African American Historical Fiction

“Douglass sets a classic on fire with an inspired recasting that strips away time and all expectations."" — Rita Williams-Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of A Sitting in St. James From New York Times bestselling author Ryan Douglass comes a gripping and tender reimagining of...

Inspired by a real-life scandal that was shocking even for the tumultuous Roaring Twenties, this captivating novel tells the story of a secret marriage by a New York elite that ignites an explosive battle over race and class—and three very different women struggling for truth, legitimacy, and the futures they risked everything to shape.

Of Rizpah's Daughters is the story of an American enslaved African woman named Margaret. When her master gave her toddler daughters away as gifts, she was so devastated that in her grief, she made "graves" for her daughters. She topped the graves with flowers and knelt at the graves daily. Her master thought it was funny and sarcastically re-named the woman Rizpah. Of Rizpah's Daughters is a story about the evils of slavery, love, grief, friendship, loyalty, adultery, the supernatural, death, and victory.

Cassius, a virile slave, avenges the murder of his kind master and must flee with his pregnant wife and son via the Underground Railroad. The journey is endangered by greedy bounty hunters and harsh weather. When he discovers his ex-lover in a safe house, he is torn between desire and fidelity—and the pull of freedom.

A powerful story about love, courage, sacrifice, resilience, and hope, True Grace, set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties, chronicles the journey of an immigrant, mixed-raced woman from the Congo, England, and Jamaica, fighting for her family's survival. Inspired by real people and events, Grace must navigate the misogyny and racism of the courts, banks, child welfare system, and bad actors to hold her family together. Calling on her grit, determination, and grace, she must overcome harrowing circumstances.

Annamitta enters the story as a six-year old as her “Sonatina” begins with a Polonaise North with her Mama Minnie Lou, where she learns dignified protest and discovers a talent for sewing. Annamitta’s adult dance kicks-off in what I like to call the “Honey Pot Suite” where a visit with her big sister Suzie Mae in Miami leads to an altercation with Trixie Dupree causing concern over Mr. Buddy J.

Read about a genius slave who name George; also known in the 1800’s as, The Black Magician, for his remarkable tactics of helping slaves escape North into freedom. George uses his witty inventions, brilliant disguises and crafty tricks to help slaves escape slavery. George is instructed and guided by his grandmother, a Nubian princess, stolen from Africa. While setting out on the mission to set slaves free, George has to contend with a money hungry slave catcher, dishonest friends and many other trials and tribulations.

The World is Full of Champions spans more than thirty years from the ’60s to the late ’90s in race-torn Philadelphia as two proud Black families—one wealthy, the other not—confront major change when tragedy strikes and the daughter of the working-class Smythe family falls in love with the son of the affluent Whitman family.

Por toda a América as plantações de tabaco floresceram e trouxeram riqueza aos senhores de terra durante o século XIX. Quando a bonança começa seu declínio, Howell Walker já vislumbra o próprio fim e sabe que precisará de um substituto para administrar os últimos dias de Lockless, sua propriedade no coração da Virgínia, Estados Unidos. Logo fica claro que seu único herdeiro, Maynard, não tem a menor aptidão para a missão. E mesmo o jovem Hiram, com sua resiliência e memória infalíveis, não poderia fazê-lo―além de filho ilegítimo de Walker, ele é um escravo.

Beautiful and brilliantly talented Celia DeMille is a 19th-century concert artist who has garnered fame, sung all over the world, and amassed a fortune. But prejudice bars her from achieving her place in history as one of the world’s greatest singers, and she dies in poverty and obscurity.

Betrayed and left for dead, a soldier in 13th-century East Africa winds up in hiding as a monk in Roha (Lalibela). He soon gets romantically entangled with a wealthy heiress as he struggles to maintain his monastic vows. However, when old enemies resurface and threaten those he has come to care for, he secretly picks up the sword again, offering salvation by day with the Bible, but secretly exacting deadly vengeance and justice by night with the sword.

Timbuktu, western Africa, 1706. Folashade, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a professor of linguistics, is sent south with her older sisters, Bibi and Adaeze, to endure the painful ceremony that a girl on the cusp of womanhood is expected to. In Djenné, on the banks of the Niger, the sisters’ fate and that of their fellow Bambara are changed forever when they’re kidnapped, marched toward grueling indignities on Gorée Island, and eventually hauled aboard an English slaver bound for the Americas.

J. Sutter is a bonafide junketeer - a freelance writer, travelling from city to city, hungry for free meals and the discarded sales receipts of others to claim on his expense account. Travelling into the backwoods of West Virginia to write a piece on the unveiling of the new John Henry postage stamp and the ensuing John Henry Days festival, J. continues his nearly record-setting, three-month junket binge.

The son of Maya Angelou, Guy Johnson is a critically acclaimed author and poet in his own right. Echoes of a Distant Summer is the story of Jackson St. Clair Tremain, a San Francisco civil servant who thought he had left his old life far behind. In 1982, Jackson is summoned to Mexico to confer with his dying grandfather, the brutal hustler King Tremain. When King dies, Jackson inherits $50 million - and the unwanted attentions of a malevolent bayou crime lord named Pug DuMont.

Harlem, 1936: Lena Aldridge grew up in a cramped corner of London, hearing stories of the bright lights of Broadway. She always imagined that when she finally went to New York City, she’d be there with her father. But now he’s dead, and she’s newly arrived and alone, chasing a dream that has quickly dried up. When Will Goodman—the handsome musician she met on the crossing from England—offers for her to stay with his friends in Harlem, she agrees.

Roo, as he is affectionately known by family and friends, experiences a dual journey: the conscious journey via the Atlantic Railroads and the eerie journey through his dreary and murky dream state. Both of these "pathways" ultimately lead him to the same profound and soul-jarring destination—a catastrophic event that all but decimates a successful Black community where many of its residents earned more that the average United States citizen...only 56 years after the abolition of slavery.

Harlem, 1936. Clyde “The Viper” Morton boards a train from Alabama to Harlem to chase his dreams of being a jazz musician. When his talent fails him, he becomes caught up in the dangerous underbelly of Harlem’s drug trade, leaving him to decide what he's willing to give up and what he wants to fight for.

A streetwise African American teenager hastily departs bigoted Anderson, South Carolina in the 1940s. During her travels over a span of nearly eighty years, she assumes the identity of her alter ego while living a good life as a nationally respected media mogul. But it is marked with deep-rooted secrets: One involving the murder of a White man and the other dealing with the disappearance of a prominent Black man, both from her past life in the Deep South.

As the 1950s' Mau Mau war breaks out in the foothills of Mt. Kenya, Wambũi, a 14-year-old girl, leaves her besieged village to join a prestigious boarding school, a half day’s journey away by train. There, she becomes aware of her extraordinary mathematical abilities discovered by her teacher Eileen Atwood. Initially, Wambũi views Eileen’s attentions with suspicion and hostility, but over time, the two grow close and form a lifelong friendship.

Author Lawrence Reid Bechtel has captured the story of Isaac Granger, a slave from Thomas Jefferson's plantation as told through the eyes of amateur historian Reverend Charles Campbell. In 1852, after much searching through the Black districts of Petersburg, Virginia, the amateur historian Charles Campbell finally located Isaac Granger, a former slave of the late Thomas Jefferson.