Urban African American

Tanya Jackson works at the Camden Food Bank, and this year is like no other; donations have dried up, and hope is fading due to the pandemic. A phone call to CFB's biggest donor one afternoon and fate has reconnected Tanya to someone she longed for for a long time.

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!

Adonis "Drayko" Loving had been trouble since he learned to walk. Living a risky lifestyle finally catches up with him, forcing him to suddenly leave Ohio and find a fresh start elsewhere. After relocating, he finds himself struggling with adjusting to his new surroundings. Living a single, drama-free life by getting money and staying out of the way comes to an abrupt end when Nyoka crosses his path. Her slanted, sly eyes pull him in and make him rethink and reevaluate his entire life.

Even the saved struggle when navigating their way through love. This much could definitely be said for the Fold family's oldest child, Angela. Perfection was the main objective when it came to Angela. She was stubborn, strong-willed, and completely incapable of relinquishing control, at times risking her own happiness to preserve the image of what others thought she should be. Angela must figure out which way to go after leaving a toxic marriage. And she may or may not find refuge in an equally stubborn alpha male by the name of Damien Christopher Briscoe.

Black Picket Fences is a stark, moving, and candid look at a section of America that is too often ignored by both scholars and the media: the Black middle class. The result of living for three years in "Groveland", a Black middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, sociologist Mary Pattillo-McCoy has written a book that explores both the advantages and the boundaries that exist for members of the Black middle class.

As the oldest of three girls, Renee at a young age knew she was born into a special family of women. These women are blessed with unique gifts from God but others may disagree. Although Renee, Leah, and Tiffany were born in Georgia, their family roots were planted in New Orleans where the Creole cuisine fills your soul, the swamps run deep with blood and voodoo is a religion to some. At the age of 13, Renee’s life is forever changed as well as her sister’s.

The audiobook is a story about two brothers, Kelvin “Kels” Johnson, Jr., and Malik “Lil Ghadi” Johnson. Each of them had eager desires to follow in their father’s legacy for success and power. They wanted to finish the goal their father, Kelvin “Ghadi” Johnson, Sr., started before his incarceration, as well as try to achieve the goal of getting out of the game without getting scarred like their father did. Kelvin “Ghadi” Johnson, Sr.’s name ran throughout the streets of the Eastson Neighborhood, but not even his name could stop what his sons were about to face.

Fed up with her married Miami boyfriend, savvy Dulce has no problem stealing his drug-dealer stash and fleeing to the Caribbean. Between her special skills - and an eye for very rich and/or very smokin' men - Dulce stays a hustle ahead of trouble and makes her new life one endless party in Puerto Rico. Until she's caught in Hurricane Maria - and witnesses both the heartbreaking disaster of climate change, and the international vultures who plunder the tragedy for a financial killing, making shady use of relief funds to devastate the island even more....

Sisters from Trinidad, Violet and Lily have never had much in common. Stunning Lily arrives undocumented in New York and makes her way as a stripper. But Harvard-educated Violet is this close to the perfect assimilated life, thanks to a prestigious job, and her rich bougie fiance.... Until she's wrongly accused of helping a notorious strip-club mogul embezzle millions of his workers' earnings. Violet loses everything - except the determination to get her life back. Now Violet's on his track with the help of his vengeful ex-wife and the Lower East Side Women's Health Clinic's resourceful crew - which includes Lily.

Shawn Harrington returned to Marshall High School as an assistant coach years after appearing as a player in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, Marshall's struggling team was about to improve after the addition of a charismatic but troubled player. Everything changed, however, when two young men opened fired on Harrington's car as he drove his daughter to school. Harrington was struck and paralyzed. The mistaken-identity shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and Marshall's basketball family.

After serving 10 hard years in the joint for armed robbery, JC is ready for some payback. His targets, the three childhood friends - now crimelords - who betrayed him to save themselves, are about to have everything they've worked for ripped right out of their hands.

At 72, Johnny Ribkins shouldn't have such problems: he's got one week to come up with the money he stole from his mobster boss or it's curtains. What may or may not be useful to Johnny as he flees is that he comes from an African American family that has been gifted with superpowers that are a bit, well, odd. Okay, very odd. For example, Johnny's father could see colors no one else could see. His brother could scale perfectly flat walls. His cousin belches fire. And Johnny himself can make precise maps of any space you name, whether he's been there or not.

As gentrification encroaches on historic Harlem, Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award recipient Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts untangles the myth and meaning of its storied legacy. Drawing on Harlem’s history and her own observations, Rhodes-Pitts introduces a variety of observers who shared a common hope that Harlem would become the ground from which Blacks fully entered America’s democracy.

Former gang member Y. Blak Moore grew up in Chicago’s housing projects before becoming a poet and noted novelist. His gritty fiction captures the mean streets with an authenticity few writers can match.... The Apostles run Chicago’s streets. Now “Solemn Shawn,” their legendary leader, wants out. But the head of The Governors has a score to settle. So before Shawn can make a better life for his pregnant girlfriend, he must fight one last war.

When retired FBI forensic psychologist Spencer Berry and his dog break up a scuffle between gang members, in the process of chasing one with a gun, they end up discovering the nude remains of a young woman partially submerged in a creek behind the home of police spokeswoman Deidre Lawrence. The deceased appears to be the victim of the Park Killer, a serial murderer terrorizing Sinclair Heights, Oregon over the past three years.

The kingpins of Oklahoma City, one from the north side and one from the south side, push pounds of weed, gallons of PCP, and kilos of cocaine through the corridors of the OKC, using very different methods to keep their people in line. King is the leader of the north side crew. Along with his protégé, Tippi, he runs his crew with deadly force. Each member knows there is no room for error when it comes to getting money on the north side. Flamboyant, the leader of the south side crew, is the opposite.

In this scorching, mournful, often explicit, and never less than moving literary novel by the famed creator of the Easy Rawlins series, Debbie Dare, a black porn queen, has to come to terms with her sordid life in the adult entertainment industry after her tomcatting husband dies in a hot tub. Electrocuted. With another woman in there with him. Debbie decides she just isn't going to "do it anymore". But executing her exit strategy from the porn world is a wrenching and far from simple process.

Karlie Houston hasn't seen a raise in forever, but the payday loan office she manages is raking in the cash. So why not get what she's rightfully owed by masterminding a heist? Once her lover Sidney's boys hit all the company's locations at one time, there's a fortune to split. But suddenly bodies start dropping - and Karlie better devise the perfect plan to survive.

How was Locksie supposed to tell her boyfriend that she had gone off to church and fallen in love with another man? Locksie grew up in the church - against her will - thanks to her holier than thou mother. But now that she's all grown-up, she's her own woman and church is the last thing on her mind; her live-in boyfriend, Dawson, is the first. When Locksie finally decides to go back to church, she ends up finding more than she could have ever expected.

Owner of a string of Northwest car dealerships and movie theaters, Trey Lancaster is living a life of leisure. But all is not well in Paradise Bay, Oregon. After cheating on his wife with the wife of a wealthy client, Trey is trying to get past this moment of weakness, knowing that he loves his wife and no one else. But Ivana Kendall-Lancaster, former international model, has not been as easy to forgive or forget. Having already dealt with the pain of a miscarriage and her husband's infidelity, she turns to alcohol, only adding to the couple's woes.