African American Historical Fiction

He is a devilish and handsome ex-football player, now a rising sports agent at one of the hottest firms in the country. She is the uncompromising Yancey Harrington Braxton, an up-and-coming Broadway star who oozes charm and bleeds ambition. Both believe that in each other they've finally met their match. A lavish wedding is planned, and the ultimate power couple plans to spend their lives in holy matrimony. But just before the nuptials, fate and a little comeuppance from the past threaten the happy couple's future.

This is a time when the industrial might of the US was converted from making automobiles and washing machines to airplanes and bombs; a time when men carried guns instead of lunch pails; a time when machines stood idle because there was no white men to operate them; a time when white women left home to take the place of white men in the factories. This is a time when most unions and companies continued to ban Negroes from skill-training or employment in all but janitorial jobs; a time when white men refused to have black men work alongside them....

Essence best-selling author Keith Lee Johnson's popular series continues with this fourth book, which reaches back to unearth the roots of JohnnieWise's family tree. On the eve of her arranged marriage in an African village, a 16-year-old girl elopes with her fiancé's younger brother. But the lovers are captured and sold into American slavery - and the girl wonders if she'll ever see her man again.

Laurel Dixon has it all. She is a Caucasian woman, living the American Dream... or so she thinks. She has a successful career in a world where women are expected to be home and stay silent. She is a proponent for equal rights, and has finally given birth to her first child after years of failed pregnancies.

Hand in Hand presents the stories of 10 men from different eras in American history, organized chronologically to provide a scope from slavery to the modern day. The stories are accessible, fully drawn narratives offering the subjects' childhood influences, the time and place in which they lived, their accomplishments and motivations, and the legacies they left for future generations as links in the "freedom chain".

The Lebensborn Alliance begins 11 years after The Lebensborn Experiment ends. It is now 1956, and the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. Former Sergeant Kapp Johnson gets enlisted as Dr. Martin Luther King's bodyguard and moves to Montgomery, Alabama. Hans has inherited millions from his uncle and buys the Vancouver Daily Times. As Managing Editor, Hans sends Adok to Montgomery to report on the bus boycott. When Adok gets involved with the local KKK and goes missing, Hans' prophecy he would one day meet Sergeant Johnson again comes true.

When Sheriff Mapes is summoned to a sugarcane plantation to find a dead Cajun farmer, he knows who committed the crime. Mapes finds himself powerless, however, when nearly 20 elderly black men confess to the murder. Can justice be served, or will the dead man's brutish father pass judgment his way?

It's 1955 and ex-cop Tommy Smith is working as a crime writer for the only daily black newspaper in America when his boss, a prominent publisher with a politically complex past, turns up murdered, a group of corrupt white cops takes the opportunity to make sure Smith is prime suspect. To clear his name, Smith will need to enlist the help of his old boss, the resilient Sergeant McInnis - who has logged seven difficult years as the only white cop in a black precinct.

Jackie is a poor boy from Harlem and the victim of abuse from his widowed, alcoholic father. But everything changes on the day he discovers the power of comedy. When his classmates make fun of his tattered clothes, Jackie turns everything around by freely poking fun at himself and soon has everyone on the floor with laughter. His amazing talent, and raging ambition, take him through the local club circuit to become the most sought after comedic entertainer in opulent, '50s Las Vegas and beyond.

In the early 1900s an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea, just as the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule. Orphaned by the sunk vessel are two sisters and their half-brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them. Chronicling three generations of an island family from 1916 to the 1970s, Land of Love and Drowning is a novel of love and magic.

In 1831 Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed 55 whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and quickly convicted and executed. In the Matter of Nat Turner penetrates the historical caricature of Turner as befuddled mystic and self-styled Baptist preacher to recover the haunting persona of this legendary American slave rebel.

Twelve Years a Slave is the autobiographical account of Solomon Northup, an African American who was born free in New York in the early 1800s. In 1841, Solomon Northup was captured and forced into slavery for a period of twelve years. Northup's account is detailed in its account of life on a cotton and sugar plantation and the daily routine of slave life during the first part of the 19th century.

Dovey Johnson Roundtree was most famous for her successful defense of an indigent Black man accused of the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a prominent White Washington, DC, socialite, in 1965. Despite her triumph in this high-profile case, Roundtree continued to represent the poor and the underserved. She was the first lawyer to bring a bus-desegregation case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, clinching the ruling that enabled Robert F. Kennedy to enforce bus integration. She was also among the first Black women to enter the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

April 7, 1994 to July 15, 1994 proved to be a veritable nightmare for 100 harrowing days in Rwanda, so this book precedes the anniversary of a momentous time. Deep-seated enmity between Tutsis and Hutus boiled over, starting from the downing of President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane, and culminating in a vicious slaughter of Tutsis, their sympathizers, and in turn, Hutu perpetrators at the hands of vindictive Tutsis.

In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman, the acclaimed author of Writing to Save a Life, blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country. Navigating an extraordinary range, Wideman challenges the boundaries of traditional forms, and delivers unforgettable, narratives that touch the core of what it means to be alive.

The book tells the story of Henry, a slave who escapes from his plantation and meets the notorious pirate Blackbeard. Together, they embark on a journey filled with danger and adventure, facing challenges such as wanted posters, royal navy battles, and the threat of losing Blackbeard's treasure.

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions: Why couldn't she drink from a whites-only fountain? Why couldn't she feel safe beyond home - or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter - and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

This story takes place in 1912, with the narrator being a young girl named Heattie. Her memories take her to the times when the Sisterhood, one who is her grandmother, would sit on the front porch and tell stories, past and present. Even though the stories are being told on the front porch, Heattie's life gets caught between the stories and the mysteries of real life. In the midst of the stories and the mysteries, Heattie and her best friend, Luceen, have several adventures while trying to solve certain mysteries of lost identities.

A retelling of the story of escaped slave Jim from Huckleberry Finn. This novel shifts the focus to Jim's wife Sadie.

If you loved Detroit and the Motown sound, you will love Graylin Brown! A heartwarming and triumphant story of an African American soul singer who was cut down in his prime by a debilitating disease. The fictional story spans from 1965 Detroit, Michigan to Hollywood, California in the early 90s. After the onset of the disease in 1965, he went into a nine-year remission. He did the best he could as he struggled with the possibility of a relapse