Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in African American

Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, collects bottles and cans to recycle for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - that is, until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, whose already committed murder and is perilously close to slipping into a life filled with only violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination to fight for and save Darryl lights his own pathway to self-forgiveness.

I'm a protector, and my family is my responsibility. When it comes to my team, I'm the same way. They are family and the reason that me and Capone are able to do us in the streets, knowing they are tucked away safe. As a man, you sometimes fall short, and something—someone—falls through the cracks. I know one thing; I put that on my grandson that I'm going to crack his uncle's skull. He has hurt his own family, tossed them out to the wolves, and has hurt mine. I don't take too kindly to people hurting mine.

Linda, Dikeledi, Nolwazi and Sade spent their twenties pursuing fast-paced careers and love lives in vibrant Johannesburg. Now, with their thirties just around the corner, they know the one thing they can count on is each other, but it turns out even the firmest friendships have secrets… On the cusp of their thirtieth birthdays, just when everything should be going to plan, their lives start to derail.

Written from the heart, When Angels Speak of Love is a book of fifty love poems by bell hooks, one our most beloved public intellectuals, and author of over twenty books, including the bestselling All About Love. Poem after poem, hooks challenges our views and experiences with love—tracing the links between seduction and surrender, the intensity of desire, and the anguish of death.

In this evocative short piece, Candace worries that her mother, Annie, has reached an emotional breaking point. When her best friend loses her battle with cancer, Annie is acting in uncharacteristic ways, seemingly less concerned than ever about what her friends and neighbors think of her - a troubling development in her daughter’s eyes. But while Candace may think she knows her mother better than anyone, something deeper lingers beneath the surface, and times of hardship have a way of bringing us closer together than ever.

A critic explores the paradox of finding community in “the dozens” while grieving. A violent town ritual causes an all-too-familiar moral panic. An email thread between friends on why we need an updated Green Book but for public toilets. All across the nation, “Karens” become illegal overnight. These are just a few of the hilarious worlds contained in Damon Young’s groundbreaking anthology featuring the best, funniest, and Blackest essays, short stories, letters, and rants.

What happens in the Bahamas stays in there. That was the plan, until the woman Ransom Stewart hooked up with shows up at his law firm. He knows he should stay away from her. But for some reason, he can't. Revenge sex. That's what Sophie Bradshaw told herself the night with Ransom was all about. One night to punish her boyfriend for years of neglect that culminated in a painful betrayal. She knows she should stay away from Ransom. She knows she should leave him alone. But she can't.

Desmond Simmons' life is at an impasse. After a tragic near-death experience, he’s left struggling to pick up the pieces of an existence that’s grown monotonous. He’s so sure he’s stuck until an old neighbor reappears, turning his new, uneventful life upside down. While reconnecting, the two embark on a journey that leaves them grappling with their new lives and falling back into a whimsical world full of secrets they created as children to escape reality. They soon learn that outrunning the truth isn’t as easy as it once was, but that doesn’t mean they won’t try.

Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologist-slash-paleobiologist. Expert in an incredibly niche field, he spends his days playing chess with his daughter, trading puns with his wife as she does yoga, and dodging committee work at the college where he teaches. After his daughter is diagnosed with a fatal illness, Wells finds a cryptic plea for help tucked into a secondhand jacket bought online. Desperately seeking a way avoid his newfound sense of powerlessness, he embarks for New Mexico on a quixotic rescue mission.

Greg Abimbola is many things. He's Black, British and fluent in Russian. He's a snappy dresser, a reasonable teacher, and an unenthusiastic sports fan. But most of all, he's exceptional at keeping secrets—like who he really is, and the things he's done. Determined to keep his head down after helping solve a murder in the school basement, Greg fears a trap when Sergeant Rachel Lev of the Pittsburgh police corners him in his apartment—because his refusal to take credit isn't modesty, it's a survival tactic. But Rachel is there for another matter entirely. She needs his help.

Life as a single mother was never easy for Vanessa Childs but she did what she had to do in order to provide a good life for her and her baby. Falling pregnant after a drunken one night stand at college graduation, Vanessa had no real idea of who the father of her baby was. That was until several years later she saw a familiar face on her TV. The man's smile was the same one that charmed her that night and his cheeky voice made all the memories come flooding back.

Still reeling from a messy divorce, kindergarten teacher Venus Thibodeaux is on a self-proclaimed healing journey and adamant that she's done with love. She's determined to move on from her toxic past with a fresh start in a new city, but starting over isn't as easy as it sounds. Anthony "Nuney" Nunez is young. He's unpolished, unpredictable, and according to his daughter's kindergarten teacher—a lousy parent. In fact, the two can't see eye to eye on anything except the strange attraction they have for each other every time their paths cross.

When Drew Honey moved into a shared house with 5 other girls, all she wanted was to get through her last semester of college and start living the life she always dreamed of. However, the universe had other plans when a charismatic and kind-hearted woman named Adrian Jackson slid her way into the picture. From that first day, the two of them were drawn to each other, easily becoming closer as the months passed. Their feelings grew and as graduation approached, they both decided to confess to each other, but of course, the universe once again threw them a curveball.

Told in alternating viewpoints, Long After We Are Gone is a searing portrait on the power of family and letting go of things that no longer serve you, exploring the burden of familial expectations, the detriment of miscommunication, and the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children.

Hope is a dangerous thing. It holds you close like a lover, whispering promises it never intends to keep, and just as soon as you relax into its arms, it lets you go. Sending you spinning into an abyss of nothingness. When I sent him away four years ago, he promised he would come back to me, and even as I asked him not to, I hoped that he would.

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.

Two must-listen novellas from best-selling author Sabrina B. Scales... Naughty: Recently separated from her on again, off again boyfriend, Darryl, Nedra Brooks finds herself in the arms of her handsome neighbor Justin Steele. Years of sexual tension finally come to a head when she seeks, and finds, temporary satisfaction in Justin's arms. Nasty: Two innocent bystanders are introduced by their siblings with nothing in common but a sexual attraction that they couldn't act upon without breaking all the rules. But rules are made to be broken, right?

Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to North America to work as an au pair for Lewis and Mariah and their four children. At first glance Lewis and Mariah are a blessed couple—handsome, rich and seemingly happy. Almost at once, however, Lucy begins to notice cracks in their beautiful facade. With a mixture of anger and compassion, Lucy scrutinizes the privileged, facile world of her employers while comparing it to the vivid realities of her home in the Caribbean.

Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington.

Billionaire Pierce Carrington had achieved all he ever wanted in life. Everything apart from finding love. With his own biological clock ticking, Pierce knew his only realistic way to have a child of his own was to hire a surrogate. And he chose curvy Kate Wilder. Kate was set to be paid $500k for her surrogacy services, but the billionaire had an interesting caveat inserted into the contract. He stated that the baby must be produced by natural conception and that this surrogacy must remain top secret, even to his own family....