Contemporary Stories from Black Authors

In her thrilling debut novel, Zakiya Dalila Harris draws from her experiences in the publishing industry to craft an all-too-accurate suspense novel about the micro-horrors of being a person of color in the workplace. Performed by a talented cast of star narrators (Aja Naomi King, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Heather Alicia Simms, and Bahni Turpin), the audiobook is a must-listen experience that keeps listeners on the edge of their seats.

The Prophets is a debut novel by a writer with an extraordinary gift for storytelling. Robert Jones, Jr.’s prose is lyrical, challenging, beautiful, and horrifying. This epic historical fiction tells the story of Samuel and Isaiah—two enslaved men in love on a Deep South plantation. Told from the viewpoint of an array of characters, the narrative is largely in third person. Mixed in are chapters told in first-person plural—where the old gods of Africa, watching over the descendants of those who worshiped them, share wisdom and serve as witnesses. This is where narrator Karen Chilton’s mesmerizing performance shines the brightest.

Danielle Evans burst onto the literary scene in 2007, when her first short story was published in The Paris Review. She was only 23. In 2010 she released her debut collection of short stories called Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. The stories are both revelatory and inviting as they confront complex issues of race, class, and gender. Now, more than 10 years later, this short story collection is available in audio for the first time, exclusively from Audible.

In former magazine editor Dawnie Walton’s opulent stunner, a journalist tracks the history of a fictional rock duo. The glamorous Opal is a radical punk pioneer from Detroit and, like the journalist, an independent and ambitious Black woman. Opal and her White partner, Nev, rise to fame in '70s New York, where a racially charged incident proves to have outsized repercussions for Opal. With its glittering milieu, provocative themes, and remarkable heroine, Opal & Nev is a knockout, and the novel’s dazzling polyphonic structure—a rock oral history—was made to be listened to in audio.

Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life - her hunger, her anger - in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.

Almost everything about Wallace, the central character of the story, is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochemistry degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, Black and queer, he has left behind his family. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends. But one late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, White classmate, conspires to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.

The idea of ''passing,'' that is, when a Black person with light skin ''passes'' for White has existed for a long time—something visually displayed and explored in the 1959-film adaption of Imitation of Life. That iconic scene—when the White ''passing'' daughter of the Black protagonist throws herself on her mother’s coffin, therefore publicly revealing her true identity—is haunting. Brit Bennett’s 2020 novel, The Vanishing Half, gives provocative portrait of ''passing'' in the post-civil rights era follows identical twin sisters who choose to live in two very different worlds, one Black and one White, and is as affecting as that 1959 film.

Just like the dessert it’s named for, Charmaine Wilkerson’s debut novel is a complex family story, full of long-buried secrets and tangled threads of identity and belonging. Stretching from the 1960s Caribbean to present-day California, its narrative unspools as siblings Byron and Benny press play on a lengthy recording of their estranged (and now deceased) mother’s lilting accent, which calls into question everything they once thought they knew about her. Narrators Simone McIntyre and Lynnette R. Freeman’s performances put the cherry on top of this delectable debut.

Debut novelist, Kiley Reid, brings a fresh new voice that's distinctly modern and authentic—a voice that is amplified and made even more real by narrator Nicole Lewis's spot-on performance. Reid's treatment of issues of race and class, career and family, child-rearing and education all ring true-to-life. Her characters are people you know and see every day. It's impossible to not imagine yourself in their shoes and wonder, ''what would I do in this situation?''

All is fair in love and lust in best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey’s latest: a tale of two brothers, four women, and the business of desire. With powerful performances by Dominic Hoffman and Amir Abdullah, The Business of Lovers offers an unpausable portrait of the family we have, the families we create, and every sexy moment in between.

No one tells a story quite like Colson Whitehead. This time he takes us to Harlem, where Ray Carney is trying to "make it" selling furniture on installment plans. His wife is expecting a second child, the bills are piling up, and his wife’s family on Striver’s Row isn’t loving him. Little do they know that he has a pedigree too—a long line of hustlers. His cousin Freddie falls in with a crew who come up with a plan to rob the famous Theresa Hotel on 125th Street. What ensues is series of twists and turns, and a guided tour of Harlem and its colorful characters, including people like Ray, trying to make it as best he can.

The Sellout revolutionized what the contemporary American novel could be—satirical, lyrical, truly laugh-out-loud funny—all while attacking the ugliness that lives within our world without ever flinching. The unrelenting rhythm of Beatty's writing, which is brought to life by Prentice Onayemi's narration, will have you hooked within minutes of the prologue.

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative 10 times its length, Red at the Bone uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.

Yaa Gyasi’s command of language is absolutely stunning in this moving, sweeping tale of two sisters separated in 18th-century Africa, and set on two very different life paths. With Dominic Hoffman’s understated, yet powerful performance leading the way, we follow the sisters and their descendants across 300 years – from Ghana to America and back again – and the stories of slavery and survival, family and faith are simply unforgettable.

This stirring love story is a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look deep into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward - with hope and pain - into the future.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project's drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of this very human tale. Bringing both his masterly storytelling skills and his abiding faith in humanity, James McBride has written a novel that is emotionally honest and told with insight and wit.

Proof of Love is an explosive, funny, and moving one-woman play written by Chisa Hutchinson and performed by Brenda Pressley. It’s the story of Constance, a woman who thought she had a happy life and a loving husband. Suddenly, a tragic accident splinters her upper-class black family—and forces Constance to face uncomfortable truths about her marriage and herself.

Two World War II veterans, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal become unlikely friends. Each has their own family drama in addition to the racial strife and politics of England. Archie Jones marries a Jamaican woman and they have a daughter. Samad marries later because his wife hadn’t been born yet, and they become parents to twin boys. Zadie Smith’s debut novel was groundbreaking and still is with all its twists, comedic conflicts as it shines a light on one particular area of London.

Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. But while Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent—which has more than doubled—and to keep the nine-year-old boy next door, abandoned by his mother, safe and fed...