African American FictionLike this list

26 items

• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

  McBride, James, 1957-

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  In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Salvage the Bones

  a Novel

  Ward, Jesmyn

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  Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Violin Conspiracy

  Slocumb, Brendan,

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  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. But Ray has a gift and a dream--he's…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Such a Fun Age

  a Novel

  Reid, Kiley

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  A story about race and privilege is centered around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

• The Water Dancer

  a Novel

  Coates, Ta-Nehisi,

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  A Virginia slave narrowly escapes a drowning death through the intervention of a mysterious force that compels his escape and personal underground war against slavery.

• Beloved

  a Novel

  Morrison, Toni

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  Sethe, an escaped slave living in post-Civil War Ohio with her daughter and mother-in-law, is persistently haunted by the ghost of her dead baby girl.

• Dirty Bird Blues

  a Novel

  Major, Clarence

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  Dirty Bird Blues tells the story of Manfred Banks, a Chicago blues musician and blue-collar worker, who drifts from Chicago to Omaha in the early 1950s. Caught between the casual comfort of a relationship with a male buddy and the domestic…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Waiting to Exhale

  McMillan, Terry

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  Four African-American women console and support one another in a complex friendship that helps each of them face the middle of their lives as single women.

• The Upper Room

  Monroe, Mary,

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  Mama Ruby's known for taking things that aren't rightfully hers, like her best friend's stillborn infant, who she brought back to life and christened Maureen. She's also rumored to have done away with her husband. Some fear her, others try…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• James

  a Novel

  Everett, Percival,

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  When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Big Gold Dream

  Himes, Chester B., 1909-1984,

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  Alberta Wright drops dead on the street during a sermon by the charismatic con man Sweet Prophet. Her partner rushes home to avoid the cops, only to find her apartment looted by someone looking for her stash of cash. But soon it becomes…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Girls Must Be Magic

  a Novel

  Allen, Jayne, 1978-

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  In this highly anticipated second installment in the Black Girls Must Die Exhausted series, Tabitha Walker copes with more of life's challenges and a happy surprise--a baby--with a little help and lots of love from friends old and new.

• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

  a Novel

  Jeffers, Honorée Fanonne, 1967-

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  To come to terms with her own identity, Ailey embarks on a journey through her family's past, uncovering the shocking tales of generations of ancestors--Indigenous, Black, and white--in the deep South. In doing so Ailey must learn to…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Nickel Boys

  a Novel

  Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

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  Follows the harrowing experiences of two African-American teens at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

• If Beale Street Could Talk

  a Novel

  Baldwin, James, 1924-1987

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  When a pregnant Tish's boyfriend Fonny, a sculptor, is wrongfully jailed for the rape of a Puerto Rican woman, their families unite to prove the charge false.

• What Looks Like Crazy on An Ordinary Day

  Cleage, Pearl

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  HIV-positive Ava Johnson returns to the Michigan town where she grew up, and finds that what she thought might be the end is, in fact, a beginning.

• The Color Purple

  Walker, Alice, 1944-

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  The lives of two sisters--Nettie, a missionary in Africa, and Celie, a southern woman married to a man she hates--are revealed in a series of letters exchanged over thirty years.

• Devil in a Blue Dress

  An Easy Rawlins Mystery

  Mosley, Walter

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  1948, Los Angeles: The mortgage payment's coming due, so Easy Rawlins accepts the assignment of finding Daphne Monet, a blonde torch singer with a penchant for jazz and criminal black consorts. 

• The Vanishing Half

  Bennett, Brit,

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  Twin sisters, inseparable as children, ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.

• Kindred

  Butler, Octavia E.

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  Dana, a Black woman, finds herself repeatedly transported to the antebellum South, where she must make sure that Rufus, the plantation owner's son, survives to father Dana's ancestor.