Fiction
- Blood Grove
Blood Grove
by Walter Mosley
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"Master of craft and narrative" Walter Mosley returns with this crowning achievement in the Easy Rawlins saga, in which the iconic detective's loyalties are tested on the sun-soaked streets of Southern California (National Book Foundation)
It is 1969, and flames can be seen on the horizon, protest wafts like smoke though the thick air, and Easy Rawlins, the Black private detective whose small agency finally has its own office, gets a visit from a white Vietnam veteran. The young man comes to Easy with a story that makes little sense. He and his lover, a beautiful young woman, were attacked in a citrus grove at the city’s outskirts. He may have killed a man, and the woman and his dog are now missing. Inclined to turn down what sounds like nothing but trouble, Easy takes the case when he realizes how damaged the young vet is from his war experiences—the bond between veterans superseding all other considerations.
The veteran is not Easy’s only unlooked-for trouble. Easy’s adopted daughter Feather’s white uncle shows up uninvited, raising questions and unsettling the life Easy has long forged for the now young woman. Where Feather sees a family reunion, Easy suspects something else, something that will break his heart.
Blood Grove is a crackling, moody, and thrilling race through a California of hippies and tycoons, radicals and sociopaths, cops and grifters, both men and women. Easy will need the help of his friends—from the genius Jackson Blue to the dangerous Mouse Alexander, Fearless Jones, and Christmas Black—to make sense of a case that reveals the darkest impulses humans harbor.
Blood Grove is a novel of vast scope and intimate insight, and a soulful call for justice by any means necessary. - Salt the Water
Salt the Water
by Candice Iloh
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From Printz honoree and National Book Award finalist Candice Iloh, a verse novel about Cerulean Gene, a nonbinary Black teenager searching for a new way to do more than survive in post-pandemic America.
Cerulean and their friends went into senior year—the first year of normal school after the pandemic—with a plan: keep their heads down in class, save money, and get the hell out of the Bronx once they graduate. If teachers are going to force them to read Huckleberry Finn, then they can't blame kids for "lighting out for the territory." Cerulean is convinced that there must be somewhere better than the Bronx and is focused on learning how to grow and make food so they can all be self-sufficient when they finally make their break.
Burned-out teachers and their father's badly timed workplace accident send Cerulean reeling off course, but Bronx babies are resiliant and resourceful, and Salt the Water is ultimately a radically hopeful vision of life beyond mere survival. - Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories (Revised)
Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories (Revised)
edited by Pamela Johnson & Juliette Harris
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In this “outstanding volume” (Boston Herald) that “ought to be at the top of everyone’s must-read list” (Essence), Black women and men evocatively explore what could make a smart woman ignore doctor’s orders; what could get a hardworking employee fired from her job; what could get a black woman in hot water with her white boyfriend? In a word: hair.
In a society where beauty standards can be difficult if not downright unobtainable for many Black women, the issue of hair is a major one. Now, in this evocative and fascinating collection of essays, poems, excerpts, and more, Tenderheaded speaks to the personal, political, and cultural meaning of Black hair.
From A’Leila Perry Bundles, the great-granddaughter of hair care pioneer Madam C.J. Walker celebrating her ancestor’s legacy, to an art historian exploring the moving ways in which Black hair has been used to express Yoruba spirituality, to renowned activist Angela Davis questioning how her message of revolution got reduced to a hairstyle, Tenderheaded is as rich and diverse as the children of the African diaspora.
With works from authors including Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and more, this “remarkable array of writings and images” (Publishers Weekly) will stay with you long after you turn the final page. - Stars in Your Eyes
Stars in Your Eyes
by Kacen Callender
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The National Book Award-winning author of Felix Ever After delivers a beautifully tender story of two grumpy/sunshine, fake-dating actors navigating their love story both on and offscreen—perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Alexis Hall.
Logan Gray is Hollywood's bad boy—a talented but troubled actor who the public loves to hate. Mattie Cole is an up‑and‑coming golden boy, adored by all but plagued by insecurities.
When Logan and Mattie are cast as leads in a new romantic film, Logan claims that Matt has “zero talent,” sending the film’s publicity into a nosedive. To create positive buzz, the two are persuaded into a fake‑dating scheme—but as the two actors get to know their new characters, real feelings start to develop.
As public scrutiny intensifies and old wounds resurface, the two must fight for their relationship and their love.
A heartfelt, hopeful, and nuanced story about identity, healing, and growth. - This Is Salvaged: Stories
This Is Salvaged: Stories
by Vauhini Vara
from $17.99Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbor, or lover, and the relationships between self and others. A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible’s specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.
- The Confession of Copeland Cane
The Confession of Copeland Cane
by Keenan Norris
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“A significant new voice in fiction, Norris has written what may be one of the defining novels of the era at the intersection between Black Lives Matter and COVID-19.” —BuzzFeed
One of Publishers Weekly's Best Novels of the Summer ∙ One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of June ∙ One of ALTA's Recommended Reads for June ∙ One of BuzzFeed's Amazing Small Press Books To Add To Your Summer Reading List
Copeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive…
He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland’s life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates—the highly-rated Insurgency Alert Desk that surveils and harasses his neighborhood in the name of anti-terrorism.
Recruited by the nearby private school even as he and his folks face eviction, Copeland is doing his damnedest to do right by himself, for himself. And yet the forces at play entrap him in a reality that chews up his past and obscures his future. Copeland’s wry awareness of the absurd keeps life passable, as do his friends and their surprising array of survival skills. And yet in the aftermath of a protest rally against police violence, everything changes, and Copeland finds himself caught in the flood of history.
Set in East Oakland, California in a very near future, The Confession of Copeland Cane introduces us to a prescient and contemporary voice, one whose take on coming of age in America becomes a startling reflection of our present moment. - The Peach Seed
The Peach Seed
by Anita Gail Jones
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A multigenerational novel and an epic debut that explores the origins of a south Georgia family’s tradition and how its modern-day sons and daughters struggle the legacies of America’s Civil Rights Movement and the far-reaching impacts of the 1800s slave trade from Senegal to Charleston, S.C.
On a routine day, Fletcher Dukes drives his older sister, Olga, who is losing her sight, to do weekly grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly. On the liquor aisle, they pass a tall woman, head bowed reading a wine label. Fletcher smells her perfume first, then sees a strawberry birthmark on the nape of a woman’s neck and knows at once that this is his lost love, Altovise Benson. Fletcher and Altovise risked their lives together in sit-ins and marches, but their plan to marry was interrupted when the police turned a peaceful protest violent. The two were jailed in different towns leading to a separation that would ultimately span 52 years. Before Altovise’s departure, Fletcher carves her a peach seed monkey with diamond eyes. As we learn via harrowing flashbacks to 1800’s Senegal, an undiscovered Dukes ancestor who was sold into slavery carved the first monkey—the Peach Seed Monkey that forms the talismanic tradition, the rite of passage, that each generation of Dukes man gifts to his son on his 13th birthday—along with the tools and knowledge to carve them himself. By giving one to Altovise Fletcher initiates a physical and spiritual break in a tradition that like the Civil Rights Movement irrevocably shapes the lives of future generations including a Fletcher’s daughters, his grandson, Bo-D and a constellation of Dukes in the present.
- A Quitter's Paradise : A Novel
A Quitter's Paradise : A Novel
Elysha Chang
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In A Quitter’s Paradise, the darkly humorous debut by bold, new voice Elysha Chang, a young woman does everything she can to ignore her mother’s death, even as unearthed family secrets become increasingly inextricable from her own.
Eleanor is doing just fine. Yes, she’s keeping secrets from her husband. Sure, she quit her PhD program and is now conducting unauthorized research on illegitimately procured mice. And, true, her mother is dead, and Eleanor has yet to go through her things. But what else is she supposed to do? What shape can grief take when you didn’t understand the person you’ve lost?
Resisting at every turn, Eleanor tumbles blindly down a path toward confronting her present. As Eleanor’s avoidance of her feelings results in a series of outrageous—often hilarious—choices, her actions begin to threaten all she holds most dear. Meanwhile, glimpses of Eleanor’s childhood and family history in Taiwan unfurl, revealing long-held secrets, and Eleanor starts to realize that she will never be able to escape her grief, or her family, despite her wildest attempts. But will she be brave enough to withstand the reckoning she’s hurtling toward?
At once disarmingly provocative and compulsively readable, A Quitter’s Paradise is an unexpectedly funny study of the beauty and contradictions of grief, family bonds, and self-knowledge, exploring the ways we unwittingly guard the secrets of our loved ones, even from ourselves.
- Silence
Silence
by Zaire Crown
$16.95A gritty, intense novel set on Detroit’s mean streets, featuring a much-feared deaf killer known as “The Silent Assassin,” who’s fresh out of prison and on a mission to avenge the murder of the man who taught him to survive. Perfect for readers of K’wan and Ashley & JaQuavis.
The man called Silence never let being deaf stop him from becoming Detroit’s most feared thug. Now he’s tearing up the city’s meanest hood to avenge the murder of his mentor. But there’s a brutal truth even he won't see coming . . .
Deaf since childhood, Silence can read body language like a book. His mentor, Doc, who acted as his voice, taught him to navigate the streets. Silence put those skills together to become the Motor City’s most lethal killer. But now he’s home after twelve years in lockdown—and primed for revenge. His city is crumbling, and Doc has been shot dead, his empire divvied up between Silence’s former friends—and no one is talking. . . Until Silence starts rattling cages, from the town’s hottest strip joints to its icy centers of political power.
Under pressure from a ruthless cop, Silence soon finds that the loyalty and friendship he valued, the truths he lived by—even the man he looked up to—might just be deadly illusions. And when someone goes after his adopted family, Silence is on the clock to unravel a lethal conspiracy—and stake his life on one last impossible play . . . - Trinity
Trinity
by Zelda Lockhart
$27.99Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into the world in Fayetteville, North Carolina by a Black nurse who declares, “Lord Jesus, if that ain’t the blackest little baby born this side of heaven.” Later, Lottie will prove that she is the ancestors’ promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanaian atrocities that have tormented Benjamin Lee, her grandfather who was born during the Great Depression in Mississippi’s red clay tobacco fields, and Benjamin Junior, his son and Lottie Rebecca’s father, born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the post Korean War GI Bill promises prosperity. These two generations of men are haunted by the Mother-Spirit who did not survive enslavement’s post-traumatic stress violence. Trinity is the riveting story of the daughter-spirit born to stitch love back into the scattered wombs of her Black mothers and call love back into the fishing blues songs of her Black male kin. Lottie Rebecca Lee is the Divine spirited daughter born to set everything back up right again, in this daringly original novel.
- The Temple of My Familiar
The Temple of My Familiar
by Alice Walker
$19.99In The Temple of My Familiar, Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. From recent African immigrants to a woman who grew up in the mixed-race rainforest communities of South America to Celie’s own granddaughter living in modern-day San Francisco, all must come to terms with the brutal stories of their ancestors in order to confront their own troubled lives.
As Alice Walker unfolds the experiences of these astonishing characters, she weaves a new mythology from old fables and history, creating a profoundly spiritual explanation for centuries of shared African American experience.
- The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle
The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle
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Still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, Jess is about to do the hardest thing she's ever done: empty her childhood home so that it can be sold. As she sorts through a lifetime of memories, everything comes to a halt when she comes across something she just can’t part with: an old set of encyclopedias. To the world, the books are outdated and ready to be recycled. To Jess, they represent love and the future that her mother always wanted her to have.
In the process of finding the books a new home, Jess discovers an unusual archive of letters, photographs, and curious housed in a warehouse and known as the Museum of Ordinary People. Irresistibly drawn, she becomes the museum's unofficial custodian, along with the warehouse’s mysterious owner. As they delve into the history of objects in their care, they not only unravel heart-stirring stories that span generations and continents, but also unearth long-buried secrets that lie closer to home.
Inspired by an abandoned box of mementos, The Museum of Ordinary People is a poignant novel about memory and loss, the things we leave behind, and the future we create for ourselves.
- Sunshine Nails: A Novel
Sunshine Nails: A Novel
by Mai Nguyen
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A tender, humorous, and page-turning debut about a Vietnamese Canadian family in Toronto who will do whatever it takes to protect their no-frills nail salon after a new high end salon opens up—even if it tears the family apart. Perfect for readers of Olga Dies Dreaming and The Fortunes of Jaded Women.
Vietnamese refugees Debbie and Phil Tran have built a comfortable life for themselves in Toronto with their family nail salon. But when an ultra-glam chain salon opens across the street, their world is rocked.
Complicating matters further, their landlord has jacked up the rent and it seems only a matter of time before they lose their business and everything they’ve built. They enlist the help of their daughter, Jessica, who has just returned home after a messy breakup and a messier firing. Together with their son, Dustin, and niece, Thuy, they devise some good old-fashioned sabotage. Relationships are put to the test as the line between right and wrong gets blurred. Debbie and Phil must choose: do they keep their family intact or fight for their salon? - G-Spot: An Urban Erotic Tale
G-Spot: An Urban Erotic Tale
by Noire
$17.00Her man demanded loyalty, but her body wouldn’t obey.
Have you ever rolled over in the middle of the night and realized you were doing things you swore you’d never do? Sexing brothers you vowed you’d never touch? Bending backwards and stooping lower than you ever thought you’d stoop? Well if you can feel me even a little bit, then let me hit you with a story that just might blow your mind. . . .
Nineteen-year-old Juicy Stanfield is the sexy young girlfriend of Granite “G” McKay, owner of Harlem’s notorious G-Spot Social Club. A drug dealer with a lethal streak, he runs Harlem with an iron fist. But even the cash and the bling can’t keep Juicy from getting restless, and while G fulfills her every material desire, she’s burning up with unrequited sexual energy. To cheat on him would mean a death sentence; so Juicy finds pleasure in secret ways: fantasizing on crowded subways or allowing her eyes to hungrily take in the male dancers on the club’s ladies night.
But as Juicy’s sexual cravings grow stronger, one thing becomes frighteningly clear: She’s a virtual prisoner in G’s dangerous world. As G begins to suspect her of playin’ him, he pulls the reins he keeps on her even tighter. If she’s ever to escape and get a life of her own she must find a way to start stashing away some of G’s cash. But doing that under G’s watchful eye is a challenge she might not live up to–especially when her appetite tempts her with the deadliest desire of all: G’s very own son. . . . - Our Fruiting Bodies: Short Fiction
Our Fruiting Bodies: Short Fiction
by Nisi Shawl
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Our Fruiting Bodies collects stories of old growth and fresh decay, of stubborn rebirth and the faint but nonimaginary paths connecting life and nonlife. From the sharp, sweet confessional of their Peter Pan-inspired “Awfully Big Adventure,” through the melting ambitextualities of “Just Us”—from the early, dizzy-eyed quest at the heart of “Looking for Lilith” through the newly unfurling tendrils that pierce the grounds of “I Being Young and Foolish,” Nisi Shawl’s search for the power of fiction’s truth puts pure, precious gifts right here, right in your hands, ripe and ready for reading.
- The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption by Shannon Gibney
The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be: A Speculative Memoir of Transracial Adoption by Shannon Gibney
$18.99Part memoir, part speculative fiction, The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be explores the often surreal experience of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee.
Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian.
At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical records, and brief essays on the surreal absurdities of the adoptee experience.
The end result is a remarkable portrait of an American experience rarely depicted in any form. - By the Light of My Father's Smile: A Novel
By the Light of My Father's Smile: A Novel
by Alice Walker
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By the Light of My Father's Smile is Alice Walker's first novel in six years--a stunning, original, and important book by "one of the best American writers of today" (The Washington Post).
A family from the United States goes to the remote Sierras in Mexico--the writer-to-be, Susannah; her sister, Magdalena; her father and mother. And there, amid an endangered band of mixed-race Blacks and Indians called the Mundo, they begin an encounter that will change them more than they could ever dream. Moving back and forth in time, and among unforgettable characters and their stories, Walker crosses conventional borders of all kinds as she explores in this magical novel the ways in which a woman's denied sexuality leads to the loss of the much prized and necessary original self; and how she regains that self, even as her family's past of lies and love is transformed.
By the Light of My Father's Smile presents, as Alice Walker puts it, "a celebration of sexuality, its absolute usefulness in the accessing of one's mature spirituality, and the father's role in assuring joy or sorrow in this arena for his female children." It explores the richness and coherence of alternative culture, experience of sexuality as a celebration of life, of trust in Nature and the Spirit, even as it affirms the belief, as Walker says, "that it is the triumphant heart, not the conquered heart, that forgives. And that love is both timeless and beyond time." - The Novel Art of Murder by V.M. Burns
The Novel Art of Murder by V.M. Burns
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Mystery bookstore owner Samantha Washington is trying to keep her grandmother from spending her golden years in an orange jumpsuit . . .
The small town of North Harbor, Michigan, is just not big enough for the two of them: flamboyant phony Maria Romanov and feisty Nana Jo. The insufferable Maria claims she's descended from Russian royalty and even had a fling with King Edward VIII back in the day. She’s not just a lousy liar, she's a bad actress, so when she nabs the lead in the Shady Acres Senior Follies—a part Nana Jo plays every year in their retirement village production—Nana Jo blows a gasket and reads her the riot act in front of everyone.
Of course, when Maria is silenced with a bullet to the head, Nana Jo lands the leading role on the suspects list. Sam’s been writing her newest mystery, set in England between the wars, with her intrepid heroine Lady Daphne drawn into murder and scandal in the household of Winston Churchill. But now she has to prove that Nana Jo’s been framed. With help from her grandmother's posse of rambunctious retirees, Sam shines a spotlight on Maria’s secrets, hoping to draw the real killer out of the shadows . . .
- Eva's Man
Eva's Man
by Gayl Jones
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"The Best American Novelist Whose Name You May Not Know"—Calvin Baker, The Atlantic
"A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers" -TAYARI JONES, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE
"An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in
the blood." -John Updike, The New Yorker
Eva's Man is a gripping psychological portrait of a woman unable to love for fear of pain. Imprisoned for the bizarre murder of her lover, Eva Median Canada weaves together memory and fantasy to reveal a life tormented by the brutality of sexual abuse and emotional silence. Brilliantly experimenting with language, Jones infuses her graphic and powerful narrative of the triple yoke of race, class, and gender with a rich musical and oral idiom. - The Great Mrs. Elias: A Novel
The Great Mrs. Elias: A Novel
by Barbara Chase-Riboud
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The author of the award-winning Sally Hemings now brings to life Hannah Elias, one of the richest black women in America in the early 1900s, in this mesmerizing novel swirling with atmosphere and steeped in history.
A murder and a case of mistaken identity brings the police to Hannah Elias’ glitzy, five-story, twenty-room mansion on Central Park West. This is the beginning of an odyssey that moves back and forth in time and reveals the dangerous secrets of a mysterious woman, the fortune she built, and her precipitous fall.
Born in Philadelphia in the late 1800s, Hannah Elias has done things she’s not proud of to survive. Shedding her past, Hannah slips on a new identity before relocating to New York City to become as rich as a robber baron. Hannah quietly invests in the stock market, growing her fortune with the help of businessmen. As the money pours in, Hannah hides her millions across 29 banks. Finally attaining the life she’s always dreamed, she buys a mansion on the Upper West Side and decorates it in gold and first-rate décor, inspired by her idol Cleopatra.
The unsolved murder turns Hannah’s world upside-down and threatens to destroy everything she’s built. When the truth of her identity is uncovered, thousands of protestors gather in front of her stately home. Hounded by the salacious press, the very private Mrs. Elias finds herself alone, ensnared in a scandalous trial, and accused of stealing her fortune from whites.
Packed with glamour, suspense, and drama, populated with real-life luminaries from the period, The Great Mrs. Elias brings a fascinating woman and the age she embodied to glorious, tragic life.
- Darkwater
Darkwater
by W.E.B. Du Bois
$10.99Du Bois' foundational investigation of social justice and civil rights by means of essay, poetry, prayer and short science fiction.
A new edition with a new introduction, Du Bois' radical text is a rare statement of values formed around the vision of a collective life, where the humanity of black women and men is treated with dignity and equality. He expresses his themes through a series of literary forms: polemic essay, spirituals, poetry and short science fiction, each of which forms a pulse of social justice from a time when a true understanding of intersections between poverty, work, racism and feminism was rare. A new title in the Foundations of Black Science Fiction series. - Black No More
Black No More
by George S. Schuyler
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It’s New Year’s Day 1933 in New York City, and Max Disher, a young black man, has just found out that a certain Dr. Junius Crookman has discovered a mysterious process that allows people to bleach their skin white—a new way to “solve the American race problem.” Max leaps at the opportunity, and after a brief stay at the Crookman Sanitarium, he becomes Matthew Fisher, a white man who is able to attain everything he has ever wanted: money, power, good liquor, and the white woman who rejected him when he was black.
Lampooning myths of white supremacy and racial purity and caricaturing prominent African American leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois, Madam C. J. Walker, and Marcus Garvey, Black No More is a masterwork of speculative fiction and a hilarious satire of America’s obsession with race.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. - The Miseducation of Obi Ifeanyi by Chinua Achebe
The Miseducation of Obi Ifeanyi by Chinua Achebe
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Obi Ifeanyi's life is moving at a fast pace. He is now a husband and father. So while President Obama is contending with a tough reelection campaign, Obi Ifeanyi is dealing with the day to day pressures of married life and raising a son. When his former love interest, Sade Olufemi, comes back into his life and decides to run her political campaign with the help of his wife, Nkechi, Obi's problems are compounded because Sade is a secret Nkechi is better not knowing about. While he struggles with the torment of Sade's return, the upcoming wedding of his best friend from law school, will lead to the unveiling of a secret that will change the dynamics of the Ifeanyi family forever.
- Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral
Plum Bun: A Novel without a Moral
by Jessie Redmon Fauset
$17.00Written in 1929 at the height of the Harlem Renaissance by one of the movement's most important and prolific authors, Plum Bun is the story of Angela Murray, a young black girl who discovers she can pass for white. After the death of her parents, Angela moves to New York to escape the racism she believes is her only obstacle to opportunity. What she soon discovers is that being a woman has its own burdens that don't fade with the color of one's skin, and that love and marriage might not offer her salvation. - Redemption in Indigo
Redemption in Indigo
by Karen Lord
$16.00In this funny, fresh fable, a villager leaves her husband and finds she can manipulate chaos.
“Filled with witty asides, trickster spiders, poets and one very wise woman, 'Redemption in Indigo' is a rare find that you could hand to your child, your mother or your best friend.” —The Washington PostKaren Lord’s debut novel won the prestigious Frank Collymore Literary Prize in Barbados, the Mythopeic, Carl Brandon Parallax, and Crawford Awards. It is an intricately woven tale of adventure, magic, and the power of the human spirit.
Paama’s husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents’ home in the village of Makende, now he’s disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones—the djombi—who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.
Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord’s world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals, inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale, will feel instantly familiar—but Paama’s adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.
"Fantasy as a genre does not have boundaries," writes Lord. "It has roots. You may call it fantasy. I call it life.”
- Thunderland by Brandon Massey
Thunderland by Brandon Massey
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The stunning debut novel from the award-winning author of Dark Corner and Within the Shadows, now back in print . . .
Days after a devastating gale rips through his town and nearly takes his life, young Jason Brooks wakes up to a whole new world. His mother--once a neglectful, angry drunk--has given up the bottle to spend more time with him. His father--largely absent for most of Jason's life--is making an honest effort to mend his troubled marriage. And shy, self-conscious Jason has made friends--at last. The whole family is well on the way to recovery--and to finding the happiness that in the past has proved so elusive.
But then the nightmares start . . .
The stalker creeps into the bedroom. He bends down, slowly lifting the bedspread. He lifts it higher . . . and Jason wakes up screaming, his heart thudding in his chest.
And strange things begin to happen . . .
Cryptic messages appear on the bathroom mirror. Clothing flies about the room. The bed rises in the air . . . and thumps back to the ground. And always, in the distance, thunder roars . . .
Because someone--or something--is coming.
For Jason . . .
- Mosquito
Mosquito
by Gayl Jones
$19.95“Jones’s great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.”—Anna Wiener, The New Yorker
From the highly acclaimed author of Palmares, Corregidora, and The Healing—a rare and unforgettable journey set along the US-Mexico border about identity, immigration, and “the new underground railroad.”
First discovered and edited by Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century. In Mosquito, she examines the US-Mexico border crisis through the eyes of Sojourner Nadine Jane Johnson, an African American truck driver known as Mosquito. Her journey begins after she discovers a stowaway who nearly gives birth in the back of her truck, sparking Mosquito’s accidental yet growing involvement in “the new underground railroad,” a sanctuary movement for Mexican immigrants.
As Mosquito’s understanding of the immigrants’ need to forge new lives and identities deepens, so too does Mosquito’s romance with Ray, a gentle revolutionary, a philosopher, and, perhaps, a priest. Along the road, Mosquito introduces us to Delgadina, a Chicana bartender who fries cactus, writes haunting stories, and studies to become a detective; Monkey Bread, a childhood pal who is, improbably, assistant to a blonde star in Hollywood; Maria, the stowaway who names her baby Journal, a misspelled tribute to her unwitting benefactor Sojourner; and many more. - Fences
Fences
by August Wilson
$14.00*ships in 7-10 business days*Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less. This is a modern classic, a book that deals with the impossibly difficult themes of race in America, set during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Now an Academy Award-winning film directed by and starring Denzel Washington, along with Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Viola Davis. - Nova
Nova
Sold outGiven that the suns of Draco stretch almost sixteen light years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor of the 32nd century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the core of a recently imploded sun in order to obtain seven tons of it. The potential for profit is so great that Lorq has little difficulty cobbling together an alluring crew that includes a gypsy musician and a moon-obsessed scholar interested in the ancient art of writing a novel. What the crew doesn’t know, though, is that Lorq’s quest is actually fueled by a private revenge so consuming that he’ll stop at nothing to achieve it. In the grandest manner of speculative fiction, Nova is a wise and witty classic that casts a fascinating new light on some of humanity’s oldest truths and enduring myths.
- Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Book of Anansi
Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Book of Anansi
Sold outThe highly anticipated sequel to the instant #1 New York Times bestseller Nic Blake and the Remarkables: The Manifestor Prophecy—a boldly original and suspenseful fantasy adventure by one of the most popular and imaginative voices of this generation, Angie Thomas.
All of Nic’s dreams have come true. After years of living in hiding as a Remarkable in the Unremarkable world, she now has everything she’d ever wanted: certified hero status, a big family and a real home in the hidden city of Uhuru, and a chance to develop her Gift at a school for young Manifestors like her.
So life is perfect, right?
Not quite. Her-favorite-author-turned-vengeful-outcast wants to destroy her. Then there’s the terrifying secret prophecy that still threatens Nic’s future, and the dangerous new power she seems to have—one she cannot control. And that’s all before she encounters a cult of mysterious Manifestors who threaten to reveal the truth about her power and prophecy unless Nic delivers to them a legendary artifact, the Book of Anansi. There’s just one small complication: No one knows if it still exists, or where it could be hidden.
Nic now has only her twin brother, Alex, and her best friend, JP, to rely on as she makes a desperate attempt to uncover one of the Remarkable world’s oldest mysteries—and hold on to the home and family she has been searching for her entire life.
- Where We Found Our Home (Lost & Found Series)
Where We Found Our Home (Lost & Found Series)
$25.00Lincoln
I had my chance at love and I threw it away. I don’t deserve another.
I’ve dedicated my entire life to my community. There’s no time for anything else.
But then I met her. Ciara Jeffries is everything I told myself I didn’t want but she might be everything I need. If I can just hold on to her.
Ciara
If I don’t get out of this town I’ll lose my sanity, my loved ones, and my life. I need a fresh start and Austin, Texas feels like as good a place as any.
I wasn’t supposed to build connections and I definitely wasn’t supposed to fall in love.
Lincoln Cole has other plans for me. He has me breaking all my rules and I feel safe in his arms.
But safety is a luxury I don’t have.
I thought I ran far enough but my past will never let me go and my recklessness may just get Lincoln burned.
- Where We Found Our Heart (Lost & Found Series)
Where We Found Our Heart (Lost & Found Series)
$25.00Isaiah
I had my chance at a family and it was stolen from me.
I was told I was a joke, so that’s just what I’ll be.
But then she gives me news that turns my whole life upside down. Nina Williams is my second chance at a family and she might just be the missing key to my heart. I just need to prove to her I’m not the joke I pretend to be.
Nina
After the loss of my parents, I’m all my brother and sister have. I’m trying to piece my family back together.
I wasn’t ready to start a family of my own.
One night with Isaiah Cole changed all my plans. He’s nothing like I thought he was and I feel happy in his arms.
But happiness isn’t built to last.
When Isaiah has a chance to complete the family he always dreamed of, will the family I never knew I wanted be left behind?
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