African American Historical Fiction

Inspired by true events, Among Kings tells the inspiring story of William Sheppard, the first African American missionary to the Congo who rescues the entire nation enslaved by Belgian's ruthless King Leopold II. Traveling 1,000 miles up the Congo River with Samuel Lapsley, his white missionary companion, the two overcome deadly fevers, dangerous animals, and cannibal tribes. Sheppard becomes a famous explorer honored by kings, queens, and presidents. Armed with a camera, he exposes widespread Congo atrocities to the world.

Uplifting and occasionally heartbreaking stories of love from the time of slavery in the American south.

Paris was born and raised a slave on a South Carolina rice plantation. As a young boy, he used to look up at the birds, flying freely above him. He longed to be free like the birds, but in 18th century, pre-Revolutionary times, it seemed impossible. However, when the British came seeking slaves willing to desert their masters to fight their cause, a 15-year-old Paris saw his chance, and took it.

Lore, legend, and history tell us of the Vikings: warrior kings on epic journeys of conquest and plunder. But the stories we know are not the only stories to tell. There is another story, one that has been lost to the mists of time: the saga of the dark queen.

Set in 19th-century California, Destiny’s Embrace introduces listeners to ranch owner Logan Yates, who must come to terms with his true feelings for Mariah Cooper, his beautiful, headstrong housekeeper. But just as Logan decides to make Mariah his own, her former lover reenters her life. Now Logan will have to show Mariah that the passion they share has been written in the stars.

“I'm obsessed. Lyrical prose, relatably complex characters, a steamy love story with mounting dread that is at once sensual and full of yearning...Die for Me is utterly unique and still at its core about the most universal of stories: about a woman vanquishing fear through love.” —Ali...

Here is Gayl Jones' classic novel, the tale of blues singer Ursa, consumed by her hatred of the 19th-century slave master who fathered both her grandmother and mother.

June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

For fans of Bridgerton and The Davenports comes a sweeping historical novel from bestselling author Veronica Chambers about courageous (and flirtatious) Ida B. Wells as she navigates society parties and society prejudices to become a civil rights crusader. Before she became a warrior, Ida B...

Acclaimed author of Island Queen Vanessa Riley brings listeners a vivid, sweeping novel of the Haitian Revolution based on the true-life stories of two extraordinary women: the first Empress of Haiti, Marie-Claire Bonheur, and Gran Toya, a West African-born warrior who helped lead the rebellion that drove out the French and freed the enslaved people of Haiti.

Easy Rawlins, L.A.'s most reluctant detective, comes home one day to find Easter, the daughter of his friend Chrismas Black, left on his doorstep. Easy knows that this could only mean that the ex-marine Black is probably dead, or will be soon. Easter's appearance is only the beginning, as Easy...

Birmingham, 1929: Robert Lee Harrington, a master carpenter, has just moved to Alabama to pursue a job opportunity, bringing along his pregnant wife and young daughter. Birmingham is in its heyday, while Robert and his family find much to enjoy in the city, it’s also a stronghold for the Klan. 2019: Meghan McKenzie, a young reporter, has grown up hearing family lore about her great-grandfather’s murder—but no one knows the full story. Determined to find answers, Meghan travels to Birmingham. But as her investigation begins to uncover dark secrets, her life may be in danger.

"The Heroic Slave" is the only work of fiction by the eminent abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The narrative was inspired by Madison Washington, a slave on the Creole who led a rebellion on the ship in November 1841, and had it sail to Nassau in the Bahamas instead of New Orleans. The short story appeared in the collection Autographs for Freedom (1852).

After Winna's little sister breaks her glasses, her grandfather gives her an old-timey pair of spectacles that belonged to her great-aunt Estelle. The specs are silver and perfectly circular, with tiny stars on the bridge and earpieces that curl all the way around her ears. Best of all, they're magic. Because when Winna makes a wish beginning with the words "What if"—that is, when she speculates—the spectacles grant it.

Crispus Attucks was the major figure in the early struggle for American independence. A sailor who rallied Bostonians to walk into certain death from an assembled firing squad of British Regulars. His ethnic background was half African American and half Native American. He was born into slavery in 1723 and escaped his enslavement to become a dockyard worker, a whaler and a contract farmer.

“What a beautifully imagined and important narrative. Sanders’ clear-eyed and powerful writing made this a hard one to stop reading!” —Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-Winning Author "This is a novel to cherish and share. And this is a history to sing about and affirm --...

Perfect for fans of Promise Boys, this gripping historical mystery follows a teenager who finds a murdered girl on her family's California beach—a discovery that will reveal the racism rampant in her world. Fifteen-year-old Blue Collins’s parents own the only Black beach in Santa Monica in...

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson received the Coretta Scott King Award for her children’s book Almost to Freedom. Here she relays the extraordinary story of Bass Reeves, a lawman in the Old West who escaped slavery to become one of the most successful U.S. Marshals in history.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was threatened, King was also an advocate for the poor and spoke out against racial and economic injustice until his death - from an assassin's bullet - in 1968.

Set in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City, in the years 1857-1863, when America's attitudes toward people of color and slavery shifted—painfully, transformationally—to the point where a war that began to restore the union becomes one that owes much to Black fighting regiments, and common cause grows for the abolition of slavery. We experience the daily life of Five Points through the eyes of Theo, aged seven at the start of the book and 13 at its close. Theo is half Black and half Irish, an orphan living between the homes of her Black and Irish grandparents.