African American

In her twenties, Belle da Costa Greene is hired by J. P. Morgan to curate a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artwork for his newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. Belle becomes a fixture in New York City society and one of the most powerful people in the art and book world....

The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the problem of race in America and what he called “Double Consciousness,” a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois’s words all too well....

This is the way the world ends...for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter....

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything....

Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and best-selling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York....

In the waning days of the Civil War, brothers Prentiss and Landry—freed by the Emancipation Proclamation—seek refuge on the homestead of George Walker and his wife, Isabelle. The Walkers, wracked by the loss of their only son to the war, hire the brothers to work their farm....

Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a searing and compassionate new novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible injustice done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench....

This poetic, graceful love story celebrates boldly and brilliantly African-American culture and heritage....

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career....

Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into different villages in 18th-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and will live in comfort....

Called “wholly engrossing” by New York Times bestselling author Kathleen Grissom, this “fully immersive” story follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Virginia....

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid....

Harlem Shuffle's ingenious story plays out in a beautifully recreated New York City of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem....

Winter Santiaga hit time served. Still stunning, still pretty, still bold, still loves her father more than any man in the world, still got her hustle and high fashion flow....

The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.....

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. If he’s lucky, he’ll get a job at the hospital cafeteria. If he’s extra lucky, he’ll earn more than minimum wage....

Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland....

A New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi reimagines the love story in this fresh and seductive novel about a young woman seeking joy while healing from loss....

The first novel in a captivating three-book series about modern womanhood, in which a young Black woman must rely on courage, laughter, and love—and the support of her two longtime friends—to overcome an unexpected setback that threatens the most precious thing she's ever wanted....

After killing her own mother, Angela will stop at nothing until the woman who's ruined her life twice has experienced just as much pain as she has. She vows to make Jade's life a living hell....

When a piece of land comes up for sale in this exclusive community, it sparks a war between the Brittons and the Johnsons. It’s old money versus new money, and neither family seems willing to compromise....

In 1958 Georgia, the shade of a 13-year-old black girl's skin can make the difference in her fate. Tangy Mae is the smartest of her mother's 10 children, but she is also the darkest complected....

A collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in America - including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more - with a foreword by Jelani Cobb....

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....

Private Investigator Gideon Rimes knows he’s lucky, a survivor over the years. Now months after the first anniversary of the pandemic, a sense of mortality lingers over Nickel City. The changed landscape includes word of crime lord Lorenzo Quick’s passing whose regime is imploding as a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act case is being avidly built by the ADA. Yet in the territorial vacuum, opportunistic and unpredictable successors emerge. The case takes a twist when a drive-by shooting at an outdoor concert shares a link and jeopardizes Rimes’s personal world.

I tried my best to escape. But they are after me. These cruel, gorgeous monsters. All five of them. SadieI'd seen Mr. Marcello just once at a prestigious fashion show. His light golden amber eyes made me shiver, but I thought I was not gonna see him again. I never expected him to get his men to kidnap me, and even share me with his cousins and bodyguards. Of course, I'm not going to give in. And damn sure I'm going to fight my way out of this predicament…but what happens when I begin to fall for the men—my kidnappers?

Banneker Homes is a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone's mind. There is Swan in apartment 6B, whose excitement about his friend's release from prison jeopardises the life he's been trying to lead. Mimi, in apartment 14D, who hustles to raise the child she had with Swan, waitressing at Roscoe's and doing hair on the side. And Quanneisha B. Miles, a former gymnast with a good education who wishes she could leave Banneker for good, but can't seem to escape the building's gravitational pull. 

When hot and handsome Vince Moretti walks into Ashley Santoro's life, she ultimately has to decide whether she will continue to hold onto the bad-girl, biracial routine that has her looking for love in superficial relationships only - or if what she has with this star basketball player is true love. The Ashley series details a courageous journey of a young adult fielding her way through alcoholism and overeating into her own discovery of how to love and how to be loved.

Like Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place and Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, Sidik Fofana’s electrifying collection of eight interconnected stories showcases the strengths, struggles, and hopes of one residential community in a powerful storytelling experience. Each short story follows a tenant in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem where gentrification weighs on everyone’s mind. 

Her diamond caught the sun’s rays and refracted light across the room. She’d asked herself again and again: How could she be so blessed? Partner at a prestigious law firm and engaged to the man of her dreams . . . there was no doubt. God had smiled on Kendra Woods. But the moment Kendra is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, her world collapses. Within days, her fiancé backs out of the wedding and the firm suggests a leave of absence during her treatment. Of all the roles Kendra has played over the years, cancer patient seems the most unwelcome in the world.

Princess Cadena Winthrope was well aware of the splintering heat that sizzled her flesh whenever Gemini was nearby. As her loyal guard, Gemini remained standing in the shadows, watching her every move—his gaze catching the dark corners of the room as well as her body's outline. Past ready to face their attraction head-on, Cadena is prepared to put her heart on the line, but a romance between the two could put his life at risk. How far would they be willing to go for love?

It is a story of tenacity, courage, and faithfulness. It is a narrative of sacrifice and loyalty when death comes a-knocking. In the midst of the melancholy that follows the death of a loved one, love resurrects again when least expected, even after refusing to love again. True love often comes from unexpected quarters, as in Ella's case. Looking back, Ella could have regretted her decision after the death of her first love. Most people don't get to experience one, let alone two. Could she have envisaged experiencing another true love in her life?

An irresistible story of love and death, this latest Easy Rawlins mystery takes place during the devastating 1965 Watts riots. Easy's hunt for a killer reveals a new city emerging from the ashes—and a new life for Easy and his friends.

Grant Ashford has his heart set on becoming the next mayor of the City of Detroit, and he has joined forces with some powerful players to assist with obtaining this goal. He is well aware of their ability to turn his dream into a reality; however, he is quite naïve regarding the fact that commingling with this circle could possibly turn his dream into a nightmare. What does a player do when he finds out he’s the one being played?

She genuinely didn't know why she did it or why she allowed things to continue in the direction they were heading. Thinking back on it now, maybe it was his eyes. He was unlike anyone she ever dated before. Unfortunately, being with him means putting her marriage at risk. Will she be able to keep her lover from being found out or will her blue-eyed mystery be the end of her 10-year marriage?

In the wild, ghetto streets of poverty, drugs, and violence grew a little, dainty girl called Mya. Living smack-dab in the trenches of a firestorm between two rival street mobs, Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords, along with the invading police, this 17-year-old of innocence is pulled into the street game's grasp.

Irene Wilson knows that a “no-name invisible something” has settled over her parents’ marriage and suspects her glamorous new teacher is to blame. Irene is not alone in her suspicions. In the town of Rattlebone, a small Black neighborhood of Kansas City, secrets are hard to keep and growing up is a community affair. As Irene is initiated into adult passion and loss, her family story takes its place in a tightly woven tapestry of neighbors whose griefs and joys are as vivid as her own.