Shayna Small
Author
Publisher
Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier,...
Author
Publisher
Riverhead Books
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve. As these courageous women help to form the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, they are dealing with...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Named a Best Book of Summer by Good Housekeeping, Chicago Magazine, The St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, Veranda, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, and more!
"[A] powerful novel....
...Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Following an unforgettable cast of characters and a jaded female P.I. enmeshed in a criminal conspiracy in 1980s Mississippi, The Queen City Detective Agency is a riveting, razor-sharp Southern noir that unravels the greed, corruption, and racism at the heart of the American Dream.
Meridian, Mississippi—once known as the Queen City for its status in the state—has lost much of its royal bearing by 1985. Overshadowed by more prosperous cities such...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake is back with an epic duology starter that follows a young woman training to join a fabled order as she attempts to lead a hero to his critical first victory. A must-read for fans of Alexandra Bracken and Victoria Aveyard.
Aristene are an order of mythical female warriors. Though heroes might be immortalized in legends, it's the Aristene who guide their paths to victory. They are the Heromakers.
Raised...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 10.4 - AR Pts: 15
Language
English
Formats
Description
Who was Harriet Tubman? To John Brown, the leader of the Harpers Ferry slave uprising, she was General Tubman. For those slaves whom she led north to freedom, she was Moses. To the slavers who hunted her down, she was a thief and a trickster. To abolitionists she was a prophet. As Catherine Clinton shows in this riveting biography, Harriet Tubman was, above all, a singular and complex woman, defeating simple categories. Illiterate but deeply religious,...
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.9 - AR Pts: 17
Language
English
Description
"As princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer--the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it's never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove her mastery of the monarchy's dangerous soul magic. When her demonstration goes awry, Amora is forced to flee. She strikes a deal with Bastian, a mysterious pirate: he'll...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Sixteen-year-old Ebony Jones is devastated when her family moves from Houston to her grandmother's house in the country. There's nothing for Ebony in Alula Lake, Texas. Absolutely nothing.
Award-winning author Liara Tamani's “What She Missed” is a rich and emotional novel that celebrates change, nature, friendship, growing up, and love, for readers of Sarah Dessen's “The Rest of the Story” and Elizabeth Acevedo's “Clap When You Land.”
When...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Young Black Americans have been trying to realize the promise of the American Dream for centuries and coping with the reality of its limitations for just as long. Now, a new generation is pursuing success, happiness, and freedom -- on their own terms.
In It Was All a Dream, Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
From the author of Sisters in Arms comes the incredible, untold story of Effa Manley, a black businesswoman in the male dominated baseball industry, and, currently, the only woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1930s, New York City
An ambitious Harlem woman's husband upends her social climbing when he buys a Negro Leagues baseball team and appoints her as the team's business manager. Overnight, Effa Manley goes from 125th Street's civil...
12) Anywhere You Run
Author
Language
English
Description
As Seen on The TODAY Show!
Called One of the Best Crime Novels of the Year by New York Times * NPR * New York Post * Washington Post * Buzzfeed * South Florida Sun-Sentinel * Library Journal * CrimeReads
From the award-winning author of All Her Little Secrets comes yet another gripping, suspenseful novel where, after the murder of a white man in Jim Crow Mississippi, two Black sisters run away
...Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.1 - AR Pts: 14
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Delilah always keeps her messy, gooey insides hidden behind a wall of shrugs and yeah, whatevers. She goes with the flow--which is how she ends up singing in her friends' punk band as a favor, even though she'd prefer to hide at the merch table. Reggie is a D&D Dungeon Master and self-declared Blerd. He spends his free time leading quests and writing essays critiquing the game under a pseudonym, keeping it all under wraps from his disapproving family....
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A promise could betray you.
It's 2008, and the inauguration of President Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to—and was forced to leave behind—when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she'd never look back, but Ruth knows...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A powerful work of Afro-magic realism that interrogates the legacy of slavery and roots of poverty, witnesses the beauty and power in survival, and asks whether belief, magic, and intention can forge new realities
Blue's daughter, Tsitra, is dying a horrific death. Thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by an 18-month stillness. More than a century before, Blue's grandparents, Amanda and Palmer, attend a salon...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.6 - AR Pts: 11
Language
English
Description
"Following in the footsteps of her überfamous grandma, eighteen-year-old Evie Jones is poised to be Hollywood's next big star. That is until a close friend's betrayal leads to her being blacklisted . . . Fortunately, Evie knows just the thing to save her floundering career: a public appearance with America's most beloved actress--her grandma Gigi, aka the Evelyn Conaway. The only problem? Gigi is a recluse who's been out of the limelight for almost...
Author
Language
English
Description
As the "War on Crime" targeted American cities from the late 1960s onward, Black residents threw punches and Molotov cocktails at police officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Drawing on new sources, Elizabeth Hinton reveals that these so-called riots were not explosions of criminality, but collective acts of rebellion against police brutality and racism. A leading scholar of policing, Hinton documents the...
18) Carolina Built
Author
Language
English
Description
This "exuberant celebration of Black women's joy as well as their achievements" (Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author) novelizes the life of real estate magnate Josephine N. Leary in a previously untold story of passion, perseverance, and building a legacy after emancipation in North Carolina.
Josephine N. Leary is determined to build a life of her own and a future for her family. When she moves to Edenton, North Carolina, from the plantation...
19) Otaku
Author
Language
English
Description
Otaku is the debut novel from former NFL player and tech enthusiast Chris Kluwe, with a story reminiscent of Ready Player One and Ender's Game.
Ditchtown.
A city of skyscrapers, built atop the drowned bones of old Miami. A prison of steel, filled with unbelievers. A dumping ground for strays, runaways, and malcontents.
Within these towering monoliths, Ashley Akachi is a young woman trying her best to cope with a brother who's slipping away, a mother...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Professional bodyguard D Hunter takes a gig protecting rapper Asya Roc at an underground fight club in poverty-stricken Brownsville, Brooklyn. Unknown to D, the rapper has arranged to purchase illegal guns at the event. An acquaintance of D's from the streets, Ice, turns out to be the courier.
During the exchange a robbery is attempted, and Ice is wounded. D gets Asya Roc to safety but, now in possession of the illicit merchandise, finds himself...