Angel. The only problem is the long-legged Victoria’s Secret model standing in the way of getting him back. If that weren’t enough stress, her Jack Daniels-loving mother, Candy, returns to stir up even more trouble. Unsure of how to face her future as a single mother, Dylan reverts back to the only thing she knows to comfort her pain - shopping!

Solomon takes care of his people. All he expects in return is for everyone on his team to remain solid. Anyone who refuses to show loyalty no longer earns his favor, and family is not exempt. Kaori Randall embraces one concept: love and be loved. She is raised by parents and grandparents, who are examples of happy, healthy relationships. Kaori has high expectations when it comes to her own happiness, which makes the failure of her own love life a huge disappointment.

Aphrodite Greer was born and raised in the bricks—projects in Jagoda Bay. She met the love of her life, Baguette, on that very soil. The ghetto goddess had her entire life mapped out for her, and just like most life plans, things took a turn for the worse. Infidelity, losing her baby girl Athena, and constant fights with her lover's mistress turned her from a rigid, dope boy's queen to a soft, put-up businesswoman. With five years between their failed relationship, Baguette and Aphrodite remain best friends, and since Baguette has moved on, his current girlfriend has also joined their circle.

Dylan Monroe is the kind of chick females love to hate, but children and dogs mysteriously adore. She's a material girl, living in a material world filled with diamonds, furs, limousines, celebrities, and private planes. To the world, she has it all, but behind closed doors, she has nothing. Almost bankrupt, she finds solace with State, a wealthy entrepreneur with a heart of steel, the man who breaks her heart time and time again.

This new South End Press edition makes available the full text of this out-of-print classic - along with a new foreword by Manning Marable, interviews with participants in DRUM, and reflections on political developments over the past three decades by Georgakas and Surkin.

When we left Alexis and the crew, lives were hanging in the balance and their enemies were celebrating their victories. Old relationships were strained, and new ones started to form. But they were quickly threatened by danger and drama from jealous exes and bitter enemies bent on revenge. Will Alexis and Kevell be able to survive and come to the rescue of their loved ones who need them the most? Or will the losses and damage their enemies have inflicted be too much for them to handle?