African American Literature Fiction

Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction Named a Most Anticipated Book by New York, Time, the Boston Globe, Bustle, and Town & Country A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington. In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor...

A New York Times bestseller and Oprah Book Club 2.0 selection, the epic, unforgettable story of a man determined to protect the woman he loves from the town desperate to destroy her. This beautiful and devastating debut heralds the arrival of a major new voice in fiction. Ephram Jennings has...

The man known as the King of the Zoo has spoken his truth. He laid his cards on the table and prepared his friends for his impending death. Time is running out, but Chevy is determined to reach Toussaint and fulfill a lifelong dream. However, the one person he feels he needs by his side has gone missing. Even though the team is aware of Chevy's sickness, they rally together to aid him in finding a resolution and motivate him to seek treatment. Their final hope rests with Zaria, who they believe can change the King's life.

All Zarinah wanted was to fall in love. Growing up, she had kissed her fair share of frogs. When an unconventional situation leads her to Lawson, her wishes might become reality. Lawson is the new CEO of his family's hotel casino chain. He's tired of aimless dating and women just wanting his money. When he meets Zarinah, he instantly feels like she's the one.

Her life. Her rules. Finally. Anuri Chinasa has had enough. And really, who can blame her? She was the unwilling star of her stepmother’s social media empire before “momfluencers” were even a thing. For years, Ophelia documented every birthday, every skinned knee, every milestone and...

Most people wouldn't accuse me of being a good person, but most people don't understand me. Hell, I'm not sure I understand myself sometimes. All I know is that my life has been a challenge, and the day-to-day grind of all wears me down. I graduated college with a degree in marketing, and have just been brought on to be an intern at an ad agency. Contrary to the chaos in my home life, things are looking up . . . until I learn that Kendrick Kennedy will also intern for the same agency.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled Black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.

Dominic has always had a way with the ladies, but this one is different as she’s the forbidden fruit. He’s doing a job, but she’s intrigued by him. He’s as dangerous in the streets as he is in the bed. Can he keep a clean face, or will all hell break loose?

She’s got everything planned—including when she’ll have kids. Until something completely unplanned turns her world upside down. World-famous Whitney “Sahara” Richardson is at the top of her game. With four Grammys, an Oscar nod, and a billion-dollar clothing line, her career is...

In this powerful, edgy, and funny debut novel about making right and wrong choices, Bump gives us an unforgettable and lovable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude is a young black man in search of a place where he can fit; born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. After a riot consumes his neighborhood, Claude decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new life and identity. But he discovers, there's no escaping the people and places that made him.

One of Esquire's Best Horror Books of 2024 One of Crime Reads' Best Gothic Novels of 2024 In this Southern gothic horror debut, a young Black woman abandons her life in 1960s Chicago for a position with a mysterious family in New Orleans, only to discover the dark truth: They’re under a curse...

News of the murder sparks fear in the small community of Cherry Creek, and that fear only grows when the arsonist leaves a calling card belonging to a killer everyone believed was long dead. The Dragonfly mysteriously disappeared from the local asylum decades ago, stepping out of existence and into legend. The story draws the attention of Noelle McKenzie, a local author, and she digs into details from the past while Captain Derek Dempsey searches for evidence in the present.

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 small Caribbean Island has turned into Cartel land and Aries is at the head of the bloodshed. Her son was brutally murdered and she fights through depression and the burden of guilt as she tries desperately to find the truth. She's prepared to paint the town red to find the reason behind the murder. An unpredictable enemy surfaces and she begins to reevaluate everything that she thought she knew. She turns back to the life that she vowed to leave behind, but she is broken. She's broken into tiny pieces and at every moment, danger is present.

He thinks, as he escapes from Zanzibar, that he will probably never return, and yet the dream of studying in England matters above that. Things do not happen quite as he imagined—the school where he teaches is cramped and violent, he forgets how it feels to belong. But there is Emma, beautiful, rebellious Emma, who turns away from her white, middle-class roots to offer him love and bear him a child. And in return, he spins stories of his home and keeps her a secret from his family. Twenty years later, the barriers come down in Zanzibar and he is able and compelled to go back.

Racquel and Marcella are sisters with very little in common, except that each wants what the other has. Racquel has a beautiful house, a fulfilling career and a loving husband. But driven by her desperate longing for a child, she is alienating her husband and family. Marcella is a single mom, trying to support her two children with a low paying job, food stamps, and occasional child support from a deadbeat ex-husband. She won't allow anyone to interfere with her dream for a better lifestyle, not even her own children.

New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber and award-winning novelist Eric Pete team up to deliver the first in a much-anticipated new trilogy. The Family Business features two times the heat, two times the fun, and two times the drama as the members of an unforgettable family (not to mention their lovers and hangers-on) find their way in and out of trouble. As their many fans will attest, Weber and Pete share a talent for penning juicy fiction that their audience can’t get enough of.

"There's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories, as told by James Baldwin, detail the ingenious and often desperate ways in which they try to keep their heads above water.

Detective Easy Rawlins returns in a mystery set in 1961 Los Angeles as Easy accepts a job searching for a beautiful woman nicknamed Black Betty who works as a housekeeper in Beverly Hills.

From Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström, international bestselling author of In Every Mirror She’s Black, comes the highly anticipated second novel, focusing on the lives of three Black women as they fight their own personal struggles in one of the most egalitarian societies, Sweden. Can a career...