It's 1924 South Carolina and the region is still recovering from the infamous boll weevil infestation that devastated the land and the economy. Gertrude, a mother of four, must make an unconscionable decision to save her daughters from starvation or die at the hands of an abusive husband. Retta is navigating a harsh world as a first-generation freed slave, still employed by the Coles, influential plantation proprietors who once owned her family. Annie...

"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community--and the things that ultimately haunt us most. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd...

Zara Cole is recruited into the Honors, an elite team of humans selected by a race of sentient alien ships, to explore the outer reaches of the universe, and begins to feel at home for the first time aboard Nadim, her assigned alien ship.

Forging a friendship at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean meet regularly at the first diner owned by black proprietors in their Indiana city and are watched throughout the years by a big-hearted man who observes their struggles with school, marriage, parenthood and beyond.

To seventeen-year-old Angie, who is mixed-race, Marilyn is her hardworking, devoted white single mother. When Marilyn was seventeen, she fell in love with Angie's father, James, who was African-American. Marilyn has always told her he died before she was born. When Angie discovers evidence of an uncle she's never met she starts to wonder: What if her dad is still alive, too? So she sets off on a journey to find him, hitching a ride to LA from her...

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--

Exploited by the white family that took him in as a servant fifteen years earlier, groundskeeper August Sitwell becomes tragically enraged by how his employers mindlessly profit from the talents of a hired Black cook.

Born into slavery, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (ca. 1824-1907) rose to a position of respect as a talented dressmaker and designer to the political elite of Washington, D.C., and a confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. In this unusual memoir, Keckley offers a rare, behind-the-scenes view of the formal and informal networks that African Americans established among themselves, as well as an insider's perspective of the men who made Civil War politics...

"Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of a girl whose imagination is as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn shelter. Dasani was named after the bottled water that signaled Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. In this sweeping narrative, Elliott weaves the story of Dasani’s childhood with the history of her family, tracing the passage of their ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration...

"A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of Black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on Black women during slavery, the devaluation of Back womanhood, Black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the Black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions. The result is nothing short of groundbreaking, giving this...