"A Black father makes amends with his gay son through letters written on his deathbed in this wise and penetrating novel of empathy and forgiveness, for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robert Jones Jr. and Alice Walker. As Jacob lies dying, he begins to write a letter to his only son, Isaac. They have not met or spoken in many years, and there are things that Isaac must know. Stories about his ancestral legacy in rural Arkansas that extend back to slavery....

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers...

This poignant and powerful narrative tells the dramatic story of Kunta Kinte, snatched from freedom in Africa and brought by ship to America and slavery, and his descendants. Drawing on the oral traditions handed down in his family for generations, the author traces his origins back to the seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte, who was abducted from his home in Gambia and transported as a slave to colonial America. In this account Haley provides an imaginative...

Twelve-year old Joy dreams of writing music for the movies, but first she has to survive her family's move into a small apartment when her father loses his job.

When best selling author Carl Black moves his family back to his childhood home, he must team up with oddball neighbors to do battle with a pimp, who may or may not be an actual vampire.

"When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. When Hilton's wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons...

This book is unlike any memoir you'll ever read. Moving in its frankness, it is a relentless tale of a resilient spirit who took on the worst of contemporary urban life and survived it with a furious wit and unyielding determination. Cupcake Brown is a dynamic and original storyteller who will guide you on the most satisfying, startlingly funny, and genuinely affecting tour through hell you'll ever take.--From publisher description.

"A new edition of this award-winning modern classic, with new introduction, excerpt, and discussion guide Pakersfield, Georgia, 1958: Thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn is the sixth of ten fatherless siblings. She is the darkest-skinned among them and therefore the ugliest in her mother, Rozelle's, estimation, but she's also the brightest. Rozelle--beautiful, charismatic, and light-skinned--exercises a violent hold over her children. Fearing abandonment,...

QPBC New Voices Award winner Jervey Tervalon authors scintillating works of African-American fiction. Spellbinding, luminous, and richly atmospheric, Dead Above Ground tells the story of the wealthy Du Champs family of New Orleans. Helen, the matriarch, rules over her daughters Adele and Lita with an iron will. But Adele has fallen in love with smooth operator Lucien, who, unbeknownst to her, means to settle a decades-old score with her mother.

When her grandfather meddles in the billion-dollar development deal she's closing for the family company, Amara Devereaux-Rodriguez feels betrayed...and rebellious. A chance encounter with Lennox Carlisle is just the kind of trouble she's looking for. But their night together soon becomes a threat to Amara's aspirations because the mayoral contender has the power to quash the Devereaux deal. And now Amara's pregnant with his child. Can she quench...