Regional Fiction

Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

At once a powerful evocation of his early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice to both the individual and the body politic, James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil rights movement with this eloquent manifesto. The Fire Next Time stands as one of the essential works of our literature.

Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.

As a transnational and transracial adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the fraught spaces of ethnicity and belonging. As a pan-polyam individual, she lives between types of family—adopted, biological, chosen—and "community"; heternormativity and queerness; commitment and a constellation of love. Everything and Nothing At All weaves together a lifetime of literary criticism, cultural study, and a personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge.

Sean was a seventh-grade drop-out, a dishwasher then a construction worker to help his mother and sister scrape by, and a self-described "nobody with a sad story behind him." Yet he cannot deny the glimmers of life's goodness even amid its rough edges. Such goodness becomes even harder to deny when Sean meets the love of his life at a fried chicken church potluck, and harder still when his lifelong love of storytelling leads him to stages across the southeast, where he is known and loved as "Sean of the South."

From one of Fine Homebuilding's best-loved authors, Larry Haun, comes a unique story that looks at American home building from the perspective of twelve houses he has known intimately. Part memoir, part cultural history, A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses takes the reader house by house over an arc of 100 years.

In a world beset by amassing forces of darkness, one organization - the Regional Office - and its coterie of superpowered female assassins protects the globe from annihilation. At its helm, the mysterious Oyemi and her oracles seek out new recruits and root out evil plots. Then a prophecy suggests that someone from inside might bring about its downfall. And now the Regional Office is under attack.

Spannungsvoll, atmosphärisch und bewegend. Der belgische Ermittler Piet Donker wird von Brüssel in eine Kleinstadt in Ostbelgien versetzt. Dort soll er einen fünfzehn Jahre alten Cold Case wieder aufnehmen, bei dem es neue Erkenntnisse gibt. Ein Jugendlicher verschwand damals spurlos, die Polizei ging davon aus, es mit einem Ausreißer zu tun zu haben. Doch nach und nach häufen sich die Hinweise, dass der Junge Opfer eines Serienmörders wurde - und dass das Morden noch lange nicht beendet ist.

Lake Ohrid and Lake Prespa. Two ancient lakes joined by underground rivers. Two lakes that seem to hold both the turbulent memories of the region's past and the secret of its enduring allure. Two lakes that have played a central role in Kapka Kassabova's maternal family. As she journeys to her grandmother's place of origin, Kassabova encounters a historic crossroads.

As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer. With her deft pen, she created stories speculating the devolution of the American empire, using it as an apt metaphor for the best and worst of humanity—our innovation and ingenuity, our naked greed and ambition, our propensity for violence and hierarchy. In this outstanding work, Susana M. Morris places Butler’s story firmly within the cultural, social, and historical context that shaped her life.

Keine Tat wird je vergessen... Der erste Fall für das ungleiche Ermittler-Duo Iwersen und Hansen. Als eine Frau unter rätselhaften Umständen am Strand von Föhr zu Tode kommt, ahnt noch niemand, dass dies erst der Beginn einer Mordserie ist, welche die beschauliche Nordsee-Insel erschüttert. Aus einer Freundesgruppe wird ein junger Mann nach dem anderen erschossen. Der erfahrene Inselpolizist Hark Hansen und die junge Flensburger Kommissarin Kerrin Iwersen werden auf die Fälle angesetzt. Liegt das Motiv für die Morde in der Vergangenheit der Männer?

It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.

Authored with uninhibited candor and manic energy, this audiobook is Acosta's own account of coming of age as a Chicano in the psychedelic '60s, of taking on impossible cases while breaking all tile rules of courtroom conduct, and of scrambling headlong in search of a personal and cultural identity. It is a landmark of contemporary Hispanic American literature, at once ribald, surreal, and unmistakably authentic.

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

"Behutsam fuhr sie mit ihren Fingern über den nackten Körper. Es war wie ein Zwang. Schon seit Stunden rief sie sich immer wieder zur Ordnung, befahl sich, ihn aus ihren Gedanken zu verbannen, ihn einfach zu ignorieren. Aber, so sehr sie es auch versuchte, es gelang ihr nicht. Ganz im Gegenteil schien ihr Verlangen, diesen Körper zu berühren, mit jedem Moment intensiver zu werden." In der ostfriesischen Stadt Emden wird der junge Musiklehrer Raffael Winter ermordet.

Der grausame Mord an einem Journalisten führt Hauptkommissar David Büttner und seinen Assistenten Sebastian Hasenkrug ins idyllische ostfriesische Fischerdorf Greetsiel. Nach ersten Ermittlungen deutet vieles darauf hin, dass der junge Familienvater Opfer einer skrupellosen Agrarlobby wurde. Denn bereits seit längerem waren ihr seine engagierten Recherchen zum massiven Bienensterben und dem Einsatz genmanipulierten Getreides ein Dorn im Auge. Doch auch im Privatleben des Opfers lief nicht alles so harmonisch, wie es auf den ersten Blick schien.

Der zweite Fall für Bodenstein und Kirchhoff. Ein Tierpfleger des Opel-Zoos im Taunus macht eine grausige Entdeckung: im Elefantengehege liegt eine menschliche Hand. Die dazu gehörige Leiche finden Kommissar Oliver von Bodenstein und seine Kollegin Pia Kirchhoff von der Hofheimer Kripo in einer frisch gemähten Wiese gegenüber dem Zoogelände. Der Tote war ein Lehrer und vehementer Umweltschützer, der wegen seines Charismas von vielen Schülern glühend verehrt wurde - und von einigen Einwohnern der Stadt ebenso sehr gehasst.

No Longer Human (1948, Ningen Shikkaku / A Shameful Life / Confessions of a Faulty Man) was an attack on the traditions of Japan, capturing the postwar crisis of Japanese cultural identity. Framed by an epilogue and prologue, the story is told in the form three notebooks left by Ōba Yōzō, whose calm exterior hides his tormented soul. Osamu Dazai was a Japanese author who is considered one of the foremost fiction writers of 20th century Japan. A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō (The Setting Sun) and Ningen Shikkaku (No Longer Human), are considered modern-day classics in Japan.

Das beschauliche ostfriesische Dorf Canhusen wird durch eine Mordserie aufgeschreckt. Kommissar David Büttner und sein Assistent Sebastian Hasenkrug stehen vor einem Rätsel: Warum mussten die Opfer sterben? Und was hat es mit den Teebeuteln auf sich, die bei jedem der Opfer gefunden wurden? Haben diese Morde womöglich etwas mit dem Tod zweier junger Männer zu tun, die in der Nachkriegszeit auf mysteriöse Weise ums Leben kamen?

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