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A woman’s trip home reveals frightening truths in a twisty novel of murder and family secrets by the New York Times bestselling author of And Now She’s Gone and These Toxic Things.
TV writer Yara Gibson’s hometown of Palmdale, California, isn’t her first choice for a vacation. But she’s back to host her parents’ twentieth-anniversary party and find the perfect family mementos for the celebration. Everything is going to plan until Yara receives a disturbing text: I have information that will change your life.
The message is from Felicia Campbell, who claims to be a childhood friend of Yara’s mother. But they’ve been estranged for years - drama best ignored and forgotten. But Yara can’t forget Felicia, who keeps texting, insisting that Yara talk to her “before it’s too late.”
But the next day is already too late for Felicia, whose body is found floating in Lake Palmdale. Before she died, Felicia left Yara a key to a remote lakeside cabin. In the basement are files related to a mysterious tragedy, unsolved since 1998. What secrets was Felicia hiding? How much of what Yara knows about her family has been true?
The deeper Yara digs for answers, the more she fears that Felicia was right. Uncovering the truth about what happened at the cabin all those years ago will change Yara’s life - or end it.
In this "tense, twisting mystery" and "absolutely can't-put-it-down read" (Megan Miranda), no one bats an eye when a Black reality TV star is found dead in the Bronx - except her estranged half-sister, whose refusal to believe the official story leads her on a dangerous search for the truth.
“I found out my sister was back in New York from Instagram. I found out she’d died from the New York Daily News.”
When the body of disgraced reality TV star Desiree Pierce is found on a playground in the Bronx the morning after her 25th birthday party, the police and the media are quick to declare her death an overdose. It’s a tragedy, certainly, but not a crime.
But Desiree’s half-sister Lena Scott knows that can’t be the case. A graduate student at Columbia, Lena has spent the past decade forging her own path far from the spotlight, but some facts about Desiree just couldn’t have changed since their childhood. And Desiree would never travel above 125th Street. So why is no one listening to her?
Despite the bitter truth that the two haven’t spoken in two years, torn apart by Desiree’s partying and by their father, Mel, a wealthy and influential hip-hop mogul, Lena becomes determined to find justice for her sister, even if it means untangling her family’s darkest secrets - or ending up dead herself.
“A riveting, read-through-the-night thriller.” (Liv Constantine)
“Equal parts charm and heartbreak, with razor-sharp insights on class, race, and family.” (Laura Lippman)
“Smart with twists you never see coming.” (Walter Mosley)
“Domestic suspense for the Instagram gen. #lovedit.” (Lori Rader-Day)
Fleeing persecution in 1960s America, a Black couple seeks asylum in Ghana, but fresh dangers and old secrets threaten their newfound freedom in this hypnotic debut novel.
December 26, 1965, Alabama, the fateful night that triggers an avalanche of events that turn newly engaged couple, Melvin and Bernadette, into fugitives. A pitstop in the wrong part of town ends with blood on their hands, and Melvin decides they must flee the country in order to survive. Bernadette, who’s hiding a secret from her fiancé, reluctantly agrees. With a persistent FBI agent on their trail, they travel to Ghana to seek the help of Melvin’s old college friend, who happens to be the country's embattled president, Kwame Nkrumah.
The couple’s chance encounter with Ghana’s most beloved Highlife musician, Kwesi Kwayson, who’s on his way to perform for the president, sparks a journey full of suspense, lust, magic, and danger as Nkrumah’s regime crumbles around them. What was meant to be a fresh start quickly spirals into chaos. Kwesi and Bernadette's undeniable attraction and otherwordly bond cascades during their three-day trek, and so does Melvin's intense jealousy. All three must confront each other and their secrets, setting off a series of cataclysmic events.
Steeped in the history and mythologies of West Africa, at the intersection of the civil rights movement in the United States, The Scent of Burnt Flowers merges political intrigue, magical encounters, and forbidden romance in an epic collision of love, morality, and power.
In this chilling thriller from the bestselling authors of Spare Room, one woman just wants the truth about who she really is. But she’s not the only one looking...
It’s twenty years since Eva, a biracial woman, was adopted as an eight-year-old, and Cherry and Carlton "Sugar" McNeil have always been the only parents she’s wanted or needed. But when she’s dealt the double blow of Cherry’s death and her own suspension from work, Eva decides it’s time to discover who she was before she was theirs.
Against Sugar’s advice, Eva joins a DNA database, desperate for a match that will unlock her identity. And when a positive hit comes, she’s excited to learn there are relations out there who might hold the key. But the closer Eva gets to uncovering her past, the more it appears someone is trying to stop her finally finding the truth...
As she continues to dig, Eva is drawn into a dark and merciless underside to society, where Black women disappear without a word. Names erased from history, no search parties, no desperate pleas for their return. Once, someone tried to save Eva from all this. Someone wanted a better life for her. But now that she’s torn down the facade of her life, has she come too far to be spared again?
Black girls and women disappear every day, but not without a trace. Join actress and activist Erika Alexander in a neo-noir, true crime drama as she searches for Tamika Huston, a 24-year-old Black woman from Spartanburg, SC who went missing in 2004. Her case became a rallying cry for other missing Black women in America and led to a growing demand to expose a system that ignores missing girls and women of color.
Kevin Hart and Charlamagne Tha God’s SBH productions present their debut Audible Original Finding Tamika. In it, host Erika Alexander summons a new generation to help raise the dead, expose a hidden past, and give a dark warning for our future. In Finding Tamika, what we’ll actually discover is the awful truth that a Black girl does not have to go missing for us not to see her. No matter the cost, though, we must look for Tamika, because until she is found, we are all lost.
Please Note: This content is for mature audiences only. It contains adult language and themes. Discretion is advised.
The critically acclaimed author of The Rib King returns with an eagerly anticipated collection of short stories including the title story written exclusively for this volume that explore relationships in a Black neighborhood over the course from the late 1980s to the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration.
The 12 stories in The Last Suspicious Holdout: Stories capture powerful and poignant moments in the everyday lives of African American families, friends, and neighbors. Taking place in an unnamed “sliver of Southern suburbia” in the years spanning from the beginning of the Clinton presidency to the eve of Barack Obama’s election, each of these exceptional works of short fiction explore how the inequities of our society - in the criminal justice system, education, and health care - as well as issues like the “war on drugs” - shape and scar ordinary lives in deeply personal ways.
In “False Cognates”, a formerly incarcerated attorney struggles with paying raising tuition costs to keep his troubled son in an elite private school. In “There He Go”, a young girl whose mother moves them constantly yearns for stability and clings to a picture of the grandfather she doesn’t know, inventing stories of his greatness that contrast with the actual man.
In this fearless and at times funny collection, Ladee Hubbard transcends stereotypes to provide a fuller portrait of Black American life and its undercurrents. The characters inhabiting her world present diverse configurations of family - grandmothers and granddaughters who live together as roommates; cousins and uncles who form tight bonds; and fathers who are mainly present. Each is part of a community where daycares and babysitters are never taken for granted; where books and words are revered.
The Last Suspicious Holdout: Stories mirrors and celebrates Black resilience. Though their finances, jobs, and businesses may be vulnerable to forces they cannot control, the neighbors in these stories bravely confront the realities of their lives and firmly believe that hope is not a promise but a choice.