Showing titles in African American

Doing Time: For the prison writers whose work is included in this anthology, it means more than "serving a sentence"; it means staying alive and sane, preserving dignity, reinventing oneself, and somehow retaining one's humanity. For the last quarter century the prestigious writers' organization PEN has sponsored a contest for writers behind bars to help prisoners face these challenges. The contest honors the best short stories, plays, essays, and poems among hundreds submitted annually by men and women nationwide.

With sheer determination, purpose, and a little bit of luck, Alesha takes charge of her own destiny, refusing to leave her life to chance. She creates Unleash for Love, a reality TV show, aiming to discover genuine love and propel her career to new heights. Alesha is not alone in this adventure—her besties, Melissa (Pretty Vee), and Candi (Logan Browning), are by her side; her most successful friend, Teddy (Lamorne Morris), lends his money and talent to get the show made; and a hilarious cast of bachelors and characters are along for the ride....

Struktureller Rassismus über Jahrhunderte: Eine Alternativ-Weltgeschichte Anna ist 20 Jahre alt und studiert Geschichtswissenschaft. Sie ist die Erste ihrer Familie, die es geschafft hat, eine Zulassung an der Hochschule zu erhalten. Denn für Weiße ist es eher ungewöhnlich, einen Studienplatz zu bekommen. Um nicht aufzufallen und diesem Privileg gerecht zu werden, verhält sich die junge Frau möglichst unauffällig.

Publicly humiliated, Marisa Banks is blindsided by the news that the man she's been dating for months is married. Being called names she wouldn't wish on anyone in front of a room full of people by her boyfriend's wife is enough to shake her identity to its foundations. In an attempt to rebuild, she makes a few questionable decisions. Asher Blaine is one of them. He's intelligent and sexy, but the pedestal he's got himself up on is unshakeable. Or so he thinks. Marisa asks for the one thing he can't deny her, even if it's the craziest thing he's ever done.

Dimple, Nikisha, Danny, Lizzie and Prynce are half-siblings who don't have much in common except abandonment issues. But when a catastrophic event forces them to reconnect with each other and with Cyril Pennington, the absent father they never really knew, things start to get complicated fast . . .

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions.

It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, 17-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is 21, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth.

Aaliyah is determined to celebrate her thirtieth birthday with a boyfriend. And after a failed blind date, the local bartender, Ahmad, suggests she joins a dating app. Filled with lies, catfish, and fetishizing, the wild world of online dating makes Aaliyah think she’s in over her head. And she is. But with her two best friends and a protective bartender by her side, what could go wrong?

Brought to you by Penguin. Every slave plantation is a house of spies and intrigue. No slave walks a straight line or has a single story - deep within their hearts is betrayal and insurrection. But against whom? Hiram Walker is a man with a gift and a curse. He was born between worlds: his father a white plantation master, his mother a black slave. And, unbeknown even to himself, he was born with a special power. When he is sold to a new mistress as punishment for attempting escape, Hiram discovers her home is a secret hub of the underground railroad: a training ground for its agents.

Bonnie and Mansour are meant to be: two children abandoned by their mothers from opposite sides of the Black Atlantic, who find each other in New York in 1968 and set about making music that will change the world. Mansour’s sound is unique: a fusion of Senegalese prayer songs, and the wild beats of East Coast American jazz. His voice soars and lifts, carrying away the hearts of all who hear him; carrying away Bonnie, a lost American girl with her own troubled past. As they travel together from New York to Paris, to Rio and Switzerland, Mansour’s music forges connections and breaks new ground.

Blood spilled long ago between the Republic of Mareen and the armies of the Blood Emperor, ending all blood magic. Now there is peace in the Republic—but there is also a strict class system, misogyny and racism. Her world is not perfect, but Ikenna survived in it. With the murder of her grandfather, Ikenna spirals out of control. Though she is an initiate for the Republic’s deadly elite military force, Ikenna has a secret only her grandfather knew: she possesses the blood magic of the Republic’s enemies.

Philadelphia, 1948: Fifteen-year-old Ruby's dreams are almost within reach. She's going to be the first in her family to attend college, despite having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising her only daughter. Washington, DC, 1948: Eleanor arrives in the city with ambition, hope and a past she's trying her hardest to run from. When she meets William at Howard University, with his inky black eyes and broad shoulders, it's love at first sight. In the dawn of the 1950s, Ruby and Eleanor are complete strangers - until their paths unexpectedly collide.

Swearing to herself she’d never get involved with an alpha due to a devastating loss, Shante, a therapist with magic and an omega, has now gained the attention of an alpha demon. When he asks her for help controlling his beserker rage, she can’t say no. However, maintaining her walls around the handsome alpha proves more challenging than she anticipated.

Drawing on James Baldwin's own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the Fire Baptized, where the church swells with song and it is as if 'the Holy Ghost were riding on the air'. But he feels only scalding hatred for Gabriel, whose fear and fanaticism lead him to abuse his family. Johnny vows that, for him, things will be different. This blazing tale is full of passion and guilt, of secret sinners and prayers singing on the wind.

This remarkable novel begins in 1850s Louisiana, where Gilda escapes slavery and learns about freedom while working in a brothel. After being initiated into eternal life as one who "shares the blood" by two women there, Gilda spends the next 200 years searching for a place to call home. An instant lesbian classic when it was first published in 1991, The Gilda Stories has endured as an auspiciously prescient book in its explorations of blackness, radical ecology, re-definitions of family, and yes, the erotic potential of the vampire story.

Harlow Shaw feels naïve for believing in happily ever afters, but she craves a love that lights her up. She thinks she has it all with her boyfriend—Until his promising baseball career overshadows their relationship, and he asks her a life-changing question. It causes her to wonder if what they have is all she ever truly wanted. Harlow is yearning for more than the curated life she is living. A trip to Bali, a move to Seattle, and an alleged burned cup of coffee lead her to a friendship she didn't know she needed and a love so deep she can feel it in her bones.

Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, she is sleeping with all the wrong men and she has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her: painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. And then she meets Eric, a white, middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted Black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair.

The Nickel Boys is Colson Whitehead's follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning best seller The Underground Railroad, in which he dramatises another strand of United States history, this time through the story of two boys sentenced to a stretch in a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college.

For Nalani Stark, legacy matters… maybe more than most things. Important enough that when that legacy — inextricably tied to her mother’s memory - is challenged, she’s forced to consider even the most undesirable options… Such as a match made in hell with Orion Sterling. The heir to the competitor she grew up being warned about. Orion is a man well-accustomed to getting exactly what he wants. Other than opportunities to grow the family business, he’s moved by very few things.

Chaurisse and Dana have a lot in common. They both grew up in Atlanta, they shop at the same stores, visit the same restaurants. But unlike Chaurisse, Dana knows the truth: that the girls share the same father. A father with two families, one of which he is determined to keep secret. When the girls meet and become friends, the unsteady balance of both their lives is threatened. Theirs is a relationship destined to explode.