African American Short Stories

Emery Thompson hates Calvin Chamberlain. From the way he acts like he’s better than everyone to the way he moves through the world thinking his podcast is the cream of the crop, every little thing about the man gets to him. Even that dashing, oh-so-confident smile. He’d rather be caught dead than be around the man any longer than necessary—or admit that last part out loud.

Andre Monroe is ready to move on from heartbreak, and the first step is bringing home his rescue pup. He’d bonded instantly with the playful Zeus and was already planning their first adventures. But one thing he definitely hadn’t daydreamed about was Zeus accidentally being promised to someone else - or that he might go home empty-handed and brokenhearted all over again.

African American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley. Before the high point of enslaved people narratives, African-American literature was dominated by autobiographical spiritual narratives. The genre known as slave narratives in the 19th century were accounts by people who had generally escaped from slavery, about their journeys to freedom and ways they claimed their lives.

Some of the best-known and most influential pieces of crime fiction have been from African American writers. Be it Walter Mosley's great Detective Easy Rawlins, or the mean streets of Harlem at the hands of Chester Himes, the stories and characters in this anthology have shaped the mystery genre with their own unique viewpoints and styles. Contributors to the collection include Robert Greer, Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Cary Phillips, Frankie Bailey, and Richard Wright.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

This exciting collection presents two previously unpublished stories by SF legend Octavia E. Butler. A Necessary Being precedes the events of Survivor, Butler's third (famously disowned) installment in her Patternist series, and includes characters from it, focusing exclusively on the Kohn, aliens who build their social hierarchies on the blueness of their fur. In Childfinder, a black woman with the gift of identifying children with latent psychic ability refuses to share her skill with an organization of white telepaths.

The collection contains 12 provocative tales that explore the emotional and mental terrain of a diverse cast of characters, from the innocent to the insane. In each, Jones displays her unflinching ability to dive into the most treacherous of psyches and circumstances: the title story examines the identity and relationship conundrums of a Black man who can pass for white, earning him the name “White Rat” as an infant; “The Women” follows a girl whose mother brings a line of female lovers to live in their home.

On a snowy Christmas Eve in an unnamed American city, the archangel Michael wanders the streets. He is alone and hungry, his clothes tattered, and when he sees his face reflected in a store window, it is that of a young African American boy. Who will offer him food and shelter and who will turn him away? And when he becomes a blonde, freckle-faced child, is his fate different?

Tales of the Out & the Gone reflects the astounding evolution of America's most provocative literary anti-hero. The first section of the audiobook, War Stories, offers six stories enmeshed in the vola-tile politics of the 1970s and 1980s. The second section, Tales of the Out & the Gone, reveals Amiri Baraka's increasing literary adventurousness, combining an unpredictable language play with a passion for abstraction and psychological exploration.

A collection of Christmas stories written by African American journalists, activists, and writers from the late 19th century to the modern civil rights movement. This landmark collection features writings from well-known black writers, activists, and visionaries such as Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, and John Henrik Clark along with literary gems from rediscovered writers. Originally published in African American newspapers, periodicals, and journals between 1880 and 1953, these enchanting Christmas tales are part of the black literary tradition that flourished after the Civil War.

Returning to the city that inspired his first prize-winning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens.

Previously titled "I Want Love", Daddy's Girl tells the tale of a young woman raised without a father, beginning from childhood.

“The People Could Fly,” the title story in Virginia Hamilton’s prize-winning American Black folktale collection, is a fantasy tale of the slaves who possessed the ancient magic words that enabled them to literally fly away to freedom. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to “fly” away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale.

Desire raises the stakes - and the danger. This collection includes Desperate Housewife, Sinful, and L.A. Confidential.

A young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually fraught encounters with two dancers in an open relationship, forcing him to weigh his vulnerabilities against his loneliness. In other stories, a young woman battles with the cancers draining her body and her family, menacing undercurrents among a group of teenagers explode in violence on a winter night, a little girl tears through a house like a tornado, driving her babysitter to the brink and couples feel out the jagged edges of connection, comfort and cruelty.

In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.

Dr. Harmon refers to her style of writing as "Short Stories With A Purpose". Her fictional Christian short stories were created to highlight God's goodness, grace, and mercy. Sometimes we become so busy with our everyday lives that we forget to pause and say thank you. The stories in this book will inspire and encourage discussions about faith and purpose.

This small collection of short stories of riveting and dark plots dabbles in politics, religion, martial arts, social identity, and various other facets of life like baby farms, revealing what man proves to be when he tries! Titles include "A Cold One", "Lagos Hustle", "Cornbread, Fried Chicken, and Sauerkraut", "Rest in Peace", "Alpine Nightmare", "My Style Is Better Than Yours", "Furqaan", "Turf", and "The Part: The Re-assassination of Abe Lincoln".

In Dale's Tales, Dale Guy Madison takes young listeners on a journey through a series of African-American stories and folktales. From the humor of How God Created Butterflies to the magical realism of Flying Away to Freedom, Dale's retellings of classic folktales will delight and inspire. The collection also includes Dale's brand-new story Three Heads of Hair.

DeShawn Watts has always followed the rules and obeyed law enforcement for as long as he could remember. But why does a life in the suburbs with a loving wife, a beautiful daughter, and a nice job feel so hollow whenever DeShawn talks to his jailbird brother, Darnell? Respectability is a short story detailing the lives of Black men and asking what it really means to be free today in America.