American Literature

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination - in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, DC....

Justin and Toni were friends. Besties, with a whole list of life rules developed over a friendship that started when they were kids. As long as they stuck to the rules, even when they blended a business relationship into the friendship, things went off without a hitch. But then one of them broke the rules - it was Justin. Justin broke the rules - and Toni has been mad about it ever since.

The daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, Ricki Wilde is the opposite of her famous socialite sisters. In her bones, Ricki knows that somewhere, a different, more exciting life awaits her. When she moves into a Harlem brownstone, she leaves behind her family, wealth, and chaotic romantic decisions to realize her dream of opening a flower shop. One evening Ricki encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.

Stories of Your Life and Others presents characters who must confront sudden change-the inevitable rise of automatons or the appearance of aliens-while striving to maintain some sense of normalcy. In the amazing and much-lauded title story (the basis for the 2016 movie Arrival), a grieving mother copes with divorce and the death of her daughter by drawing on her knowledge of alien languages and non-linear memory recollection.

When Ian Blackheath and Lucy have an altercation in Emily d'Autrecourt's millinery shop, the lovely Englishwoman is horrified at Blackheath's insensitivity toward his ward. Then Lucy steals a doll from Emily's shop-secreted inside the plaything is evidence of Emily's role as a spy. Accepting Ian's offer that she be Lucy's governess is dangerous, but how else can Emily search for the doll without arousing suspicion?

Claudia Rankine's bold new audiobook recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in 21st-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV - everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive.

Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.

A young father and son set out on a road trip, devastated by the death of the wife and mother they both loved. United in grief, the pair travel to her ancestral home, where they must confront the terrifying legacy she has bequeathed: a family called the Order that commits unspeakable acts in search of immortality.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting.

In a hood loaded with sex, brutality, and crime, three friends are at a turning point. They can surrender to the streets - and the murderous men who rule there - or walk a totally different path. But nothing is simple for women addicted to life on the edge. And everything has consequences.... Angel, Jaz, and Kyra are all leading double lives, torn between working hard to leave the ghetto behind and being dragged back in by the lying, pimping, drug-dealing men they can't seem to let go.

From the Chelsea House Black Americans of Achievement series, this biography focuses on one of today’s most talented and popular screen stars. Denzel Washington rose to stardom, won an Academy Award, and was named one of the most popular movie stars in 1998.

Finnegans Wake is the greatest challenge in 20th-century literature. Who is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker? And what did he get up to in Phoenix Park? And what did Anna Livia Plurabelle have to say about it? In the rich nighttime and the language of dreams, here are history, anecdote, myth, folk tale and, above all, a wondrous sense of humor, colored by a clear sense of humanity. In this exceptional reading by the Irish actor Barry McGovern, with Marcella Riordan, the world of the Wake is more accessible than ever before.

When Catherine Saxon, an American correspondent reporting on the war in Europe, is found murdered in her London digs, news of her death is concealed by British authorities. Serving as a linchpin between Scotland Yard and the Secret Service, Robert MacFarlane pays a visit to Maisie Dobbs, seeking her help. He is accompanied by an agent from the US Department of Justice - Mark Scott, the American who helped Maisie get out of Hitler’s Munich in 1938. MacFarlane asks Maisie to work with Scott to uncover the truth about Saxon’s death.

An American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream.

Blanche White is a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper working for the genteel rich in North Carolina. But when an employer stiffs her, and her checks bounce, she goes on the lam, hiding out as a maid for a wealthy family at their summer home. That plan goes awry when there's a murder and Blanche becomes the prime suspect. So she's forced to use her savvy, her sharp wit, and her old-girl network of domestic workers to discover the truth and save her own skin.

Beauty isn't everything. Beneath Simone's long fake hair, phony smile, and saline booty is a web of trickery, lies, and murder. After being attacked by Jimmy, Simone's web of lies begins to violently unravel. One by one, her skeletons are falling out of the closet and revealing her true colors. While Simone fights to keep the man and life that she stole, Chance is fighting desperately to keep his life with Gia. Amidst the hot and steamy passion, which builds between Gia and Chance like a scorching inferno, is the fear of Chance being locked away for the rest of his life.

Since coming home to Spirit Bear Point First Nation, Hazel Ellis has been dreaming of an old crow. He tells her he’s here to help her, save her. From what, exactly? Sure, her dad’s been dead for almost two years and she hasn’t quite reconciled that grief, but is that worth the time of an Algonquin demigod? Soon Hazel learns that there’s more at play than just her own sadness and doubt. The quarry that’s been lying unsullied for over a century on her father’s property is stirring the old magic that crosses the boundaries between this world and the next.

Sasha Naradnyo is a gangster. He's a gangster with heart, sure, but Sasha sticks his neck out for no man. That's how you stay alive in Crack City, a colony stuffed deep into the crust of the otherwise unlivable planet Peezgtaan. Alive only - because if you're human, you don't prosper, at least not for long. Sasha is a second generation City native. His parents came to this rock figuring to make it big, only to find that they'd been recruited as an indentured labor force for alien overlords known as the Varoki.

Now that she's happily married-for-security, there's nothing Mercedes Crystal won't do to hold on to what she's got. She didn't sweat it when her rich businessman husband had a down-and-dirty ego-boosting affair. But she's not going to stand for him falling in love with luscious Arizona Remington - or Arizona unleashing all kinds of shenanigans to keep him. And Mercedes' take-no-prisoners ways are just what her siblings need to take down all those out to game them.

This riveting story takes place during the Battle of the Hundred in the Hand, otherwise known as the Fetterman Massacre of 1866. The story is told alternately through the eyes of Cloud, a dedicated Lakota warrior who fights alongside a young Crazy Horse, and Max Hornsby, a white pioneer who mistakes Cloud's redheaded wife for a captive.