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African American Fiction & Non-Fiction January/February 2021
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The Awkward Black Man: Stories
by Walter Mosley
"Bestselling author Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension, both with his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley's most accomplished short stories to display the full range of his remarkable talent. Mosley presents distinct characters as they struggle to move through the world in each of these stories-heroes who are awkward, nerdy, self-defeating, self-involved, and, on the whole, odd. He overturns the stereotypes that corral black male characters and paints a subtle, powerful portrait of each of these unique individuals. In "The Good News Is," a man's insecurity about his weight gives way to a serious illness and the intense loneliness that accompanies it. Deeply vulnerable, he allows himself to be taken advantage of in return for a little human comfort in a raw display of true need. "Pet Fly" follows a man working as a mailroom clerk for a big company-and the unforeseen repercussions he endures when he attempts to forge a connection beyond the one he has with the fly buzzing around his apartment. And "Almost Alyce" chronicles failed loves, family loss, alcoholism, and a Zen approach to the art of begging that proves surprisingly effective. Touching and contemplative, each of these unexpected stories offers the best of one of our most gifted writers"
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Black Bottom Saints: a Novel
by Alice Randall
A celebrated columnist, nightclub emcee and fine arts philanthropist draws inspiration from the Catholic Saints Day books while reflecting on his encounters with legendary black artists from the Great Depression through the post-World War II years.
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Black Buck
by Mateo Askaripour
An unambitious college graduate accepts a job at Sumwun, the hottest NYC startup, and reimagines himself as “Buck” a ruthless salesman and begins to hatch a plan to help young people of color infiltrate America’s sales force.
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Blood Grove
by Walter Mosley
Unlicensed private investigator-turned-hardboiled detective Easy Rawlins navigates sex clubs, the mafia and dangerous friends when he reluctantly accepts the racially charged case of a traumatized Vietnam War veteran in late-1960s Los Angeles.
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The Conjure-man Dies: A Harlem Mystery: the First Ever African-American Crime Novel
by Rudolph Fisher
A unique crime classic: the very first detective novel written by an African-American, set in 1930s New York with only Black characters. When the body of N'Gana Frimbo, the African conjure-man, is discovered in his consultation room, Perry Dart, one of Harlem's ten Black police detectives, is called in to investigate. Together with Dr Archer, a physician from across the street, Dart is determined to solve the baffling mystery, helped and hindered by Bubber Brown and Jinx Jenkins, local boys keen to clear themselves of suspicion of murder and undertake their own investigations. The Conjure-Man Dies was the very first detective novel written by an African-American. A distinguished doctor and accomplished musician and dramatist, Rudolph Fisher was one of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, but died in 1934 aged only 37. With a gripping plot and vividly drawn characters, Fisher's witty novel is a remarkable time capsule of one of the most exciting eras in the history of Black fiction. This crime classic is introduced by New York crime writer Stanley Ellin, and includes Rudolph Fisher's last published story, 'John Archer's Nose', in which Perry Dart and Dr Archer return to solve the case of a young man murdered in his own bed. ~BiblioCommons
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The Coyotes of Carthage
by Steven Wright
In a small South Carolina town, a political operative runs a dark-money campaign for his corporate clients.
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Everywhere You Don't Belong
by Gabriel Bump
Raised by a civil-rights activist grandmother on the South Side of Chicago, Claude McKay Love searches for a sense of belonging before a riot compels his departure for college, where he discovers he cannot escape his past.
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Honey Girl
by Morgan Rogers
Grace Porter just received her doctorate in astronomy, and though she may not be practicing medicine, as her no-nonsense father intended, she is on track to put her doctorate to use. But as a Black lesbian, Grace doesn't seem to "be the right fit" for most companies in her field. Then the ever-responsible Grace wakes up in Vegas with a hangover, a wedding ring, fuzzy memories, and a note from her new, and absent, wife. Using a business card, Grace tracks down her wife, Yuki, in New York City. Grace leaves Portland and gives her marriage a shot, staying with Yuki and her roommates. They develop a deep connection. However, the life Grace left behind catches up to her as depression, difficulties reconnecting with her mostly absent mother, and deep wounds left by her disapproving father surface. Can a marriage between two virtual strangers wed in a Vegas chapel actually work when life gets in the way? ~Library Journal
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House of the Patriarch
by Barbara Hambly
Reluctantly accepting a missing-persons case in New York, Benjamin January navigates religious zealots, human circus shows and kidnapping slavers to solve the mystery of a girl’s baffling disappearance from a crowded steamboat.
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How Beautiful We Were: a Novel
by Imbolo Mbue
A young revolutionary risks everything to secure her people’s freedom when her small African village is decimated by an American oil company that reneges on promises of reparation.
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The Kindest Lie
by Nancy E. Johnson
Needing to reconnect with the baby she gave up for adoption years earlier, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer uncovers devastating family secrets before her bond with a young white misfit scandalizes her racially torn community.
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Life After Death
by Sister Souljah
A sequel to the best-selling The Coldest Winter Ever continues the gritty experiences of a returned Winter Santiaga.
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Pale
by Edward A. Farmer
The summer of 1966 burned hot across America but nowhere hotter than the cotton fields of Mississippi. Finding herself in a precarious position as a black woman living alone, Bernice accepts her brother Floyd's invitation to join him as a servant for a white family and she enters the web of hostility and deception that is the Kern plantation household. The secrets of the house are plentiful yet the silence that has encompassed it for so many years suddenly breaks with the arrival of the harvest and the appearance of Jesse and Fletcher to the plantation as cotton pickers. These two brothers, the sons of the house servant Silva, awaken a vengeful seed within the Missus of the house as she plots to punish not only her husband but Silva's family as well. When the Missus starts flirting with Jesse, she sets into motion a dangerous game that could get Jesse killed and destroy the lives of the rest of the servants. Bernice walks the fine line between emissary and accomplice, as she tries her best to draw secrets from the Missus's heart, while using their closeness to protect the lives of the people around her. Once the Missus's plans are complete, families will be severed, loyalties will be shattered, and no one will come out unscathed. ~BiblioCommons
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The Prophets: a Novel
by Robert Jones
Two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation find refuge in each other while transforming a quiet shed into a haven for their fellow slaves, before an enslaved preacher declares their bond sinful.
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Real Life a Novel
by Brandon Taylor
Keeping his head down at a lakeside Midwestern university where the culture is in sharp contrast to his Alabama upbringing, an introverted African-American biochem student endures unexpected encounters that bring his orientation and defenses into question.
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The Rib King: a Novel
by Ladee Hubbard
Exploited by the white family that took him in as a servant 15 years earlier, a Black orphan becomes tragically enraged by how his employers mindlessly profit from the talents of a hired black cook.
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The Secret Women
by Sheila Williams
Three new friends, women all with mothers who have recently died, find long buried secrets when they help each other sort through their mothers’ belongings.
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The Son of Mr. Suleman
by Eric Jerome Dickey
Targeted and blackmailed by racist colleagues, a Black professor at a Memphis university is called away from a whirlwind romance by the death of his father and a family that has never acknowledged him.
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A Spy in the Struggle: a Riveting Must-read Novel of Suspense
by Aya De Leon
The award-winning author of the Justice Hustlers series follows the FBI recruitment of a savvy young lawyer who uses the wits of her impoverished youth to infiltrate an extremist activist group that is being exploited by a biotech company.
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This Close to Okay
by Leesa Cross-Smith
A powerful, vibrant novel about the life-changing weekend shared between two strangers, from the award-winning writer Roxane Gay calls "a consummate storyteller."
On a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home from work when she spots a man precariously standing at the edge of a bridge. Without a second thought, Tallie pulls over and jumps out of the car into the pouring rain. She convinces the man to join her for a cup of coffee, and he eventually agrees to come back to her house, where he finally shares his name: Emmett.
Over the course of the emotionally charged weekend that follows, Tallie makes it her mission to provide a safe space for Emmett, though she hesitates to confess that this is also her day job. What she doesn't realize is that Emmett isn't the only one who needs healing--and they both are harboring secrets.
Alternating between Tallie and Emmett's perspectives as they inch closer to the truth of what brought Emmett to the bridge's edge--as well as the hard truths Tallie has been grappling with since her marriage ended-- This Close to Okay is an uplifting, cathartic story about chance encounters, hope found in unlikely moments, and the subtle magic of human connection.
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What's Mine and Yours: a Novel
by Naima Coster
Integrated into a predominantly white high school, an anxious young Black student and a half-Latina whose mother would have her pass as white join a bridge-building school play that shapes the trajectory of their adult lives.
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When No One Is watching: a Thriller
by Alyssa Cole
Finding unexpected support from a new friend while collecting stories from her rapidly vanishing Brooklyn community, Sydney uncovers sinister truths about a regional gentrification project and why her neighbors are moving away.
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Wild Women and the Blues
by Denny S. Bryce
In an award-winning debut novel, a sharecropper’s daughter navigates celebrity encounters, bootlegging and gangster activities in Jazz Age Chicago before sharing her story with a grieving film student nearly a century later.
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Won't Go Home Without You
by Cheris Hodges
A refuge in good times and bad, there's nothing the four very different Richardson sisters won't do to sustain their family's legacy - a historic bed-and-breakfast in Charleston, South Carolina. Now, as one sister celebrates new love, another's heart is sorely tested... She thought nothing could shatter their storybook marriage, for her husband, Dr. Logan Baptiste, told her in a thousand unspoken ways their love was all he needed. But now, in the face of overwhelming evidence, his co-worker, Kamrie, claims Logan fathered her son. Logan can't recall what happened with Kamrie - and DNA never lies. ~BiblioCommons
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Yellow Wife: a Novel
by Sadeqa Johnson
Born on a plantation, but set apart from the others by her mother’s position as a medicine woman, a young slave is forced to leave home at 18 and unexpectedly finds herself in an infamously cruel jail.
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Anti Racist Ally: an Introduction to Action & Activism
by Sophie Williams
The creator of the popular @officialmillennialblack Instagram shares practical insights into active practices of anti-racism, covering subjects ranging from the terminology of today’s world to the personal biases that shape inequality.
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The Black Church: This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
by Henry Louis Gates
The Harvard University professor, NAACP Image Award recipient and Emmy Award-winning creator of The African Americans presents a history of the Black church in America that illuminates its essential role in culture, politics and resistance to white supremacy.
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Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider
by Charles Person
A surviving original Freedom Rider recounts his firsthand experiences with the South's historical and ongoing resistance to racial equality, sharing insights into what is required for progressive change to become possible in America.
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The Devil You Know: a Black Power Manifesto
by Charles M. Blow
The New York Times columnist and best-selling author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones presents a rallying call to action that challenges popular myths about race and urges Black Americans to unite against white supremacy.
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Four Hundred Souls: a Community History of African America, 1619-2019
by Ibram X. Kendi
"A "choral history" of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Last year marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas--and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain, editor of The North Star. They've gathered together eighty black writers from all disciplines -- historians and artists, journalists and novelists--each of whom has contributed an entry about one five-year period to create a dynamic multivoiced single-volume history of black people in America."
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The Hill We Climb: An Inaugural Poem for the Country
by Amanda Gorman
On January 20, 2021, Amanda Gorman became the sixth and youngest poet to deliver a poetry reading at a presidential inauguration. Taking the stage after the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, Gorman captivated the nation and brought hope to viewers around the globe. ~Amazon
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Surviving the White Gaze: a Memoir
by Rebecca Carroll
A woman describes growing up as the only black person in a rural New Hampshire town, the tense relationship she had with her birth mother, her loyalty towards her adoptive parents and her search for racial identity.
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