African American Families

After the Civil War, African Americans placed poignant “information wanted” advertisements in newspapers, searching for missing family members. Inspired by the power of these ads, Heather Andrea Williams uses slave narratives, letters, interviews, public records, and diaries to guide listeners back to devastating moments of family separation during slavery when people were sold away from parents, siblings, spouses, and children. Williams explores the usually unsuccessful journeys toward reunification.

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICK An NPR Best Book of the Year Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence ""Magnificent…. A uniquely intimate history of Black liberation."" – Los Angeles Times The long overdue story of the Shakurs...

A stunning novel on love, identity, loss, and redemption. When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she's isn't sure if she'll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (as well as her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has...

The Chancellor’s Mansion was built by William Townsend McCoun, a public servant and abolitionist in New York City. The once-grand house on a hill in Oyster Bay, Long Island, had been abandoned for years. Many would have torn the property down and built something new on the land. But Jamie and Frantz Arty realized the house had more to give. The couple purchased the home, moved in, and began period-specific renovations at the height of the pandemic, along with their parents and three children—including newborn twins.

Dr. Cade Mathis learned early that he was not the son of the man who raised him. His adoptive father, a cruel, bitter man, had always been quick to tell him that he was a bastard and an embarrassment to the rich society family whose daughter got pregnant with him. So when Cade received a full scholarship to college, he was only too happy to leave the only home he had ever known behind and never looked back. Now a successful doctor and one of the best neurosurgeons in the state, the only thing he still wants are answers about where he came from.

When we think of slavery, most of us think of the American South. We think of back-breaking fieldwork on plantations. We don't think of slavery in the North, nor do we think of the grueling labor of urban and domestic slaves. Rachel May's rich new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in the growth of mercantile America, and the bonds between the agrarian South and the industrial North in the antebellum era - all through the discovery of a remarkable quilt.

From one of the most trusted commentators on the issues facing black Americans today, The Vanishing Black Family exposes the real force holding back black Americans—and it’s closer to home than you think. Since 2020, there’s been a sustained effort to narrow the divide between black and...

In God Don't Play, trouble comes a woman's way just when she thinks she's finally got it all figured out. Annette Goode couldn't be happier with where she is in life. She has a good job, a comfortable home, and a wonderful husband and daughter. But tough times lie ahead. Out of the blue, Annette begins receiving anonymous hate mail and threatening phone calls. It seems her life isn't as settled as she thought, and demons from her past surface in unexpected ways.

The creator of the viral TikTok series “Who TF Did I Marry?” shares an even more unfiltered account of how she reclaimed herself, fought through toxic relationships, and regained her foundation through healing and deep self-reflection. When Tareasa “Reesa Teesa” Johnson decided to...

An extraordinary new novel about family, legacy, and an inherited curse, from National Book Award–nominated author LaToya Watkins Set across Texas and spanning four generations, The Book of Chuck is a gimlet-eyed investigation into birthright and belonging through the story of one family in...

A rediscovered "masterpiece" (Kirkus) of Black American literature first published in 1950, about an unlikely friendship in a West Virginia town After several years of seclusion in the Black quarter of Beetlecreek, West Virginia, in the precarious 1930s, a retired carnival worker named Bill...

In this gripping, emotionally-layered novel set in Prohibition-era Martha’s Vineyard, a young woman from a Black seafaring family plunges into the dangerous world of rum-running to save her home and uncover the truth about her father’s death. Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea is a gift...

Framed in a drug sting by the person he trusted most, grad student Jean emerges from seven months at Rikers Island into a pandemic-ravaged New York City. His parents won't speak to him. His girlfriend has moved on. And Marcus, the friend who betrayed him, has vanished. Working as a food delivery cyclist through the empty streets of 2020, Jean pedals between his shattered past and an uncertain future. But as the city erupts in protests over George Floyd's murder, he's forced to confront not just personal betrayal, but the injustices that have shaped his life as a young Black man in America.

Fall in love with this group of navy SEALs from The Westmoreland Legacy in three fan-favorite novels from New York Times bestselling author Brenda Jackson, collected here in one volume! The Rancher Returns Returning from active duty to find his ranch being dug up by a beautiful stranger isn’t...

It was a long, hard-fought battle for Judge Kristen Catherine Bryant to be appointed by the President of the United States to a judgeship on the DC Circuit Federal Court of Appeals. She endured Congressional interrogations, press and news media interviews, speaking engagements, and grips and grins with intestinal fortitude and no little amount of patience and guile. That was all now behind her. She had a month to decompress before she had to move from Chicago, Illinois, to Washington, DC, to assume her new post.

In this season of giving, love is in the air for the Rose and Valentine families. Because of the addition of in-laws, they both are in pursuit of new land and developments to build lasting memories with the ones they hold dear. So when they submit bids against one another, their rivalry heats to a level that will bring them to a head; until they both become outbid by a new competitor. On the heels of a love affair brewing, the need for a partnership arises that may shut down the foundation of their feud permanently, or possibly, extend it.

This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the...

Born in 1937 and raised by her physician great aunt, chorus-line dancing grandmother, and glamorous murdermystery writing mother, psychotherapist Carole Ione knew more about the men in her family than she did about her secretive female forbearers. This critically acclaimed memoir is the lyrical fruit of an 18-year quest for her maternal roots. This is the fascinating truth of the complexities of race and class that make up her family.

Audio Journeys are exploring the National Civil Rights Museum Memphis Tennesse. Forty-one years ago on April 4 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated as he was leaving the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee to join the city's sanitation workers' striking for better working conditions and pay.

A piercingly powerful memoir, a grandson’s account of the coup that ended his grandfather's presidency of Haiti, the secrecy that shrouded that wound within his family, and his urgent efforts to know his mother despite the past. “A brilliant, absorbing book...I couldn’t stop reading.”...