American Contemporary

🔥 Enemies to lovers. Unfinished business. A battle of hearts and minds. 🔥 Betty Bingham has spent years dedicated to her career and family, leaving little room for romance. After a painful divorce, she’s vowed to never fall for the wrong man again—especially not a white man. But when she challenges the infuriatingly charming Dr. William "Billy" Watson during a heated academic debate, sparks fly in ways she never expected. Billy is a well-respected historian, used to commanding the room—until Betty calls him out in front of a packed audience. He should be annoyed. Instead, he's ...

The "construction laborer" is really a wealthy felon with too many inexplicable circumstances to fathom for her narrow worldview. Will Jas share more of his complexities? Will Ashira be able to absorb them with understanding, leaving the judgment behind? Two souls, still galaxies apart, bound by love. The unanticipated UFO has collided with her world like a ferocious asteroid.

What Happens When a Person Compromises when it Comes to Faith? Nikki Walton has had a true love for Christ for as long as she can remember — since childhood really. But sometimes, she can’t help but think that her narrow walk with the Lord has prevented her from attaining some of the things she wants in life — mainly a soulmate. Things backfire in a major way for Nikki when she puts her faith on the back burner for a few minutes, thinking that doing so will help her snag a husband, the man of her dreams. The man she ends up with turns out to be a true devil in disguise. Realizing that...

Allie Abraham has it all going for her - she’s a straight-A student with good friends and a close-knit family, and she’s dating popular, sweet Wells Henderson. There’s only one problem: Wells’ father is Jack Henderson, America’s most famous conservative shock jock, and Allie hasn’t told Wells that her family is Muslim. It’s not like Allie’s religion is a secret. It’s just that her parents don’t practice and raised her to keep it to herself.

Essence best-selling authors of Love Don’t Live Here Anymore, the husband/wife team of Chiles and Millner use a dramatic “he said, she said” approach in a novel that carries listeners right into the hearts of two lifelong friends. Aaron and Nina grew up on the same street and have been best buddies for 25 years. Now they wonder if they might ruin their relationship if they make room in it for passion and romance.

Welcome to Ashberry Park, an elite and luxurious community in San Francisco, California where five wives have formed a friendship and help each other through the challenges in their lives. Blair and Landon Adams have built an extravagant life together. Landon is the owner of Adams’s Oil Company with franchises all over the country. Blair started a foundation, Queens in the Making, that helps young women receive scholarships and job opportunities. They have two children in college, Jeremy and Nova. Blair is proud of the success she and Landon have, but when Landon starts spending most of ...

What would you do if you weren't getting attention at home? Crystal, devoted wife and mother, wasn't, and thought she should get it elsewhere until it backfired. Crystal and Aaron were happily married for fourteen years until he started acting strange and distant. Crystal starved for his affection, only to find her desires would be fed, but not by her husband. Caught between the hope for a change in her marriage and the newfound lust for another man. Crystal must make some hard choices, and fast, before it all blows up in her face.

At thirty, eldest brother Byron hasn't dated seriously in a while--not since he became a single dad to his beloved baby girl. Besides, he's found that most women can't see past his job as a bus driver, and he's not interested in that type of superficial foolishness. When he meets Cynthia Hall, her disinterest is obvious. Still, there's something about her. . .

Everyone knows the hardest thing to do is stay in the place where you’ve been hurt the most. And Jade does what so many of us do, run. She left Louisiana with hopes of healing her heart, but she soon realizes pieces of her heart was left in the place she abandoned. Jasper Booth Jr. has never stopped loving Jade, but he’s no longer waiting on her to make up her mind to come home. Hopefully, a letter from an attorney will get her back to Louisiana, where she belongs. Jessica Booth is planning the event of the century right on the field of one of Shreveport’s most phenomenal schools. ...

Everyone in the Rinaldi Mob has a job to do—a role to play—and newly appointed Mafian, Jisei Harper, is no exception. Jisei is used to slumming it out on her own. From birth, she was dealt a bad hand, but instead of dwelling on it, she smiled, rolled her shoulders back, and played her cards. After years of struggling, she meets Mocha, a rich daddy's girl, and Scarlett, a naïve hoodlum who had it worse off than Jisei. Little did she know, these two new friendships would lead her to the only blood relative she never knew existed.

Shalom Daniels has everything she wants in life outside of marriage and kids. Her career and personal relationships are flourishing, except when it comes to the relationship that matters most—one with a man dedicated to cherishing and protecting her heart. Fresh out of a relationship with a man who was almost perfect, Shalom begins to question if her boundaries and standards are too high, or if it simply isn’t her time for her happily ever after yet.

Best friends? With a celebrity? Impossible. That's how Sesali feels after a chance encounter with super producer Dash Dean. His offer of friendship has to be a smoke screen for an ulterior motive. Besides, she already has best friends, and one of them has staked a claim on Dash.

The Road Beasts: Finale Part 2 – The Explosive Conclusion 💀 She’s chasing the truth. He’s hiding in the shadows. When their worlds collide, will love be their greatest risk? 💀 Mia Donovan lives for the next big story. As a fearless journalist, she’s spent years exposing corruption, crime, and the secrets people would kill to keep buried. When her latest investigation leads her straight into the orbit of the Road Beasts MC, she’s determined to uncover the truth—no matter how dangerous it gets. Gopher is the club’s tech mastermind, a ghost in the system who sees everything...

Two children from Sierra Leone, Liberty and A’shai, are brought together by chance, only to be forced apart by the most inevitable and tragic fate. Ashley & JaQuavis bring us this classic love story set against modern life’s most horrifying realities.

Mary Monroe is the author of Essence best-sellers including The Upper Room. Here, she examines the emotional webs that are woven between friends, lovers, and families. Carmen Taylor is absolutely dependable; she feels responsible for everyone she knows. It will take one reckless night to make Carmen realize that she might be able to lay her burdens down and take a chance on real happiness.

When souls are tied, it's never goodbye. A boy I was that summer evening I met you, pulling your belongings out of the truck and into your new home. I knew it was love then. A whole man I was the day that you met me at the altar and agreed to love me until death do us part. A shell of a man I've become since it did, unable to move on, move forward, or progress in any way until I discovered that not even death was permanent enough to keep us apart. A better man I'm destined to be, knowing that, at some capacity, you're still with me. Our love is one that never dies.

Sometimes, you just need someone to help you see things in a different light. A shift in the angle.

Charmaine Heaton is a young, beautiful, God-fearing photo journalist with a feisty attitude, but a heart of gold. When she involves her best friend's brother Devin—a victim of a troubled childhood—in her plans to travel on assignment to war-torn Afghanistan, she discovers that he's the love of her life. But, will she be able to convince him that he is worthy to be loved and that their love is worth fighting for.

Yejide and Akin have been married since they met and fell in love at university. Though many expected Akin to take several wives, he and Yejide have always agreed: Polygamy is not for them. But four years into their marriage - after consulting fertility doctors and healers, trying strange teas and unlikely cures - Yejide is still not pregnant. She assumes she still has time - until her family arrives on her doorstep with a young woman they introduce as Akin's second wife.

"It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon..." This is how Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she fell in love with Red that day in July 1959. The Whitshanks are one of those families that radiate togetherness: an indefinable, enviable kind of specialness. But they are also like all families, in that the stories they tell themselves reveal only part of the picture.