African American Southern Fiction

Touré Wallace and Niomi Spencer were close friends at Finley College, the prestigious HBCU they attended. The attraction that simmered between them every semester was a question they never got to ask or answer before soaring ambitions launched them to opposite corners of the world. Both chased their dreams of grit and glamor as high-profile journalists. They got it all...except a shot at being more than friends. Years later, Touré is an award-winning investigative journalist and Niomi is America's most popular morning-show host, but they both feel like something’s missing.

Why did I decide to put together a Bundle of my FOUR BBW Urban Fiction Series? Each series shows Plus Size Women as main characters. They aren’t sidekicks, ugly ducklings, or undesirable third wheels. Their beauty is up front and center. These BBWs are not late-night booty calls. And they’re not their lovers’ last options. Sexy, dangerous, street ninjas love and desire them. These are the most attractive men on the market. And they're willing to do anything to get their hands on the Big Beautiful Woman who is the object of their desire. Of course, as a writer, I want everyone to read ...

Waiting to enter a movie theater to see "Dr. No," the first James Bond movie, Simon sees a cute Black girl standing in a separate line that leads to the balcony, the "colored" section. A friend tells him, "You're in the South. Stick with your own kind.” Simon doesn't. It's the steamy summer of 1963. Simon Klein has moved with his family, Jews from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Pickettville, Alabama, where his father has taken a job at a nearby Army base. He is as mystified of the South as Southerners are of a Jew While gathering information for a story he is writing for his school paper, Simon ...

***Re-Release*** ***Standalone*** I want you all to myself I swear… Keldric “Ice” Hemmings wasn’t looking for love. In the right places, the wrong places, at all. Even with his mother breathing down his neck begging for grandbabies, he wasn’t in a rush to settle down. And, until he found a woman like his mother, he was just having fun with the thots, and focused on getting money. That is, until he meets Blaze, a thick, brainy chick, who has her head on straight, and has his mom’s seal of approval. Blaze Cooper was green to the real world. A nerd who’d always kept her nose in ...

Ya'll, let me tell you my story!Glad you could find your way here, and I welcome you to the Sellers Plantation here in the deep south of Mobile, Alabama. I'm anxious to get started with my story tellin,' so, I'm sharin' a little bout the story that I be tellin' to ya'll down below. When I wuz born, I be given the name Gertrude Ida Rollins, but as I be growin' folks just be callin' me Ms. Gertie. I wuz born in Mobile, Alabama in the year eighteen and eighty-eight. Yes, that be a long time ago for most of ya'll, but I thinks it be good to be learnin' bout the history that be comin' before you...

As a young woman, Naomi Simmons grabbed her one chance to escape the overwhelming demands of her selfish family by marrying devout older man Jacob Purcell. But it only landed her with a controlling, unfaithful husband who delights in hurling insults at her and their troubled now-teenage daughter, Ethel Mae. So, Naomi is amazed and touched when Homer Clark sees her for the vibrant, intelligent woman she truly is. Believing the handsome, worldly widower is her love of a lifetime, Naomi plans to leave with Homer and start fresh in the big city.

Romaine Wilder, big-city medical examiner with a small-town past, has been downsized and evicted. With few other options, she’s forced to return to her hometown of Roble in East Texas, leaving behind the man she’s dating and the life she’s worked hard to build. Suzanne Babet Derbinay, Romaine’s Auntie Zanne and proprietor of the Ball Funeral Home, has long since traded her French Creole upbringing for Big Texas attitude. She’s a member in a number of ladies’ auxiliaries and clubs, including being in charge of the Tri-County Annual Crawfish Boil and Music Festival. Hanging on to ...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy. “A rhapsodic hymn to Black women.”—The New...

Khian "Khi" Prince has the ladies going crazy. He's a certified boss with what seems to be the weight of the world on his shoulders. After failing at love twice, Khi's not ready to give up yet, and when he runs into Cuba Lance, he's certain he has finally gotten it right. But when Cuba shatters his heart all over again, will Khi give up on love once and for all? Daelan "Dae" Prince is the ultimate bad boy. With the love of his life and their five-year-old son by his side, Dae seems to have his happily ever after. But things are never what they seem.

In fourteen sublime stories, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever. Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people...

A forbidden affair. A city on the edge. A choice that could cost everything. In the pre–Civil War South, New Orleans is a city divided by wealth and bondage, power and desperation. Trent, a plantation master, finds his world spiraling out of control when his secret affair with a slave unleashes betrayal, vengeance, and the threat of ruin. Caught in the storm are Amana, Tabari, and others whose lives intertwine in a struggle for dignity and freedom. Every decision they make carries a price — and survival demands both courage and sacrifice. Keeper of Slaves is the second novel in the ...

Abigail was the last keeper of the house, the last to know the Howland family's secrets. Now, in the name of all her brothers and sisters, she must take her bitter revenge on the small-minded Southern town that shamed them, persecuted them, but could never destroy them.

"Funny, wild, witty, and profound.”―Victor LaValle "A wild and wonderful debut, teeming with music, family and art."—New York Times "Magical, lyrical, gritty, otherworldly…hype like Bayou Classic in the 90s."—P. Djèlí Clark New York Times Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2022!...

“Urban Southern Love Story” In this suspenseful urban love story we are introduced to King, a southern born and bred hustler, who is determined to take the drug empire handed to him by his father into the legitimate world of the music industry. Little does he know that when the streets birth you, trying to leave can be deadly. Then enters into his life the beautiful classy Queen that every King needs. Sloan is a beautiful, college educated, hard working neo soul singer. She has always tried to do the right thing, but when something from her past comes back to haunt her, could it destroy...

It’s another murder in the little town of Roble. But not to worry, Romaine and Auntie Zanne are on it! It’s the 100th Boule of the Distinguished Ladies’ Society of Voodoo Herbalists. They’ve gotten together to eat, drink, be merry and vote for the next Lesser Mambo, a lifetime appointment second only to the Most High (bet you’ll never guess who holds that position). But the second in command spot keeps becoming vacant—that’s because the women who fill it keep dying off. This time though, it looks like murder. During an alcohol-infused dinner and a tall glass full of absinth, a...

African American Romance Collection that includes 10 books. The Snow Series: What happens when everything seems perfect and peaceful, but all of a sudden you, your family, or your surroundings is threatened by something or someone that will rob you of what you've always know? This happens to many people, from all walks of life, each and every day. No one is exempt from the trouble that can cause one to have his or her own personal meltdown. Some are able to overcome their meltdown? Others, however, are not so fortunate. They find themselves stuck, trying hard to deal with the meltdown of ...

In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.

Self-educated and brown skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother's laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for "colored music" and dreams of life as a big-city radio star. These teenage girls are half-sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father's inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes on a road trip together to claim what's rightly theirs. In an old junk car, with a frying pan, a ham, and a few dollars hidden in a shoe, they set off through the Deep South of the 1950s.

In this highly anticipated sequel & finale to the number one best seller, Blake Karrington once again takes you into the world of Ronnie King and Sloan Devaxx. King is facing one of the hardest trials of his life as he is falsely accused of murder and must fight for his freedom and his life. The truth can be harder to prove than a lie, especially when the liar is a public servant. The one saving grace is knowing that his family and the love of his life are there to back him every step of the way. For Sloan, life couldn't be more perfect. She has the man of her dreams and the beginning of ...

Look for The Land of Sweet Forever, a posthumous collection of newly discovered short stories and previously published essays and magazine pieces by Harper Lee, coming October 21, 2025. Voted America's Best-Loved Novel in PBS's The Great American Read Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning...