About this title:As the eldest of nine children, Dr. James Adams has been the head of the family since the murder of his father years ago. He thought he put that day and his difficult childhood behind him when he left his hometown in East Texas. After chance reunites him with his high school sweetheart, along comes a host of problems.
Link to BookAbout this title:Grace, dignity, and eloquence have long been hallmarks of Maya Angelou's poetry. Her measured verses have stirred our souls, energized our minds, and healed our hearts. Whether offering hope in the darkest of nights or expressing sincere joy at the extraordinariness of the everyday, Maya Angelou has served as our common voice. "Celebrations "is a collection of timely and timeless poems that are an integral part of the global fabric. Several works have become nearly as iconic as Angelou herself: the inspiring "On the Pulse of Morning," read at President William Jefferson Clinton's 1993 inauguration; the heartening "Amazing Peace," presented at the 2005 lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House; "A Brave and Startling Truth," which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations; and "Mother," which beautifully honors the first woman in our lives.
Link to BookAbout this title: About this title: In this beautiful, deeply moving poem, Maya Angelou inspires us to embrace the peace and promise of Christmas, so that hope and love can once again light up our holidays and the world. "Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers, look heavenward," she writes, "and speak the word aloud. Peace." Read by the poet at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree at the White House on December 1, 2005, Maya Angelou’s celebration of the "Glad Season" is a radiant affirmation of the goodness of life and a beautiful holiday gift for people of all faiths.
Link to BookAbout this title:Maya Angelou wrote this moving poem on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.
Link to BookAbout this title:Maya Angelou, the bestselling author of On the Pulse of Morning, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now, and other lavishly praised works, is considered one of America's finest poets. Here, four of her most highly acclaimed poems are assembled in a beautiful gift edition that provides a feast for the eyes as well as the heart.
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About this title:Sales of Maya Angelou's Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings surged dramatically after her soul-stirring reading at President Clinton's inauguration.
Link to BookAbout this title:This stirring marriage of poetry and art combines the daring of Basquiat's vision with the courage and strength of Angelou's poem to create a place where every child may experience and celebrate his or her own fearlessness.
Link to BookAbout this title:From the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman comes a beautifully packaged hardcover edition of the poem that captivated the nation and quickly became a national bestseller.
Link to BookAbout this title:A seamless collaboration between renowned Inaugural poet Maya Angelou and Caldecott Award-winning illustrator Tom Feelings, this intensely sensuous work combines verse with sepia-toned illustrations in a beautiful paean to Black women.
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About this title:Maya Angelou describes her career as a singer and dancer in the 1930s and 1940s.
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About this title:Ghosts and colorful characters infuse this novel about three generations of African-American women.
Link to BookAbout this title:A young black girl growing up in Georgia, in the pre-Civil Rights 1950s has special powers to see ghosts and predict the future.
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About this title:In this hot series, new, deadly enemies of the Vampire Huntress join forces with the old in the battle that will lead to Armageddon.
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The Damned: A vampire huntress legend
About this title:In this sixth book in the ultra sexy, pulse-pounding series, Lilith, consort of the Un-Named One, has released deadly creatures from Hell, and their infection threatens to wipe out the Guardians and even The Covenant. The only antidote is to find and behead Lilith before more are lost.
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The Forsaken: A Vampire Huntress Legend.
About this title:Banks spins a head-bending complex tale of passion, mythology, war, and love that lasts till the grave--and beyond . . . devoted fans should relish this new chapter in a promising series."
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The Forbidden: A Vampire Huntress Legend.
About this title:Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned in this exciting fifth book of the Vampire Huntress series by the bestselling author of "The Damned."
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The Awakening: A Vampire Huntress Legend.
About this title:Damali Richards, Vampire Huntress and spoken word artist, must foil the plans of both the Vampire Council and the rogue vampire Fallon Nuit, and confront her ex-boyfriend Carlos, who has himself become a vampire.
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About this title:In a captivating debut novel that is both humorous and heartwrenching, ReShonda Tate Billingsley -- winner of the Gold Pen Award for Best New Author -- spins an irresistible story that will touch every reader's heart.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.
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About this title:"In her riveting second novel, ReShonda Tate Billingsley -- winner of the Gold Pen Award for Best New Author for "My Brother's Keeper" -- crafts a bold and heartwarming story of family and faith that will inspire readers everywhere."Reverend Simon Jackson has always felt destined to lead and he's done a good job of it, transforming his small Houston church into one of the most respected and renowned in the region. But while the good Reverend's been busy tending his flock, his family's gone astray. His nineteen-year-old daughter, Rachel, gives new meaning to "baby mama drama."
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About this title:Suburban Chicago homicide detective Marti MacAlister and her partner Matthew Jessenovik investigate the death of a Hollywood actress, a crime that appears to be related to the skeletal remains of another gunshot victim found in an old building.
Link to BookAbout this title:Suburban Chicago homicide detective Marti MacAlister, and her partner Matthew Jessenovik, investigate the death of a homeless woman that may be the result of a serial killing.
Link to BookAbout this title:This is a collection of 22 short crime and mystery stories written by African-American authors. Selections include "Bombadier" by Walter Mosley, "For Services Rendered" by Tracy P. Clark, and "The Werewolf File" by Hugh Holton.
Link to BookAbout this title:African-American homicide detective Marti MacAlister is worried about her best friend, Sharon, who's been dating a man who seems vaguely sinister. When the mystery man spirits Sharon and her daughter away to the Bahamas, Marti feels she must go after them to make sure Sharon's OK. Marti's partner Matthew Jessenovik is left behind in suburban Chicago to deal with a grisly dismemberment case.
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About this title:Marti begins to settle into her new role as wife to Ben and mother to their children, and all seems peaceful. But when an arsonist begins burning down buildings and detonating bombs all around Marti's Chicago suburb, she and her partner, Matthew "Vik" Jessenovik, must put aside their personal lives and investigate.
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About this title:Beloved suburban Chicago police detective Marti MacAlister returns early from her honeymoon to tackle two baffling cases--one a mummified body and one a much fresher corpse.
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About this title:Detective Marti MacAlister investigates the murder of a young woman whose criminal contacts may put a homeless man at risk. And while Marti looks for one killer, another has come from the past and into her home--zeroing in on all that is dear to Marti.
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About this title:Homicide detective Marti MacAlister is compelled to investigate her husband's death, a shooting that had appeared to be suicide. But three years later one of Johnny's former colleagues dies under equally inexplicable circumstances. The colleague's widow convinces Marti that there may be an explanation for the deaths, whether accidents, negligence, or murder. With the help of her partner Matt Jessenovik, her friends, and her enduring love for her husband, Marti confronts the police and the dangerous Chicago streets to find the truth.
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About this title:When a young woman and a little girl die in a fire at a women's clinic, Marti MacAlister must investigate whether they were accidentally caught in an insurance-related arson . . . or the victims of murder by a local right-to-life group.
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About this title:From the author of the "Essence" bestsellers "Church Folk" and "Second Sunday" comes a hilarious and affecting novel about a God-loving, 40-something woman's quest for love.
Link to BookCan't get Enough
About this title:Lust, greed and revenge continue to drive the well-to-do African-American residents of suburban Silver Lake, Maryland, in Briscoe's entertaining sequel to "P.G. County."
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P.G. County
About this title:Prince George County in Maryland is affluent and African-American, and in this sweeping novel Connie Briscoe creates a cast of characters--mostly women --who exemplify the best and the worst of its citizens.
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A Long Way from Home
About this title:Written by the author of the "New York Times" bestseller "Sisters & Lovers, " this novel of mothers and daughters, set in Virginia, tells the story of three generations of house slaves, from the time of President James Madison to the Civil War.
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Big Girls Don't Cry
About this title:Naomi Jefferson thinks she is immune from the horrors of racism in her middle class community. Her world is turned upside down when her brother is killed on his way to a civil rights demonstration,her lover betrays her, and cocaine begins to control her. Then her brother's illegitimate teenage son enters her life, and makes her own problems seem trivial.
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Sisters & Lovers
About this title:Beverly, Charmaine, and Evelyn are three sisters all living in the same city, but in very different worlds. They have at least one thing in common, though--they are each reaching their personal breaking points. This is a compulsively readable contemporary novel that follows the loves, choices, intrigues, and rivalries of three close-knit sisters.
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About this title:As Kira returns from Africa and fights for her right to be part of her orphaned niece's life, she finds support from a most unlikely source--and discovers that beyond the issues of race and biology lies a heartbreaking, long-hidden secret.
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About this title:Trina has been plagued with bipolar disorder for much of her 18 years, and Keri, her mother, struggles to cope, despite the destructive influence of Trina's father (Keri's ex), who refuses to admit his daughter is ill. When Trina begins a rapid downward trajectory, her illness increasingly uncontrollable, Keri finds herself enmeshed in the intricacies of her daughter's illness and desperate attempts to treat it--and to save Trina's life. (A 72-hour hold is the period when a mentally ill person can be held in a hospital without her consent.)
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About this title:In this picture book, a young girl named Annie must deal with the fact that her mother suffers from an unnamed mental illness. Sometimes Annie's mother is bright, shiny, and full of energy, but other times she is angry and closed off, and young Annie is left to take care of herself. Although Annie is sad about her mother's illness, she knows she can rely on the help and comfort of her grandmother, her neighbors, and her friends at school. Color illustrations accompany the text.
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About this title:In the late 1940s, two cleaning women at an L.A. hotel--one a black Texan, one a Holocaust survivor --become friends and devise a magic formula that turns black skin white. The saga of the product, their friendship, and what happens to both includes a new generation and stretches into the second half of the 20th century.
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About this title:A successful African American television producer returns to the decrepit Philadelphia neighborhood of her youth, and embarks on a campaign to revitalize the area.
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About this title:An eagerly awaited new novel by the author of Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. Campbell's new novel is set in the white-hot center of racially troubled Los Angeles, where African American Esther Jackson has a promising career at a downtown bank. When a new black male vice president's behavior draws a sexual harassment suit, Esther is forced to examine her own loyalties.
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About this title:In the pre-integration 1950s, a 15-year-old boy from Chicago goes to rural Mississippi for the summer and becomes involved in a fatal misunderstanding: the aftermath of that event is explored.
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About this title:Norma, who is African American, is having an affair with a white professor; Moxie, her old college pal, is a single mother who counsels troubled adolescents; Moxie's daughter Zadi is a teenager who wants to be a dancer and who must cope with racism at her largely white school. The novel explores these three women's attitudes toward the world and toward each other.
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About this title:Regina has grown up with her widowed father in Hawaii, but has always been curious about her family back in North Carolina. When she finds an intriguing 40-year-old letter, she decides the time has come to travel back to the states and look up some of those colorful folks she knows almost nothing about. What she finds when she gets there is not quite what she expected…
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About this title:A young mother and her son struggle to hold on to their dreams through decades of heartbreaking separations, relocations, and escapes.
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About this title:The characters that readers loved in "Riding Through Shadows" are at it again! Mother and Ma Dear, Tony Taylor, and others are back to make readers laugh and cry. This story, told through the life of a grieving single parent, shows how we can recover from past failures and find our way to sustained love and joy.
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About this title:Living in one of the most tumultuous decades of America's history, an eight-year-old African American girl experiences the anguish of real-life heartache. Yet, through a wise and eccentric old woman, she discovers the tenacity of joy.
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About this title:When Garvin's life as a D.C. lawyer begins to go astray, she returns to Jacks Creek, N.C., to take care of her beloved grandmother and to take stock of her life. While there, she finds true love and also a road back to the religion of her younger days.
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About this title:Fleeing danger in her beloved Mississippi homeland, a young African-American woman seeks new life, love, truth, and joy in romantic, turn-of-the-century Chicago.
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About this title:Startling and original, this new poetry collection covers such topics as Rosa Parks, Hurricane Katrina, and Emmett Till.
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About this title:This gorgeous, sophisticated picture book focuses on Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks's bold refusal to surrender her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. A detailed portrait of Rosa's day on December 1, 1955, is presented, chronicling her long hours spent as a seamstress before leaving work early on account of her ill mother. Relieved to find a seat in the "neutral" section of the bus, where both blacks and whites could sit, Rosa's decision to stay seated even after the bus driver demanded she move sparked the historic, yearlong Montgomery bus boycott.
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About this title:Collected from the Caedmon archives, this collection contains many of the authors Caedmon recorded in the 1950s-1960s, including Richard Wright's "Black Boy"; Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" with a selection performed by Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis; and "Langston Hughes Reads." Abridged. 5 CDs
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About this title:A poetic look at a young girl's summer with her extended family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Highlights include eating vegetables grown in her father's garden, attending church with her family, and going on a picnic with her grandmother. Illustrated with color paintings.
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About this title:In this provocative set of essays, Nikki Giovanni addresses issues in African American Studies: she indicts higher education, provides guidance for black students at predominantly white campuses, and critiques Spike Lee. In addition, she debates affirmative action, meditates on the purposes of poetry, and explores the role of riots.
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About this title:A collection of poetry that celebrates childhood, specifically as experienced by black children. Selections include "dance poem", "james shell's snowball stand", "shirley and her son", "chester's wisdom", "springtime", and "mattie lou at 12". Illustrated with b&w pencil drawings.
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About this title:This book marked a new dimension in tone and philosophy-personal and autobiographical rather than political; it is also lively, loving, witty, and occasionally tough-minded.
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About this title:Everlasting Love is a deeply moving story of love lost and how through her grief, a woman can learn to live and love again.
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About this title:The reigning queen of R&B, superstar Breeze Blackwell has thousands of fans at her feet. But backstage, beneath her electric persona, is a woman who aches for the one man she's loved and lost. Now, after a decade of silence, Alexander "Lex" Franklin is back. A chart-topping guitarist and savvy record producer, it was he who had helped Breeze discover the joys of passion. Their first love, torn apart by treachery, had turned into a ballad of betrayal. But now, Lex is determined to put the pieces back together.
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About this title:This massive collection of letters--over 500 in all--illuminates the life of Zora Neale Hurston a and her circle. Written to, among others, Langston Hughes, Carl Van Vechten, Fannie Hurst, and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Hurston's letters are sharply intelligent, fiercely individual, and heartbreakingly explicit as they chronicle her rise and fall as a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.
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About this title:The most extensive volume of African-American folklore that Hurston left behind, this collection of nearly 500 folktales gathered in the late 1920s represents a major part of her literary legacy.
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About this title:From 1938 to 1939, Zora Neale Hurston worked in Florida as a "relief reporter" for the Federal Writers Project. Here are her writings from that period--on race, folklore, writing, and the social position of blacks--as well as a biographical essay by the editor
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About this title:These stories, written during the years 1921 to 1960, reflect Hurston's major interests--folklore, feminism, jazz, black history, and culture. As in her novels, Hurston employs rich language, inventive metaphors, and black American dialect to bring her characters to life. This collection includes several stories that have never been published before.
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About this title:The first in the two-volume collection brings together novels and stories, a chronology of Hurston's life, detailed notes, and an essay on the text. Includes JONAH'S GOURD VINE, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, MOSES, SERAPH ON THE SUWANEE, and a rich selection of short stories that illustrate Hurston's unique fusion of folk tradition and literary modernism.
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About this title:A special feature of this collection of works by Zora Neale Hurston is the first complete and unexpurgated edition of her 1942 autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road. Tell My Horse, Mules and Men, and selected articles are included also. Features a brief essay on the texts and detailed notes.
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About this title:Zora Neale Hurston's now-classic novel about Janie Crawford, the granddaughter of an ex-slave, and her three husbands: Mr. Killicks, Mayor Starks and, finally, Tea Cake--the love of her life. The novel is set in a black community in rural Florida, and the characters speak in dialect--a technique that inspired both anger and praise from other black writers. THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, first published in 1937, is a landmark novel of the black experience in America and also--because of Janey's stubborn insistence on her independence--of feminism.
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About this title:Zorah Neale Hurston's 1942 autobiography is a lively account of her rich and extraordinary life, from her impoverished childhood in rural Florida to her position as one of the major figures in the Harlem Renaissance.
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About this title:Unusual among Hurston's writings, this novel features a white protagonist: a depressed woman in Florida who manages to acquire a measure of self-esteem.
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About this title:John Buddy Pearson, a Baptist minister, is a good preacher but a bad husband. His adulterous adventures are condemned by the black society of his southern town--something he is unable to comprehend. Hurston's first novel was published in 1934.
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About this title:Hurston's collection of black American songs, stories, and folklore has become a classic.
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About this title:Three African American women and one white woman work at a beauty shop called Blessings. This novel tells their stories, and describes their intersecting lives.
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About this title:On the surface, the Ledouxes live an idyllic life among the upper-echelon of New Orleans' most powerful. However, once these relatives come together to celebrate a wedding, generational secrets that have spanned decades slowly come to the surface and lead two sisters to uncover the truth about their family and themselves.
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About this title:"Waiting to Exhale" meets "Church Folk" as five female attorneys do brunch each week to trade tales about their love lives, law firms, and the Lord. But what happens when depression hits hard? Through conversation and consolation, these dynamic characters provide one another with divine inspiration--encouraging readers to root for them along the way.
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About this title:Margaret Johnson-Hodge has won increasing admiration and recognition from readers who respond to her emotionally powerful and provocative stories. Unafraid to tackle difficult subjects, Johnson-Hodge tells her tales with great sensitivity, insight and wit, pulling readers in with her very human characters and lively narrative. "Some Sunday" is about loss and heartache, love and friendship, and ultimately, about hope, renewal and triumph.
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About this title:Fearful love would elude her all of her life, Sandy Hutchinson finally meets the man of her dreams. Adrian Burton has a butterscotch complexion, but Sandy, plagued with low self-esteem since childhood, wonders how he can be attracted to her. Their whirlwind romance is interrupted by a fateful call about Adrian's dying ex-wife. Now, Sandy must decide if her love is strong enough.
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About this title:For Samone Lewis, a Harlem sista with attitude, the only problem with her lover Max was his fear of marriage. Now the thirty-something Samone finds herself on the rebound. Then Jon Everette, walks into Samone's office. He's funny, caring and crazy about her, even though Samone still wants Max. Max understands blackness--the pride and anger, dreams and pain. Samone didn't date white boys. She sure didn't fall in love with them. If she did, she might have to fight the world, her family, and most of all, herself.
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About this title:A light-skinned African American woman is married to a white man who is ignorant of her racial heritage. Her childhood friend, equally capable of "passing," has chosen to live her life as a black woman and deny the existence of racism. A chance meeting forces both women to confront truths about themselves. First published in 1929, this novel has become a minor classic about the complexity of race relations in America.
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About this title:Traveling across country together, a mother and daughter discover the assorted pieces of their family's past, which--when pulled together--reveal a history of amazing survival and abundant joy.
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About this title:From the author of "Secrets of an Irresistible Woman" comes a novel of five women who explore how intelligent women with impressive careers, coveted urban dwellings, and closets full of fashions can still worry so much about the shortage of men.
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About this title:From the author of "Secrets of an Irresistible Woman" comes a novel of five women who explore how intelligent women with impressive careers, coveted urban dwellings, and closets full of fashions can still worry so much about the shortage of men.
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About this title:Three sisters are raised in an upper-class black community in Philadelphia. When, in the early '60s, their father's business fails and he disappears from their lives, their mother collapses, and the girls are put into foster care with a working-class family. Their foster sister, Ramona, who resents them deeply, is being abused by her mother, Mae, and the three sisters must cope with Ramona's problems, Mae's political activism, and the enormous changes in their own lives.
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About this title:Marilyn Grimes is going through a midlife crisis that seems pretty run-of-the-mill: the usual rampant hormones, dull husband, in-law problems, grown children and their woes. Then something happens that changes everything--most of all, Marilyn....
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About this title:McMillan takes her readers into the Price family, to meet Viola, the matriarch, and her four grown children: Paris (Viola calls her a lion), Lewis (a horse), Charlotte (a bull), and Janelle (a lamb). There's also Cecil, her very unusual husband. McMillan explores their story with the insight into the lives of contemporary African-Americans that has made her a best-seller.
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About this title:A man and a woman, both commitment-shy, both with hard lives and much disappointment, come together in Brooklyn, and--despite themselves--fall in love.
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About this title:When African American attorney Carol Reese loses her husband to a senseless murder, she suspects that his death is linked to the high-powered, often unscrupulous client he was representing.
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About this title:In this sensational new novel from the "New York Times" bestselling author of "God Dont Like Ugly" and "God Don't Play," a beautiful, resourceful woman engineers a high-stakes game of love, money, and sex--all in the name of a better future.
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About this title:In this third novel in the God Dont series, Annette Goode finally seems to have the perfect life. But out of the blue, she starts to receive hostile letters and vicious phone calls. Someone won't rest until the life Annette has worked so hard to build is torn down.
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About this title:The bestselling author of "God Don't Like Ugly" delivers a powerful and passionate new novel about six captivating women who share life on the streets of San Francisco and who are willing to face the worst life has to offer and still hope for the best.
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About this title:Set five years after the events in "The Beach House," Monroe revisits the Isle of Palms, as Toy Sooner plumbs the roots of her insecurities and fears and learns to release them at last and live fearlessly.
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About this title:Mama June and Preston Blakely's lifelong dream has been to hold on to the tract of land left from the family's plantation. When it looks as though they might have to sell, the family struggles to keep the land and remain united.
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About this title:"What price beauty? Mary Alice Monroe's "Girl in the Mirror" reflects the shadows and shapes of a woman's painful and illuminating journey of self-discovery, of choices, of loves."
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About this title:Monroe's "Gonna Lay Down My Burdens" opens with a bang when Carmen Taylor intervenes in a violent lovers' quarrel between her friends Chester and Desiree, and Chester winds up dead. Most of the novel is told in flashback, following Carmen and Chester's ill-fated attraction to one another.
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About this title:Noble prize-winning author Toni Morrison collaborates with her son, Slade, to present this reassuring look at mean people and angry feelings. Color illustrations accompany the text.
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About this title:The Pulitzer Prize winner presents a treasure chest of archival photographs that depict the historical events surrounding school desegregation.
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About this title:Toni Morrison's eighth novel centers on the Cosey family. Bill Cosey rose from poverty to become the millionaire owner of a prosperous resort. His son, Billy Boy, and Billy's daughter, Christine, have opposing views about the place. As years go by, Cosey's wealthy widow, Heed, struggles to keep the upper hand, and Billy's widow, May, becomes desperately afraid that what she has will be taken from her.
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About this title:Because they do not abide by the rules written by the adults around them, three children are judged unable to handle their freedom and forced to live in a box with three locks on the door.
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About this title:From the 1993 Nobel Prize-winner comes a novel "so charged with pain and wonder that it becomes poetry" (The New York Times). First published in 1965, The Bluest Eye is the story of a black girl who prays--with unforeseen consequences--for her eyes to turn blue so she will be accepted.
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About this title:The unnamed omniscient narrator--like a Greek chorus, or a tribal storyteller--relates the story of Joe and Violet Trace, a pair of orphans who meet and marry in rural Virginia, then come north to Harlem in 1906. Trapped in their unfulfilling marriage for 20 years, Joe begins an affair with a young woman, Dorcas. When she leaves him, he kills her--an act which, oddly, restores his relationship with Violet. Throughout the novel, the rhythms of jazz in early-20th-century New York propel the narrative.
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About this title:Sethe, an escaped slave, kills her own daughter Beloved with a handsaw to prevent her from being claimed as a slave in this stunningly rendered story. Beloved returns to her mother as a ghost 20 years later.
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About this title:The household of Valerian and Margaret Street is disrupted when Son Green--the "tar baby" of the title--arrives at Christmas instead of their son Michael. The Streets' black servants, Sydney and Ondine Childs, are also affected by Son's visit: their niece Jadine falls in love with him, and his presence in the house forces Ondine's revelation of a long-held secret about the Street family. After the turmoil, when Jadine and Son try to fit into each other's very different lives, they find they must first of all come to terms with who they are, and how they fit into their families and society.
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About this title:This novel takes readers into a magical and richly peopled world which encompasses four generations of African American life.
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About this title:Sula and Nel grow up together in "the Bottom," but when they become adults, their paths diverge. Sula leaves to explore the world, Nel settles down to a quiet life. When they are reunited, the differences between them become apparent--as do, in the end, the similarities. Morrison's novel evokes not only two unique women, but the entire culture of a small Ohio town.
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About this title:This sequel to THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE consists of seven interlocked stories about the men of Naylor's famous community.
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About this title:Bailey's Cafe is not located in a specific geographical area. It is a place that appears whenever a character needs a place "to take a breather for a while." The novel consists of the stories of various characters,all of them desperate, all of them in pain. Naylor uses a "jazz-like" theme construction, bringing in many voices all "conducted" by Bailey, to tell the story.
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About this title:The story of Ophelia Day and her fiancé George Andrews is just the tip of the iceberg in MAMA DAY. Naylor narrates Ophelia's family history on the island of Willow Springs, South Carolina. Ophelia is from a matriarchal family, whose head, Miranda "Mama" Day, is something of a midwife with magical powers and knowledge of the supernatural. Ophelia brings George to Willow Springs where, after a storm, he pragmatically sets about building a bridge to the mainland so the family won't be isolated in times of emergency. George finds he must also confront the powers of magic that run in Ophelia's family.
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About this title:The women of Brewster Place are "hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased". In their stories, Gloria Naylor has created a community of women that has touched thousands of readers across the country.
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About this title:When Vivian Carlson is forced to raise the love child of her womanizing politician husband, she begins by rebelling but ends up falling for the child--a little girl, named Passion. Finally gaining the courage to leave the marriage, she takes Passion with her, enrolls in law school, and meets a divorced father who just happens to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer--and the man of her dreams.
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About this title:Audrey Roberts, a woman who has more than her share of troubles, falls in love with a police officer, only to discover that he is the man who arrested her son on murder charges.
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About this title:Bobbie Strickland, the principal of a busy Austin, Texas, school, has to raise her grandchild because her daughter is incapable. Then her friend and neighbor is beaten and robbed. Bobbie's life seems filled to overflowing, and she wonders if she can handle it. Then she falls in love with Raymond....
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About this title:Jessica, Shereen, Yolanda, and Ellie were college pals and sorority sisters, and they have stayed friends into adulthood. Each approaches a romantic crisis in her life--particularly Yolanda, whose new boyfriend turns out to be Shereen's ex, and Jessica, who is getting threatening letters from she knows not whom.
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About this title:One of England's most widely acclaimed young novelists adopts two eerily convincing narrative voices and juxtaposes their stories to devastating effect in this mesmerizing portrait of slavery. Cambridge is a devoutly Christian slave in the West Indies whose sense of justice is both profound and self-destructive, while Emily is a morally-blind, genteel Englishwoman.
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About this title:Dorothy Jones has had a hell of a time. Her parents are dead, her late sister was badly abused by her husband, Dorothy's own husband abandoned her for a younger woman, her subsequent boyfriends have been losers, and she has just been fired from her schoolteaching job. At this low point in her life, her only friend is a handyman named Solomon who lives in her neighborhood. A former soldier in an African civil war, Solomon has come to England as a refugee. As they draw closer together, the two of them must battle not only their own demons but a legacy of racial strife. A New York Times Notable Book.
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About this title: Caryl Phillips's eighth novel is set in Harlem in the early 20th century and is based on a real person: Bert Williams ((1874-1922), who emigrated from the Bahamas as a child and went on to became a sought-after vaudeville performer. His claim to fame was his stereotypical portrayal of blacks--playing, in blackface, a comic character known as a "coon"--a move he hoped would further the cause of race relations by making blacks entertaining and appealing to whites. The reactions of his wife, his friends, his associates, and the general public was a complex mixture. As Phillips writes about Williams--with empathy and insight--he also explores the dilemma of blacks trying to find success but also be true to themselves in a white world.
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About this title:Tasha, the narrator of Porter's coming-of-age novel, is the 14-year-old mother of a baby girl named Imani.
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About this title:In 1864, after her father and brother are sold to another owner, nine-year-old Addy Walker and her mother escape from their cruel life of slavery in North Carolina to freedom in Philadelphia.
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About this title:The story of Addy, a young black girl living in America during the time of slavery. In Addy Saves the Day, the Civil War is over, but not the feud between Addy and Harriet, until tragedy forces them to come together at last.
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About this title:The long struggle to reunite Addy's family finally ends, but there is heartache along with happiness.
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About this title:After escaping from a plantation in North Carolina, Addy and her mother arrive in Philadelphia, where Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship.
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About this title:Trying to shape a new life of freedom in Philadelphia after having been a slave, Addy finds inspiration from a new friend.
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About this title:Addy and her mother forgo their Christmas plans to help the newly freed slaves arriving in Philadelphia during the Civil War.
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About this title:The African-American inhabitants of a rundown housing project near Buffalo are the focus of Connie Porter's debut novel.
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About this title:The Reverend Curtis Black turns over a new leaf in this engrossing novel by the beloved "New York Times" bestselling author of "Love and Lies."
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About this title:Sinclair writes frankly about a young black woman's sexuality and emotions, growing up in Chicago's South Side in the '60s. By turns hilarious and harrowing, this "in-your-face" novel powerfully captures what it was like to be black--before black was beautiful.
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About this title:Coffee Will Make You Black, Sinclair's bestselling debut novel, introduced Stevie, a tough-talking, irresistible African-American girl growing up on Chicago's South Side during the time of the civil rights movement. Now Stevie returns, just graduated from college and ready to explore her new turf--San Francisco in 1971.
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About this title:From the bestselling author of "Coffee Will Make You Black" comes this sparkling new novel of self-knowledge starring Chicago DJ Daphne Dupree. At first Daphne fears her romance with Skylar, a handsome mediator, might never get to the next step, but as their relationship progresses, she finds that her yearning for someone to love ends with a discovery of herself.
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About this title:About this title: Greg's mother abandoned the family years ago. Now, when Greg becomes engaged to Adrian, the woman he thinks is his dream girl, his long-lost mother turns up and reconciles with Greg's father--and Greg struggles to understand why she had to leave. Then he discovers some unsettling things about Adrian.
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About this title:Babysister, the heroine, is in love with Darren, who is unfortunately in love with her friend, Deborah. Babysister is a bridesmaid at the wedding and then must learn to get on with her life.
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About this title:"Nappily Ever After" is a hip, sassy novel about a smart and successful African-American woman who discovers the true meaning of liberation when she rebels against the beauty ritual she has dutifully accepted since early childhood.
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About this title:In her triumphant new novel, the bestselling author of "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do" writes a story about a mother's betrayal, a murder, and a secret. This is a novel filled with anguish and compassion, secrets and lies, wealth and desperation.
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About this title:P.I. Tamara Hayle tackles her toughest case: finding the killer of a close friend and her son.
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About this title:Three tough and independent women fall insanely, hopelessly in love with the divine Randall Hollis--who may or may not be too good to be true.
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About this title:Struggling P.I. Tamara Hayle is hired by New Jersey's most affluent African-American family to find their rebellious daughter who's run off to Atlantic City where a serial killer prowls the streets. Tamara joins the hunt for the missing Gabriella Desmond--especially after Gabriella's last known roommate is murdered.
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About this title:The ties that bind an African American family are tested in this Blackboard best-selling novel. Tired of living a passionless life in a passionless marriage, middle-aged Hutch suddenly finds himself falling in love with the wife of his best friend. Little does Hutch know, however, that his long-suffering wife, Eva, is on the brink of finding her...
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About this title:P.I. Tamara Hayle's latest client, radio personality Mandy Magic, is rich, famous and stalked by a past that won't turn her loose. Mandy knows that each act of vandalism and seemingly random murder brings the demons of her yesterdays closer--and each day that passes makes her easier to kill.
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About this title:Private Investigator and single mom Tamara Hayle struggles against the bureaucracy of Newark, New Jersey to find the killer of Shawn Raymond, a man who was the childhood mentor of her brother.
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About this title:Newark detective Tamara Hayle, finds a mystery wherever she goes. This time it's Kingston, Jamaica where she finds herself stranded in a bar with only two corpses for company.
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About this title:Tamara Hayle, the female, African-American P.I. who made her "valuable debut" in the acclaimed When Death Comes Stealing, finds her sleuthing skills put to the ultimate test when her newest and very well-heeled client turns up dead--only hours after he hires her.
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About this title:The last novel by Dorothy West, the final surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1953, Shelby Coles, a young member of the colony of upper-class black families on Martha's Vineyard, wishes to marry a white jazz musician. The older generation rejects this proposal, but finds equally unsuitable Lute McNeil, a prosperous black furniture salesman who wants to move into the group's social rank. After uncovering buried tensions among the members of the Coles family, "The Wedding" arrives at a tragic event. Using flashbacks from the wedding day to past generations, it delves into interracial and intraracial bigotry.
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About this title:Four women, whose lives have been entwined together from fifth grade through their 30th high school reunion, celebrate the dramas, triumphs, and love that holds them together.
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About this title:This historical novel about the Underground Railroad emphasizes Christian values, as Joseph, an ex-slave who is now a doctor working with the Quakers, tries to help a runaway.
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About this title:he fourth Charlotte Justice police procedural takes place in 1993; the Rodney King riots linger in recent memory and racial tensions in L.A. remain high. Eight months ago, someone shot Charles Zuccari, CEO of CZ Toys, along with his pregnant wife, Alma, and two Muslim African-American colleagues. As the Zuccaris continue to recover, the primary suspect in the shootings is critically injured in an automobile accident--and the car trunk is found to contain $27,000 in cash. LAPD Detective Charlotte Justice reopens her investigation of the so-called "Smiley Face Shooting".
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About this title:This debut novel featuring black LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice is set during the epochal L.A. riots. Justice saves a curfew-breaking black doctor from a potentially lethal beating--only to discover nearby the body of a one-time radical.
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About this title:Kenneth Willis is 9 when his parents divorce and he returns from Germany with his mother to the former plantation in Kentucky where her family still lives. From the stories his grandmother tells him in the "colored garden" (where former slaves are buried), Kenneth learns about racism, family, and life in America.
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About this title:The charismatic bestselling writer Solomon Wilberforce has neatly compartmentalized his life, spending part of the year in the Caribbean where he was born, part in New York where he was raised, and part in Ghana with his young and innocent lover. When his father dies, and he must attend the funeral, the different parts of his life converge.
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About this title:Playwright Carey McCullough is led on a journey of self-discovery that takes him from South Carolina to Africa. His guide is the beautiful, mercurial Frances, a woman who belongs to the mystical African tribe the Hora. Frances believes that she and Carey share a deep, supernatural connection with roots in Hora myth.
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About this title:Jamaican-born Fire is charming, talented, and a man who's vowed to never play games again. Then he meets Sylvia, a beautiful magazine editor who keeps her passions under lock and key. Together they try to connect, disconnect, and reconnect amid conflicting desires and wounds from the past.
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About this title:For the first time in more than two decades, the very best of Countee Cullen's poetry & prose is available in one collection. "My Soul's High Song" is a generous introduction to new readers of Countee Cullen & a more than generous offering to those of us who hold the poet dear." -Maya Angelou
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About this title:A suspenseful, poetic novel, based on an actual incident about a disease-ridden slave ship, a female captive, and a shocking court case.
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About this title:From the best-selling author of "The Dew Breaker" comes a major work of nonfiction: a powerfully moving family story that centers around the men closest to her heart--her father, Mira, and his older brother, Joseph.
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About this title:From the universally acclaimed author of "Breath, Eyes, Memory" comes a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a "dew breaker"--a torturer--a man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality.
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About this title:It is 1937, the Dominican side of the Haitian border... two countries sharing the same island—one poor, the other poorer. For decades, Haitians attempting to escape their country's abject poverty have streamed into the Dominican Republic to work as laborers in the sugarcane fields or as domestic help. In 1937, longstanding hostility between the two countries erupted, and Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo Molina decreed the slaughter of all Haitians on Dominican land. Amabelle, the heroine of Edwidge Danticat's haunting new novel, and her lover Sebastien are two such Haitian laborers who find themselves caught in the massacre of 1937. This is the graphic historical backdrop for The Farming of Bones.
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About this title:This is the story of Sophie Caco, the daughter of a Haitian exile, conceived in an act of violence. When Sophie is 12, her mother--who had abandoned her--asks the girl to join her in New York.
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About this title:One of the uprooted youngsters known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, John Bul Dau was 12 years old when civil war ravaged his village and shattered its age-old society, a life of herding and agriculture marked by dignity, respect, and the simple virtues of Dinka tribal tradition. As tracer bullets split the night and mortar shells exploded around him, John fled into the darkness-- the first terrified moments of a journey that would lead him thousands of miles into an exile that was to last many years. John's memoir of his Dinka childhood shows African life and values at their best, while his searing account of hardship, famine, and war also testifies to human resilience and kindness. In an era of cultural clashes, his often humorous stories of adapting to life in the United States offer proof that we can bridge our differences peacefully. John Bul Dau's quiet pride, true humility, deep seriousness, compassionate courage, and remarkable achievements will take every reader's breath away.
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About this title:Ten-time "New York Times" bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey sizzles in this rapid-fire sequel to "Sleeping with Strangers", which finds international hit man Gideon waking up with his past haunting him and danger knocking at his door.
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About this title:Dickey's fans will be delighted by this fast-paced, deadly, and sensual novel that gives them the chance to catch up with some of their favorite characters while introducing a great new bad-boy narrator: a hit man who goes by the name of Gideon.
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About this title:Billie (aka "Ducati") is known as much for her extraordinary beauty as for the sexy yellow Ducati motorcycle she rides through the mean streets of Los Angeles. Tough, talented, and self-assured, Billie's used to doing things her way--but that was before love threw an oil slick in the road and spun her life into chaos.
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About this title:The eight-time "New York Times" bestselling author--the man recently called "Chick-Lit King"--is back with a sizzling new novel of romance and betrayal.
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About this title:Sisters Frankie, Livvy, and Tommie McBroom are all having trouble with the men in their lives, and as Christmas and Kwanzaa approach, they struggle to figure out how to solve their romantic problems. Bestselling writer Eric Jerome Dickey has devised a Christmas time novel in which the best present is a good relationship with someone you love.
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About this title:When the nameless wife of a high school teacher teacher finds out he's having an affair with a colleague, she is stunned--and she goes crazy. Among her revenge tactics are an affair with her husband's girlfriend's husband. But that's not all....
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About this title:In San Francisco, the narrator of Dickey's novel is recovering from his relationship with Nicole, who has left him after seven years--for another woman. Then Nicole wants to make it a threesome....
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About this title:Vince Browne's wife has left him for another man, taking their daughter with her. Dana Smith has fled to Los Angeles from Harlem after she is forced into bankruptcy by a faithless lover. The two meet in a soul-food restaurant, lie outrageously about their precarious backgrounds, and begin a relationship that is constantly threatened by not only their secrets but their exes, their fantasies, and their differing ideas about life and how to live it.
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About this title:Taking a dip into the Los Angeles singles scene, the author of "Milk in My Coffee" treats readers to a totally, uncensored, uninhibited, and outrageously entertaining adventure in seduction, betrayal, heartbreak, revenge, and oh-so-sweet true love.
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About this title:Four narrators tell the story of two young black women and their boyfriends in 1990s L.A.
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About this title:Gabriel Lynch, an African-American adolescent in the years after the Civil War, goes with his mother and stepfather to homestead in Kansas. Tired of the hard work this entails, Gabriel takes off, traveling to Texas with a violent man named Marshall Hogg who promises him a job as a cowboy. Before long the two of them are on the run when Marshall is wanted for murder. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.
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About this title:Featuring a vast cast of characters and nationalities, twists of fate, and tales of inspired leadership, this epic work of literary fiction chronicles the superb military leader of Carthage, Hannibal Barca, and his struggle against the mighty Roman Republic.
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About this title:A slave named William escapes from a plantation in Maryland and makes his way to Philadelphia, where his wife has been taken. A Scotsman named Andrew Morrison is hired to track William down. William's flight, and Morrison's efforts, are juxtaposed, and when their paths finally cross in the end, it is to the accompaniment of unexpected revelations about both men's lives. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.
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About this title:"Acacia" offers a thrilling work of literary imagination that creates an all-enveloping and mythic world. Durham has written a timeless tale of heroism and betrayal, of treachery and revenge, of primal wrongs and ultimate redemption.
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About this title:Juneteenth is Ralph Ellison's novel about civil rights and racism issues in the early to mid-twentieth century. The book's title stems from the June 19, 1865, notification to slaves in Texas concerning the emancipation of slaves. In actuality, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was issued in January of 1863, two and a half years prior to this notification. "Juneteenth" is the slang term assigned by the Negro people of that time to mark the inaccuracy and injustice of the delayed information.
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About this title:A collection of incisive essays about race, himself as an artist, and society.
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About this title:Ellison's classic 1952 novel is about a black man from the South who travels to New York City in the 1930s. He becomes involved with the Communist Party, but is soon disillusioned: the Communists see him not as a person but as a symbol of oppressed humanity, as does the Black Nationalist Group he encounters. This inability of a blind and hostile society to value him for himself, rather than as a projection of the ideas of others, is the recurrent theme of the novel, which becomes more and more surreal as the nameless narrator continues his quest for identity.
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About this title:A professor who also writes novels returns home to care for his mother, a victim of Alzheimer's, after his sister is shot to death at the abortion clinic where she works. When his own new novel is rejected, and a patently phony novel about ghetto life by a middle-class woman is a huge success, he decides to write a parody of the book--to soothe his own indignation, if nothing else. Surprisingly, it becomes a best-seller.
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About this title:In this story of injustice and redemption set in rural Louisiana during the late 1940s, Grant Wiggins, a backwoods schoolmaster, is asked visit a young black prisoner on death row. Jefferson, the prisoner, was falsely accused and convicted of murder and is sentenced to hang, and Wiggins's job, once he realizes the impossibility of overturning the verdict, is to prepare the boy for death. Although, as a nonbeliever, Wiggins at first finds himself in competition with the minister for the boy's attention, he eventually comes to see that the cultivation of any instinct of love--human or religious is divine.
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About this title:A national bestseller, "Chocolate Thoughts" provides candid insight and uncompromising truth truth about how Black men truly feel about themselves, relationships, family, sex, marriage, work, careers, love, money, racism, music, violence and sports. It uniquely captures the commonality of Black men irrespective their socioeconomic background or educational attainment.
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