African American Sagas

Jakari Bolton: protector and provider… He takes on those roles when his father gets incarcerated for hideous crimes that are still bothering him ten years later. Jakari is so busy taking care of those he loves he forgot that he needed care too. Anger, guilt, and hurt have guided his life’s trajectory, and he doesn’t know any other way to be. So when he has to pick up his cousins from school and runs into librarian, Yendi Odom, he doesn’t know how to handle her.

Catch my gaze means your eyes better always find mine.

At almost a year without drama and chaos, Penny is ready to branch out from underneath the shadows of Polo. Her gangster is relentlessly trying to show her love and affection to prove his devotion, but something doesn't smell quite right to Penny. The familiar scent of lies and control lingers in the air. Behind his back, she dominates and sets out to be better than her teacher of the streets and first love, but not without consequence. A new budding love interest appears at her side to help her conquer all she seeks, yet Polo is not having it. If he can't have Penny—the woman he built ...

This wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars—on both sides of the Atlantic—serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent.

Spanning over a hundred and fifty years, Morgan Jerkins’s extraordinary novel intertwines the stories of these star-crossed lovers and their descendants. As Tirzah's family moves across the country during the Great Migration, they challenge authority with devastating consequences, while of the legacy of heartbreak and loss continues on in the lives of Harrison's progeny.

The year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school, when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror movie magazine Fangoria, his social doom is sealed for the next four years.

Sequel to: The Story Of Ms. Gertie King (Book #4 in the Bentley Family Adventure Series) Howdy, ya'll, I'm back! It's Ms. Gertie King here, and the year be nineteen hundred and seventy-eight. I can hardly believe it, but I've now reached the ripe ol' age of ninety, and thanks be to the Lord; he's showered me with many blessings in my long life. For the most part, I still has my mind fully intact, my boomin' voice has not left me, and I can still chase after the young'uns if'n they don't run too fast! My grandbabies be keepin' me young, that's for sure. For those of you who don't know it, ...

Aminata Diallo is the beguiling heroine of Lawrence Hill's Someone Knows My Name. In it, Hill exquisitely imagines the tale of an 18th-century woman's life, spanning six decades and three continents. The fascinating story that Hill tells is a work of the soul and the imagination. Aminata is a character who will stir listeners, from her kidnapping from Africa through her journeys back and forth across the ocean.

Aja James hasn't had it easy. She has kept a close watch over her siblings ever since tragedy robbed them of their parents. Tired of carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, Aja is ready for a change. Her best friend, Roxie, knows just what to do - she sets Aja up on a date with one of the most sought-after bachelors in town, handsome sportscaster Charles Clayton. Charles is everything Aja has ever dreamed of - sensitive, sexy, and charming. But "happily ever after" isn't that simple.

Professional basketball player Nate Guillory has a good life. He enjoyed his childhood as the only child in a single-parent home. There is only one thing he feels he missed out on: knowing his father. Although he had a great upbringing, he feels that it is his right to know the identity of his father and why they weren’t afforded the opportunity to have a relationship. Because his mother isn’t as forthcoming with information, Nate seeks out rapper, Noah Brooks, who is the bonus son of his now deceased father.

They were women whose lives began in slavery, who weathered the Civil War, and who grappled with the contradictions of emancipation through the turbulent early years of the 20th century. Through it all, they fought to unite their family and forge success on their own terms.

Las Vegas: a city built on obscene wealth and corrupt deals, cunning entrepreneurs, and the ruthless mob. The Cartel's plan to open a casino will rake in cash, but it comes with great sacrifice. The stakes have never been this high, and the rules of the game have never been this hard to manipulate. And when one dead girl, one scorned wife, and one hole in the desert launch a chain of catastrophic events, the Cartel is sent on a downward spiral as they battle the Arabian mob and fight traitors within their circle.

Bootlegging was Milton and Yvonne Hamilton's ticket out of poverty, prison time, and plain bad luck. Now they've moved on - to a bigger, richer pool of clientele - right in their own respectable new middle-class backyard. And their growing friendship with seemingly-perfect couple Joyce and Odell Watson is proving golden in more ways than one. As Milton soon learns, Odell is hiding an outside family and dubious business dealings. It's the perfect recipe for a blackmail scheme that will help Milton hide his own dirty secrets - even from Yvonne....

"Captivating, suspenseful & raw. An accurate depiction of life during that time. Incredible!" When Danny Jackson says "the N-word" on his fifth birthday his grandmother tells him their family doesn't use that word, though he's learned it from his father. There's a mysterious grave in their woods, and all he's ever heard it called was "the N-word Grave." Thus begins a family saga and coming of age story as an Appalachian grandmother tries to change her family's trajectory regarding race relations. Danny and Martin Noble Peoples, a descendent of the murdered black man, team up to uncover the ...

Yarni Taylor is a successful corporate attorney who wants nothing more than for her husband, Des, to renounce his hustlin’ ways and commit to his life as a pastor—especially after someone tries to kill him. But Des isn’t ready to abandon his old habits just yet. He has to find out who is behind the murder attempt, and he wonders if the brazen robbery that took place during one of his church services is related in any way.

It’s the summer of 1987 in Swift River, and Diamond Newberry is learning how to drive. Ever since her Pop disappeared seven years ago, she and her mother hitchhike everywhere they go. But that’s not the only reason Diamond stands out: she’s teased relentlessly about her weight, and since Pop’s been gone, she is the only Black person in all of Swift River. This summer, Ma is determined to declare Pop legally dead so that they can collect his life insurance money, get their house back from the bank, and finally move on.

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative 10 times its length, Jacqueline Woodson's extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.

American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others. In Freedom’s Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace.

Ever since running away at the age of fourteen, Paul-Edward, the son of a white landowner and a black slave, has had one dream: to own land every bit as good as his daddy's. While growing up, Paul-Edward loved, and feared, his father, but he loved the land unconditionally. Then, after a rash act of youthful rebellion, he leaves his family behind and vows to succeed on his own. However, for anyone black coming of age in 1880's Mississippi, this is no simple goal.

Keisha didn’t have a, chance growing up in the hood with a, carefree mother. She’s the youngest of her two older sisters in to street life. They are her role models, and her father has his own business and family besides her. She’s taught by her hood, money hungry mother to go for the guy with the most which for Keisha is a, drug dealer named Glen BKA G. He starts relentlessly pursuing her. Keisha is a, square in to school, poetry, reading and watching wrestling on Wednesday nights, so. She’s scared of him on all levels. However, she couldn’t deny their chemistry it was undeniable...