African Urban Fiction

Blu thinks she knows all there is to know about the dope game. She's watched her momma serve out of the same place they lay their heads since she was a little girl. Then her brother's best friend, Budz, shows her that there is more to the game than just selling drugs. With love, loyalty, and wealth on her side, what more could she want? Blu finds out when she is introduced to Black, and Blu is determined to make him her reality. Torn between two men who have secrets and motives of their own, Blu has no idea what she's gotten herself into, but she knows there is only one way out.

Diamond, the sassy vixen that you love to hate, is back, and she has a few more tricks up her sleeve. After Kemp's death, she quickly moves on and shacks up with his best friend, Black. Unfortunately, things aren't running as smoothly as they expected. Diamond is quickly losing control of the situation - and her emotions - after multiple attempts on her life by one of the victims she believed she'd killed. To make matters worse, people from her past keep popping up and causing a ruckus, including the father that walked out on her 10 years earlier.

Diamond and Mica have been best friends since grade school and have always watched each other’s backs. After Mica moves out of their drug-infested neighborhood, they have a scandalous falling out and lose touch. It isn’t until Diamond hooks up with Kemp Lo, one of North Philly’s most notorious drug dealers, that she’s able to leave the hood. Under extreme circumstances, Mica and Diamond meet up and are back on the map as the Laverne and Shirley of the ghetto. Unfortunately, both women have ulterior motives for rekindling their friendship.

Jewel climbed up the heap to become queen of the streets, diva of all divas. But now that she's expecting a baby, she's concerned about just one thing - giving her child a good life, away from the guns, the drugs, and the lies. However, that also means a life away from the glitz and glam that Jewel still craves, and she's not quite ready to give it all up...not until she's back on top. Flat broke and miles away from her fugitive baby daddy, Jewel will have to put every bit of her street savvy, as well as her sharp business skills, into action to gain back her place and her power.

Jewel used to be content with being a ride or die chick, playing Bonnie while the men in her life played Clyde. But now she realizes that it was her connections and street smarts that helped her man, Calico, rise to the top, and Jewel wants to be the one in control. She's tired of taking orders from men. She's willing to do anything to be queen of the streets, but when a deal she makes with the enemy comes back to haunt her, her dream is turned into a nightmare. Hopeless and struggling to keep her head above water, Jewel meets Misty, who seems to be her savior.

Brooklyn Johnson had it all - money, jewels, designer clothes, a successful modeling career, and men falling at her feet. Now she's struggling to keep up the facade. When life was good, she wasn't always good to those around her. Even as she developed a drug addiction and struggled to maintain her sanity, she never felt she needed anyone. Now that an illness has turned her life upside down, she finds herself having to make amends with all the people she's wronged.

When his father, one of Houston’s most notorious kingpins, is arrested and the money stops coming in, Chris King, not used to fending for himself, must learn how to rule the streets of Houston if he wants to survive another day.

When a military soldier dies, everyone feels the pain. When a street soldier dies, only those close to him mourn. But both soldiers have something in common: they fought for what they believed in. Home from their final tour, a team from the 82nd Airborne Division out of Ft. Bragg, NC faces harsh realities: a broken relationship, the death of a child, and even the murder of one of their own.

Haitian-American Vodou priestess Mambo Reina Dumond runs a healing practice from her New Orleans home. Gifted with water magic since she was a child, Reina is devoted to the benevolent traditions of her ancestors. After a ritual slaying in the French Quarter, police arrest a fellow vodouisant. Detective Roman Frost, Reina’s ex-boyfriend - a fierce nonbeliever - is eager to tie the crime, and half a dozen others, to the Vodou practitioners of New Orleans. Reina resolves to find the real killer and defend the Vodou practice and customs.

With demanding careers and two children, Cherise and Mason McKenzie find themselves spending more time apart than together, which allows infidelity with a trusted loved one to darken their doorstep. It is only through a series of near-tragic events that the couple are able to rebuild their lives and rekindle their love.

In the finale, everyone is trying hard to get their piece of happiness. Will Polite figure out who he wants, and what he wants? Will he go through with the wedding? Or will he choose Sinclair and their child, while walking away from Kamaya? With Bless getting arrested, will he be prosecuted for something he didn’t do? Or did he have something to do with it? Will he and Ace’s relationship remain, or will she allow Niko to squeeze his way back into she and Neveah’s life?

Fifteen years ago, Angelina Sanders had only begun to lead her dream life when she experienced the ultimate betrayal. Broken and hurt, Angelina left everything behind and started fresh, all alone. Now, Angelina receives a letter from her estranged sister that makes her rethink everything she ever believed. Can Angelina reconnect with the family she once left behind as she struggles to accept the help she’s not quite sure she deserves? Will she be able to redirect the course of her career as she finally finds inspiration for her art?

You can take a rat out the hood but can you take the hood out of a hoodrat? We're about to find out in Rotten Lil Peaches 3. Autumn makes it out of the ghetto but can she take the ghetto out of herself? Meka achieved her lifelong goal and is dancing center stage. She has the name, fame, and money she desired but will it equal happiness? Quiana is right on her heels but how will she deal with her deadly diagnosis? Winter is still on the scene but will she be a help or a hindrance in this strange new world?

Narcotics Detective Carl Malease earned the nickname of Malice because of his relentless drive on the job. Motivated by walking in his legendary father's footsteps drives him to make the biggest bust in New York city. The problem with that is he is the lone good apple in a bushel of bad ones. His ambition and integrity put him at odds not only with his crooked supervisor but his entire unit. A miscalculation gives them the fuel they need to burn his stellar career to the ground. It also puts him in the cross hairs of the most dangerous mobster in the city.

Chasity is a self-proclaimed THOT. The Internet is her chessboard and other men's money are the kings she so terribly loves to capture. It was never a big deal, nor was it ever complicated for Chasity. Find lonely men, exchange a couple favors, and walk away a wealthier woman. She never anticipated meeting someone quite like Vinnie, owner of a surprisingly successful construction company. Vinnie played her games like any other man, except the funds never stopped coming.

The return of Bricks. People thought the cocaine trade was exclusively for the kingpins of Mexico. But Miami was where it all had originally began....

Between running an illegal gambling house and preparing for her husband to be released from prison, Lauryn learns a vicious lesson in family values and how dealing with family can be like dealing with a total stranger. It will only take a single bullet to divide her family, but even more bullets to bring it back together.

Sex sells. Tawanna learned this early on in life and had been applying this knowledge to every aspect of her life ever since. Tawanna had no problem with using what she had in order to get what she wanted. Tawanna's daughter, who was only 15 years younger than her, was the complete opposite. Alie wanted nothing from anyone. She believed that hard work was the thing that got you to the top. Alie was an up-and-coming R&B singer whose career had risen earlier, but was now stuck at a standstill.

Son of a black gangster and an Italian mother with ties to a high profile mobster, the deadly mixture allows Spaz to become the most ruthless gangster in the City of Brotherly Love. What starts off as a plot to move his mother out of the lethal streets of North Philly, turns into a multi-million dollar drug enterprise.

Ancient folklore and modern myth come together in these stories by author Craig Laurance Gidney. Here are found the struggles of a medieval Japanese monk seduced by a mischievous fairy, and a young slave who finds mystery deep within the briar patch of an antebellum plantation. Gidney offers a gay teen obsessed with his patron saint, Lena Horne, and, in the title story, an ailing tourist seeks escape at a distant shore but never reckons on encountering an African sea god. Rich, poetic, dark and disturbing, these are distinctive tales not soon forgotten.