Showing titles in African American

As teenagers, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love in a Nigeria under military dictatorship. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America, where Obinze hopes to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?

Yoshiro escaped a career of crime with the mafia after they killed his family. For five years, he's dropped out of life. All he wants this Christmas is to be left alone. Then, Ebony and her kids accidentally crash onto his property during a snowstorm. For three years, they've been running from her husband - who's been more monster than man. The storm picks up. They are forced to remain with Yoshiro until it dies down. And the threat of Ebony's monster remains, lurking within the shadows and threatening her safety. But Yoshiro knows all about death and blood.

A discarded painting in a roadside clean-up, forgotten bones in a research archive and Lexington, the greatest racehorse in US history. From these strands of fact, Geraldine Brooks weaves a sweeping story of spirit, obsession and injustice across American history. A gripping reckoning with the legacy of enslavement and racism in America, Horse is the latest masterpiece from a writer with a prodigious talent for bringing the past to life.

Harlem in the 1970s: the black soul of New York City. Tish is nineteen and the man she loves - her lifelong friend and the father of her unborn child - has been jailed for a crime he did not commit. As their families come together to fight for his freedom, will their love be enough?

The Nickel Boys is Colson Whitehead's follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning best seller The Underground Railroad, in which he dramatises another strand of United States history, this time through the story of two boys sentenced to a stretch in a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college.

Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching—yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.

This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next 200 years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.

Sloane: Dominic Alexander is my late husband's best friend and the last man that I should want. For the last ten years, he's taken a sick pleasure in making me feel paper thin, like my existence is of no consequence to him at all. But now, things are different. After a drunken night, and a surprisingly sexy act of heroism, he's started to be . . . nice. Treating me like something other than the embodiment of his annoyance, which would be nice if it didn't make me feel things I swore to never feel for another man after my husband died.

Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Brown was promised her freedom on her eighteenth birthday. But when her birthday finally comes around, instead of the idyllic life she was hoping for with her true love, she finds herself thrust into the bowels of slavery at the infamous Devil's Half-Acre, a jail where slaves are broken, tortured, and sold every day. Forced to become the mistress of the brutal man who owns the jail, Pheby faces the ultimate sacrifice to protect her heart.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

Ebby Freeman travels to France to take a three-month hiatus from her complicated home life, the last person she expects to find is her ex-fiancé Henry, with his new girlfriend in tow. Nearly twenty years earlier, the Freemans were the only African American family living in a wealthy coastal enclave in Connecticut when armed robbers invaded their family home and tragedy changed their lives forever. Then, just as Ebby thought she had a new chance at happiness, her storybook romance with Henry fell apart. Now, this unexpected encounter with Henry will force Ebby to reckon with her past.

Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by society and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar fate, and while Nettie escapes to a new life as a missionary in Africa, Celie is left behind without her best friend and confidante, married off to an older suitor, and sentenced to a life alone with a harsh and brutal husband. In an attempt to transcend a life that often seems too much to bear, Celie begins writing letters to God. The letters, spanning 20 years, record a journey of self-discovery and empowerment guided by the light of a few strong women.

In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy that resonates profoundly. In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others—Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.

When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions. A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could—and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty.

Ola Olajide, a high-profile journalist at Womxxxn magazine, is marrying the love of her life in one month's time. Young, beautiful, successful – she and her fiancé Michael are the ‘couple goals’ of their social networks and seem to have it all. That is, until one morning when they both wake up to the same message: ‘Oh my god, have you seen The List?’ It began as a crowdsourced collection of names and somehow morphed into an anonymous account posting allegations on social media.

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. As Morrison follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, she introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized Black world.

Rose’s sister, Denise, went missing a year ago, and finding her has become Rose’s sole mission. Denise wouldn’t have vanished without a word. For the past year, Rose has obsessively investigated every aspect of her sister’s life—where she went, who she spent time with—digging deeper than anyone else would dare. Her search eventually leads her to one name: Dane Amante. A name she knows all too well. The Amante Cartel is notorious for its brutality, and worse, they’re connected to a secretive, powerful organization known as ‘The INC’.

In a world where love seems like a distant dream, Zarah King has built an empire on her own terms. As the owner of a thriving resort, she's a force to be reckoned with—strong, independent, and fiercely guarded. Haunted by memories of her father and the disappointments of past relationships, Zarah has convinced herself that men are incapable of true love and commitment. She's content to play the game on her own terms, never letting anyone get too close to her heart. Enter Kane Williams, a man with a past as complex as Zarah's own.

Taelyn Astoria Smith is the baby girl of the Washington, Christianson, Smith dynasty. Sheltered living and timid decision-making have caused her to put herself in harm's way. After a traumatizing incident, will she ever gain the true understanding of who she is to understand how it feels to be loved by a man? What happens when a journey of mental wellness turns into a pleasurable ride of love? Includes "Do You Understand: The Prelude."

Messiah "Gu" Carter vowed to protect his family of women without letting the streets take over, but when tragedy strikes, his whole world shifts. Running into someone with answers forces him to decide, seek revenge, or face the past. Turquoise "Qui" Edwards is book smart but lost in a past she can't remember. Caught in a deadly game, she holds secrets that could shatter everything. Will she keep quiet or expose the truth?