Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats By Michael Cunningham

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou In this first volume of her collection of memoirs, poet Maya Angelou describes her girlhood in the South.

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America By Nathan McCall A reporter's memoir of his journey from the streets of Portsmouth, Va., to prison, rehabilitation, and a job at The Washington Post.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short By Terry McMillan A chatty novel about the trials of the squabbling, but ultimately loving, Price family.

Their Eyes Were Watching God By Zora Neale HurstonIn this novel a proud, dreamy young woman comes of age expecting better treatment from the men in her life than she experiences.

All About Love: New Visions By bell hooks HarperPerennial, 2001 Feminist critic bell hooks takes on questions and cultural assumptions about love with examples from her own life.

Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class By Lawrence Otis GrahamAn African-American lawyer's social history and thoughtful appraisal of his own place in the black social hierarchy.

Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self By Rebecca Walker In this memoir, a daughter explores questions of racial, sexual, and cultural identity in light of the traditions of her Jewish father and African-American mother.

Black Like Me By John Howard GriffinA white writer undergoes medical treatments to darken his skin, then travels through the American South, trying to learn what it's like to be black.

A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Edited by ClayborneCarsonWarner , 2001 A collection of Dr. King's influential and best-known speeches, compiled by the director of the King Papers Project.

Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad By Jacqueline L. Tobinand Raymond G. Dobard, PhD Anchor, 1999 Based on family oral histories, this account examines how quilts were used to communicate messages on the Underground Railroad.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And OtherConversations About Race By Beverly Daniel Tatum A clinical psychologist and professor explains the development of racial identity using anecdotes about her sons, excerpts from research, interviews, and essays written by her students.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker The Color Purple is foremost the story of Celie, a poor, barely literate Southern black woman who struggles to escape the brutality and degradation of her treatment by men. The tale is told primarily through her own letters, which, out of isolation and despair, she initially addresses to God. . . . during the course of the novel, which begins in the early 1900's and ends in the mid-1940's, Celie frees herself from her husband's repressive control.

Beloved - Toni MorrisonAt the center of Toni Morrison's fifth novel, which earned her the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is an almost unspeakable act of horror and heroism: a woman brutally kills her infant daughter rather than allow her to be enslaved. The woman is Sethe, and the novel traces her journey from slavery to freedom during and immediately following the Civil War. Woven into this circular, mesmerizing narrative are the horrible truths of Sethe's past: the incredible cruelties she endured as a slave, and the hardships she suffered in her journey north to freedom. Just as Sethe finds the past too painful to remember, and the future just "a matter of keeping the past at bay," her story is almost too painful to read. Yet Morrison manages to imbue the wreckage of her characters' lives with compassion, humanity, and humor. Part ghost story, part history lesson, part folk tale, Beloved finds beauty in the unbearable, and lets us all see the enduring promise of hope that lies in anyone's future. Coming from Plume in April 1999, Toni Morrison's #1 New York Times bestseller

And This Too Shall Pass - E. Lynn HarrisIn And This Too Shall Pass, E. Lynn Harris takes us into the locker rooms and newsrooms of Chicago, where four lives are about to intersect in romance and scandal. At the heart of the novel is the gay but celibate Zurich, a rookie quarterback for the Chicago Cougars whose trajectory for superstardom is interrupted by a sexual harassment suit by Mia, a female sportscaster with her own sights on fame. With his career in jeopardy, Zurich hires Tamela, a high-powered attorney, to defend him, while Sean, a gay sportswriter, covers the story, and ultimately helps Zurich do the right thing.

Some Love, Some Pain, Some Time: Stories - J. California CooperEmploying her characteristic themes of romance, heartbreak, struggle, and faith, Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime is Cooper at her best. We meet Darlin, a self-proclaimed femme fatale who uses her wiles to try to find a husband; MLee, whose life seems to be coming to an end at the age of forty until she decides to set out and see if she can make a new life for herself; Kissy and Buddy, each of whom is trying and failing to find someone to fit them until they finally meet each other; and Aberdeen, whose daughter, Uniqua, shows her how to educate herself and move up in the world. These characters and others offer inspiration, laughter, instruction, and pure enjoyment in what is sure to be one of J. California Cooper's most popular collections of stories.

Disappearing Acts - Terry McMillanReview From Thulani Davis - Voice Literary Supplement:Disappearing Acts, like Terry McMillan's first novel, Mama, is an energetic and earthy book that takes place wholly within the confines of an intense relationship. While the narrator of Mama sounded like a character in the story, in this book McMillan uses two alternating voices that speak directly to the reunder. The whole world is filtered through the self-naming, self-mythologizing first-person monologue--from racism to masturbation, parental conflicts to staying on a diet. And because there's no one obvious for Zora Banks or Franklin Swift to tell it to--they are loners in every way--the question is whether these folks are for real. In many ways they are quite ordinary, in other ways they are hardly tangible.

Invisible Man - Ralph EllisonInvisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood", and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky. Song of Solomon - Toni MorrisonIn an effort to hide his southern working-class roots, Macon Dead, an upper-class northern black businessman, tries to insulate his family from the danger and despair of the rank-and-file blacks in his neighborhood. The plan leads his son, Milkman -- so nicknamed after his mother nursed him well past the proper age -- onto a path exactly opposite the one his father had hoped. Milkman is driven into the arms of a violent, lower-class woman, into a clandestine circle of blacks who repay white violence in kind, and into an awareness that he can fulfill his own potential by understanding the mistakes of his ancestors as they relate to his own

Native Son - Richard WrightWidely acclaimed as one of the finest books ever written on race and class division in America, this powerful novel reflects the forces of poverty, injustice, and hopelessness that continue to shape our society. Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny: by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country.

2nd Time Around - James Earl HardyPooquie and Little Bit are back in love and back to stirring up the hip-hop community and the rest of New York. But as these two strongly independent yet passionately linked men discover, the pursuit of happiness takes work to maintain. This is the seriously sexy, fiercely funny, black-on-black sequel to the bestseller B-Boy Blues. Homemade Love - J. California CooperIn one of the best-loved volumes of her work, J. California Cooper tells exuberant tales full of wonder at the mystery of life and the hardness of fate. Awed, bedeviled, bemused, all of Cooper's characters are borne up by the sheer power of life itself.

Sister, Sister- Eric Jerome DickeySassy, comical, and true-to-life, SISTER, SISTER tells the tale of three young African-American women�perky wife Valerie, scheming social worker Inda, and broken-hearted flight attendant Chiquita�and how their lives are coming together, and apart, in Los Angeles. Fresh and in-your-face, this witty novel depicts a world where women sometimes have to alter their dreams, but never have to stop embracing the future.

Kindred - Octavia ButlerDana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back again and again to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father the daughter who will become Dana's ancestor. Yet each time the stays grow longer and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has even begun

A Lesson Before Dying - Ernest GainesSet in a small Cajun community in the late 1940s, A Lesson Before Dying is an "enormously moving" ("Los Angeles Times") novel of one man condemned to die for a crime he did not commit and a young man who visits him in his cell. In the end, the two men forge a bond as they both come to understand the simple heroism of resisting--and defying--the expected. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Flyy Girl - Omar TyreeFrom a fresh new voice with talent to burn comes this brash, bittersweet novel about a young black woman's coming of age. In the tradition of Donald Goines, James Baldwin, and E. Lynn Harris, Omar Tyree is destined to be a distinctive chronicler of his environment and his generation.

Friends and Lovers- Eric Jerome DickeyFresh from the success of "Sister, Sister"--a "high-spirited celebration of black sisterhood" ("Publishers Weekly")--Eric Jerome Dickey offers a sexy, searing African-American novel of betrayal, love, and friendship in today's L.A.

Tumbling - Dianne Mckinney-WhetstoneIn her debut novel, McKinney-Whetstone evokes the feel and rhythm of a close-knit African-American community. Set in South Philadelphia during the 1940s and 1950s, Tumbling tells the story of Herbie and Noon who, although they have never consummated their marriage, are blessed with daughters when, on two separate occasions, children are left on their doorstep.

Blessings - Sheneska JacksonInfused with the themes that are closest to women's hearts, Blessings presents Jackson's most absorbing, complex work yet. At the center of the novel are four vibrant women who are searching for happiness as they grapple with such difficult issues as female bonding, infertility, adoption, abortion, and child discipline.

Waiting to exhale-terry mcmillan From the critically acclaimed author of Mama and Disappearing Acts, a wise, earthy story of a friendship between four African American women who lean on each other while "waiting to exhale": waiting for that man who will take their breath away

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/when the Rainbow Is Enuf: A Choreopoem - Ntozake ShangeThe complete text and stage directions to Shange's 1976 Broadway production is the moving statement of a talented black woman artist who sings the song of her own experience in a way that all can relate to it.

A Little Yellow Dog - Walter MosleyWill Easy Rawlins ruin all he has worked on for the past two plus years just for spending several sensuous moments with a sexy woman? Find out in Walter Mosley's latest page-turner

Invisible Life: Fifth Anniversary Edition - E. Lynn Harris After graduating with honors from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in 1977, Harris went to work as a sales executive for IBM. Five years ago, he quit his job as a computer salesman and used $25,000 of his own money to print INVISIBLE LIFE, which in the wake of the ensuing frenzy was published as a Doubleday paperback in 1994 and quickly soared to number one on the Blackboard Bestseller List of African American titles.

Possessing the Secret of Joy - Alice WalkerA New York Times bestseller, this is the story of Tashi Johnson, a tribal African woman now living in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to submit to the tribal initiation rite of passage. Severely traumatized, she spends the rest of her life trying to reconcile her African heritage with her experience as a modern woman in America. Previously published by Pocket Books.

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America - Nathan McCall In this "honest and searching look at the perils of growing up a black male in urban America" ("San Francisco Chronicle"), "Washington Post" reporter Nathan McCall tells the story of his passage from the street and the prison yard to the newsroom of one of America's most prestigious papers. "A stirring tale of transformation".--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "The New Yorker".

Just as I Am - E. Lynn HarrisFrom the author of Invisible Life comes a vivid portrait of contemporary black life, with all its pressures and the complications of bisexuality, AIDS and racism. Harris gives his readers a refreshing view of African-American achievement and a sensitive depiction of gay/straight friendships.

Mama Day - Gloria NaylorGloria Naylor won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983 for THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE. Her subsequent novels include LINDEN HILLS, MAMA DAY, and BAILEY'S CAF�.

The Wedding - Dorothy WestThe first novel in 45 years from famed African-American author Dorothy West, the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance [Ms. West Passed in 1998]. The Wedding is a wise and heartfelt story about the shackles of race and class we all wear -- and the price we pay to break them. The TV movie recently aired on ABC and was presented by Oprah Winfrey productions.

Things Fall Apart - Chinua AchebeA classic of modern African writing, this is the tale of what happens to tribal customs and old ways when white man comes.

Breath, Eyes, Memory - Edwidge DanticatAn unforgettable novel that shimmers with the wonder and terror of its author's native Haiti. Set in the island's impoverished villages and in New York's Haitian community, this is the story of Sophie Caco, who was conceived in an act of violence, abandoned by her mother and then summoned to America. In New York, Sophie discovers that Haiti imposes harsh rules on its own.

Li'l Mama's Rules - Sheneska JacksonIn this fresh, outspoken novel about contemporary relationships and the rules that guide (and misguide) them, Sheneska Jackson''s "jazzy voice sounds smoother and sweeter than ever" ("Newsday").

One Better - Rosalyn McMillanWith the raw, vivid energy that made her first novel a national bestseller, Rosalyn McMillan tells the story of Spice Witherspoon, a prosperous Detroit restaurateur, and her two grown daughters, Sterling and Mink. Mink has always been a joy, but Sterling has always been--and probably always will be--trouble with a capital "T". A story of love, family, and the search for the right someone to share it all with, this is contemporary women's fiction at its very best.

Your Blues Ain't Like Mine - Bebe Moore CampbellCampbell's affecting memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad, was hailed as "one of the more overdue books about and for the black community" by The Washington Post. Now, in her first novel, repercussions are felt for decades in a dozen lives after a racist beating turns to cold-blooded murder in a small 1950s Mississippi town.

Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter MosleyDevil in a Blue Dress honors the tradition of the classic American detective novel by bestowing on it a vivid social canvas and the freshest new voice in crime writing in years, mixing the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the racial realism of Richard Wright to explosive effect.

Sula - Toni MorrisonThis rich and moving novel traces the lives of two black heroines--from their growing up together in a small Ohio town, through their sharply divergent paths of womanhood, to their ultimate confrontation and reconciliation.

The Bluest Eye - Toni MorrisonFrom the 1993 Nobel Prize-winner comes a novel "so charged with pain and wonder that it becomes poetry" (The New York Times). First published in 1965, The Bluest Eye is the story of a black girl who prays -- with unforeseen consequences--for her eyes to turn blue so she will be accepted.

A Gathering of Old Men - Ernest Gaines"Set on a Louisiana sugarcane plantation in the 1970s, A Gathering of Old Men is a powerful depiction of racial tensions arising over the death of a Cajun farmer.

My Soul to Keep - Tananarive Due mixes nearly unbearable suspense with fantasy and horror in this tightly woven tale. When people close to her begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, Jessica's husband makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago he and other members of an Ethiopian sect gave up their humanity for immortality--a secret that he must now protect at any cost.

Roots: The Saga of an American Family - Alex HaleyThis "bold . . . extraordinary . . . blockbuster . . ". (Newsweek) begins with a birth in 1750, in an African village; it ends seven generations later at the Arkansas funeral of a black professor whose children are a teacher, a Navy architect, an assistant director of the U.S. Information Agency, and an author.

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1968-1995) - Nikki GiovanniOne of America's hottest and most controversial poets since the 1960s, Nikki Giovanni has been a teacher, mother, activist, and the unflagging poet of more than 13 poetry collections. This volume of her impeccably chosen, truth-telling poems is a celebration of her remarkable career and the changes she has endured as an African-American woman, lover, and feminist.

The Street - Ann PetryAs much a historical document as it is a novel, this 1946 winner of the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship is the poignant and unblinkingly honest story of a young black woman's struggle to live and raise her son by herself amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s.

Cane - Jean ToomerThe book by which we remember this writer is as hard to classify as is its author. At first glance it appears to consist of assorted sketches, stories, and a novelette, all interspersed with poems. Some of the prose is poetic, and often Toomer slips from one form into the other almost imperceptibly. The novelette is constructed like a play.His characters, always evoked with effortless strength, are as recognizable as they are unexpected in the fiction of that period. Fern is a "creamy brown" beauty so complicated men take her "but get no joy from it." Becky is a white outcast beside a Georgia road who bears two Negro children. Kabnis is a languishing idealist finally redeemed from cynicism and dissipation by the discovery of underlying strength in his people. Is he Jean Toomer in fictional disguise? One wonders.It does not take long to discover that Cane is not without design, however. A world of black peasantry in Georgia appears in the first section. The scene shifts, with almost prophetic insight, to the black ghetto of Washington, D. C. in the second. Rural Georgia comes up again in the third. Changes in the concerns of Toomer's folk are noted as the setting changes.A young poet-observer moves through the book. Drugged by beauty "perfect as dusk when the sun goes down," lifted and swayed by folk song, arrested by eyes that "desired nothing that you could give," silenced by "corn leaves swaying, rustv with talk," he recognized that "the Dixie Pike has grown from a goat path in Africa." A native richness is here, he concluded, and the poet embraced it with the passion of love.

How Stella Got Her Groove Back - Terry McMillian"How Stella Got Her Groove Back" is the sexy tale of a fortysomething single mother who falls in love with a 20 year old man while on vacation in Jamaica. Simultaneous release with the Signet movie tie-in paperback and the Twentieth Century Fox movie starring Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover. Abridged.

Tar Baby - Toni MorrisonWinner of the 1978 National Book Critic's Circle Award for fiction. "Beautiful and satisfying . . . an unusually wise and large-spirited book . . . consistently picturesque, charged with startling images".--Baltimore Sun

Ugly Ways - Tina McElroy AnsaThe new novel by the highly acclaimed author of Baby of the Family. A mother's death provides a time of reckoning for her three daughters. As they prepare for the funeral, members of the Lovejoy family must come to grips with their relationships with their mother. Another Country - James BaldwinSet in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, among other locales, Another Country is a novel of passions--sexual, racial, political, artistic--that is stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, depicting men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime. In a small set of friends, Baldwin imbues the best and worst intentions of liberal America in the early 1970s.

Black Gold - Anita Richmond BunkleyBased on a true story, this compelling saga of two African-American families, whose lives are entwined in a web of greed, obsession, and revenge when oil is discovered on their land, is brought vividly to life in an "exciting, entertaining, and intensely personal novel" (Dan Rather, CBS News). Author signings.

Caught up in the Rapture - Sheneska JacksonIn this impressive debut, 25-year-old Sheneska Jackson transports readers to South Central L.A. in a gritty, glamorous, and very real love story. Jazmine's ready to step out from under the influence of her preacher father, get discovered, and have a little fun with her outgoing friend Dakota, with whom she shares her righteous anger at men, girlfriend to girlfriend. "A dazzling kickoff novel."--Rita Mae Brown. First serial to Essence.

Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven - Dawn Turner TriceIn 1975 young Tempestt Saville and her family are chosen by lottery to "move on up" to Lakeland: one square mile of rich black soil carved out of a Chicago ghetto, cradling sparkling apartment towers where the elite of black professionals live behind a ten-foot-high, ivy-covered fence. But 11-year-old Temmy is drawn to the world outside the fence, to 35th Street, a place of colorful, often dangerous characters. 320 pp. National author tour. Local author promo.

The Heart of a Woman - Maya Angelou In this fourth volume of her highly acclaimed autobiographical series, the esteemed poet and author continues the story of her remarkable and sometimes turbulent life, beginning with her days as a singer-dancer in New York City, when her love for writing blossomed at the Harlem Writers Guild. Then there were fiery times as the northern coordinator of Martin Luther King's history-making quest and more impassioned moments when she promised her heart to one man only to have it stolen, virtually on her wedding day, by an African freedom fighter. Through her eloquent prose, Angelou shares her fondest dreams, her heartfelt disappointments, and her loving relationship with her teenaged son. Filled with unforgettable vignettes of famous figures, from Billie Holiday to Malcolm X.

A Do Right Man - Omar TyreeTyree (Flyy Girl, 1996) returns, this time, fortunately, focusing less on Afrocentric theorizing and more on character- -resulting in a good deal more engaging read. The first-person story centers on Bobby Dallas (the ``do right man''), who, despite the weight he's obliged to shoulder as a prototypical Good Black Man, manages to come off as likable, complex, and utterly confused. Bobby has always wanted to be ``in'' radio. And so at Howard University he interns at a couple of stations and makes contacts that ought to be useful in the future. Just before graduation, though, the campus babe and slick New Yorker Pearl Davis takes a shine to Bobby, leading him to throw over best friend Faye Butler, who's been expressing romantic interest in him for years, and follow Pearl to Manhattan, where the talk-radio scene is as cut-throat as the city streets. Sure enough, once Pearl's modeling career takes off, she dumps him fast, and Bobby moves back to Washington to make a real run for his dream job. But while he hooks up there with lots of smart and beautiful women, he finds he can't stop thinking about Faye. After finding professional success, with women of all kinds banging down his door, Bobby is all the more convinced that Faye, his soulmate, was the one he let get away. It will take a coincidence and an act of bravery to gather all the ragged threads of Bobby's life together into a cohesive strand. Tyree in a new, more subtle mode.

The Between - Tananarive DueA features writer and columnist for the Miami Herald electrifies the literary world with her brilliant first novel. Hilton's grandmother drowned trying to save his life. Thirty years later, he's beginning to suspect that he was never meant to survive the accident--and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake.

The Hand I Fan With - Tina McElroy AnsaThree sexy, screwed-up Southern sisters come home to Mulberry to put their totally self-centered mother, Mudear, in her grave. We meet the Lovejoy women as they gather in their mother's house to lay her and the demons she has dumped on them to rest.

The Piano Lesson - August WilsonSet in 1936, The Piano Lesson is a powerful new play from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. A sister and brother fight over a piano that has been in the family for three generations, creating a remarkable drama that embodies the painful past and expectant future of black Americans.

The Spook Who Sat by the Door - Sam GreenleeQuote From Sacred Fire: The Spook Who Sat by the Door was originally brought into print by a small publisher, Richard Baron Press, and quickly became an underground favorite. Published in the near aftermath of the Black Power movement, The Spook fictionalized the urban- based war for liberation that never quite manifested.

Big Girls Don't Cry - Connie BriscoeNaomi Jefferson was born into a comfortable world only occasionally marred by racism - even when she is called a nigger after wandering into the wrong neighborhood, she learns not to let it touch her too deeply. As a teenager in the 1960s, her biggest concerns are when she'll give up her virginity and if you really can't get pregnant the first time, like her friends tell her. But when her adored older brother, Joshua, seemingly the family's chosen one who is destined for greatness, is killed in a tragic car accident on his way to a civil rights demonstration, the rift between black and white America suddenly becomes personal. In an attempt to live up to Joshua's example, Naomi immerses herself in 1970s campus politics. But instead of finding herself, she loses her sense of who she is. She's unsure how to negotiate her way through a world where brothers die for no good reason and the one man she depends on most betrays her with another woman. Slapped in the face with such harsh realities, Naomi makes a decision: Politics are useless, romance is hopeless, and what she really needs is a career. But work and success in the 1980s aren't all they're cracked up to be, particularly since the promotions keep going to the white guys. Just when Naomi starts to think that the only person she can depend on is herself, two people walk into her life who make her believe once again that anything worth having is worth fighting for.

Knowing - Rosalyn McMillanAfter years of working in a factory, Ginger decides to go back to school and join the 9-to-5 white-collar world. The higher she climbs, however, the more her jealous, controlling husband tries to pull her back down. Desperate to hold onto the things she loves, yet driven to achieve more, Ginger must make choices that are both extraordinary difficult--and ultimately freeing.

Paradise - Toni MorrisonMorrison's eagerly awaited new novel--her first since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993--is extraordinary for its breathtaking drive, stylistic panache, and enlivening moral gravitas. Spanning the time from the Reconstruction to the 1970s, this powerful work deftly manipulates past, present, and future as it reveals the interior lives of the citizens of a fictional, all-black town called Paradise.

The Best of Simple - Langston HughesA selection of the author's favorite stories chosen from three of his books: Simple Speaks his Mind, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple Stakes a Claim.

The Third Life of Grange Copeland - Alice WalkerA tenant farmer's life. "Almost no one has tried to tell us about the early lives, the inner lives, of black people...Alice Walker is a storyteller"--Robert Coles, New Yorker

Bailey's Cafe - Gloria NaylorThe Reader's Catalog: Welcome to Bailey's Cafe, the most mythically real eating place you've ever walked into. Presided over by Bailey himself and his helpmate, Nadine, it is a magnet that draws a wide variety of society's detritus, each with her own story to tell. There is Sadie, whose addiction to alcohol is second only to her mania for cleanliness; Sweet Esther, who takes nothing but white roses for her very particular favors; Peaches, whose badly mutilated face is in sharp contrast to her goddess's body; Miss Maple, a transvestite who makes a handsome living by entering soap flake contests; and Mariam, the Ethiopian child who may be the bearer of a miracle. One would call them misfits all, but in the magical aura of Bailey's Cafe, as the new year approaches, each becomes a universal creature of biblical stature.

In Search of Satisfaction - J. California CooperCooper's second novel is an epic saga of three families whose paths intertwine with the devil in their quests for wealth, power and love. The history of the town is inextricably linked to Josephus, a freed slave, and his two dauthers, Ruth and Yinyang. In seeking the legacy left by their father, the sisters pull each other into the vortex of powerful emotion.

Just above My Head - James BaldwinOffered for the first time in a Laurel edition, Just Above My Head is a monumental saga of love and rage that traces a network of family, friends, and lovers through Harlem and the American South of the last 30 years.

The Parable of the Sower - Octavia ButlerA stirring portrait of 21st-century America by the author of Wild Seed. Forced to flee an America where anarchy and violence have completely taken over, empath Lauren Olamina--who can feel the pain of others and is crippled by it--becomes a prophet carrying the hope of a new world and a new faith christened "Earthseed." Previous publisher: Four Walls/Eight Windows.

Tempest Rising - Diane McKinney - WhetstoneWith the shimmering, startling detail that is the hallmark of the author's engaging style, this book evokes 1960s west Philadelphia in a spicy story of a mother and daughter forced to confront the brutal secret that has locked their hearts against one another.

The Fire Next Time-James BaldwinFrom Sacred Fire: "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!" So opens James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time. It comprises two previously published essays in the form of personal letters. The first is a letter to his nephew written on the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation that attacks the idea that blacks are inferior to whites. The second, a much longer letter addressed to all Americans, recounts Baldwin's coming-of-age in Harlem, appraises black nationalism, and discusses in detail the connection between racism and Christianity. Written in the heat of the civil rights era, the book reflects Baldwin's passion for justice and his iconoclastic ideas about the revolutionary power of love in the battle for America's survival.

The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors - Dr. Frances Cress Welsing We now are nearing the final decade of the 20th century. Recently, there has been an unraveling and an analysis of the core issue of the first global power sysem of mass oppression-- the power system of racism (white supremacy). One the collective victim (non-white population) understands this fundamental issue, the ultimate organizing of all of the appropriate behaviors necessary to neutralize the great injustice of the white supremacy power system will only be a matter of time. The length of time required to neutralize global white supremacy will be inversely proportional to 1) the level of understanding of the phenomenon; plus 2) the evolution of self- and group-respect, the will, determination and discipline to practice the appropriate counter-racist behaviors--on the part of the non-white victims of white supremacy."

Mama Black Widow - Iceberg Slim

Miss Ophelia - Mary Burnett SmithSet in rural Virginia during 1948, Miss Ophelia is a remarkable debut novel that explores the issues of abortion, illegitimacy, adultery, and skin color. Belly Anderson, now in the autumn of her life, reminisces about the last summer of her childhood, a time when she learns a terrible secret about a close friend--a secret that forces Belly to grow up and learn what it really means to be an adult.

The Wake of the Wind - J. California CooperFrom the beloved and highly successful author of "Family" and "In Search of Satisfaction" comes a dramatic and thought-provoking new novel of one African-American family's triumph in the face of the hardships and challenges of the post-Civil War South. Baby of the Family - Tina McElroy AnsaThe New York Times Book Review's Notable Book of the Yearhild at the moment of her birth, with the power to see ghosts and predict the future. But only one nurse knows the spells to ensure that Lena will see good ghosts, not evil ones.

Billy - Albert FrenchAlbert French's harrowing debut novel of 10-year-old Billy Lee Turner, convicted and executed for murdering a white girl in Baines, Mississippi, in 1937, is an unsentimental and ultimately heartrending vision of racial injustice.

Black Betty - Walter MosleyA brilliant new mystery in the highly acclaimed Easy Rawlins series. In 1961 L.A., Easy is tracking down Elizabeth Eady, a.k.a. "Black Betty"--a stunning beauty with mayhem in her wake. Easy's search takes readers deep into America's racial dilemmas and the mysteries of human character.

Manchild in the Promised Land - Claude BrownThe painfully honest autobiography of a black boyhood in the Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s.

Novels and Stories of Zora Neale Hurston- Zora Neale HurstonPart of a two-volume set of works by Zora Neale Hurston, Novels and Stories features the acclaimed 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God--plus Jonah's Gourd Vine, Moses Man of the Mountain, Seraph on the Suwanee, and selected stories. Includes a newly researched chronology of Hurston's life, detailed notes, and a brief essay.

The Women of Brewster Place - Gloria NaylorThe women of Brewster Place are "hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased". In their stories, Gloria Naylor has created a community of women that has touched thousands of readers across the country. Now the basis for a November 1988, ABC-TV, three-hour movie, starring Oprah Winfrey.

Bessie - Chris Albertson

Black Boy: (American Hunger) - Richard WrightWright's unforgettable and eloquent autobiography of growing up in the Jim Crow South offers an unsurpassed portrait of the struggles against the ingrained racism and poverty faced by African Americans.

Magic City - Jewell Rhodes ParkerInspired by real events--the 1921 razing of the black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a black man was falsely accused of raping a white woman--this atmospheric, critically acclaimed novel of an American travesty reflects the powerful core of bigotry that still gnaws at our nation's heart. MAGIC CITY is an unforgettable story of two people divided by race, but forever joined by fate.

Scenes from a Sistah - Lolita FilesMisty Fine and Reesy Snowden, best friends since the second grade, share at least two common goals: having fun and finding "Prince Charming". "Scenes from a Sistah" tells what happens when they embark on a series of adventures in search of "Mr. Right".

The Color of Love - Sandra KittConsidered by many to be the foremost African American writer of romance, Kitt presents a sizzling romance that compares to The Bodyguard. Leah Downey is a talented black artist dealing with a loveless relationship. Jason Horn is a white cop trying to get over the traumas of his past. When they meet, sparks fly--but can they keep it together? What a Woman's Gotta Do - Evelyn ColemanUsing vivid details from her experiences as a journalist, Evelyn Colemen has created a memorable black heroine--and written a groundbreaking debut thriller about a misogynist and sinister conspiracy that threatens the world.

B-Boy Blues: A Seriously Sexy, Fiercely Funny, Black-on-Black Love Story - James Earl HardyMitchell Crawford always wished, hoped, and dreamed for a RUFFNECK - a hip-hop-lovin', street-struttin', cool posin', crazy crotch-grabbin' brotha. And he finally finds one in Raheim Rivers, who is a vision of lust: six feet tall and 215 pounds of mocha-chocolate muscle. Mitchell knows Raheim will take him for a walk on the wild side, especially between the sheets. But he doesn't count on getting behind Raheim's mask - and finding someone he can love.

Belly Song and Other Poems - Etheridge Knight

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother - James McBride This "fascinating . . . superbly written" (Boston Globe) national bestseller tells the story of James McBride and his mother--a rabbi's daughter, born in Poland and raised in the South, who fled to Harlem, married a black man, founded a church, and put 12 children through college.

Corregidora - Gayl Jones"Corregidora is the most brutally honest and painful revelation of what has occurred, and is occurring, in the souls of Black men and women"--James Baldwin. "Jones's writing powerfully blends narrative and lyricism...Her imagination seems to thrive on outstripping one's expectations" -- Margo Jefferson, Newsweek

Giovanni's Room - James BaldwinSet in the contemporary Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. James Baldwin's brilliant narrative delves into the mystery of loving with a sharp, probing imagination, and he creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the heart.

I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots: A Novel - Susan StraightA rich, passionate first novel featuring a strong and determined African American woman living in contemporary South Carolina. "Straight's portrayal . . . is nearly miraculous in its astonishing richness of detail . . . emotional honesty and . . . human thought and feeling".

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens - Alice WalkerA collection of 37 essays, articles, reviews, and talks.Walker's essays would have been worthwhile reading if they simply recounted autobiographical experiences. But the essays, spanning 1967 to 1983, subtly and brilliantly detail aspects of American political and social history and Afro-American folklore and could adequately serve as an introductory course inblack women's literature. Her tributes to Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King are emotionally powerful. . . . I discovered parts of myself in Walker's Garden. Everyone should read these marvelous, thought- and feeling-provoking essays. Black women, in particular, will be uplifted, since Walker's art and life demonstrate that she loves us all so very much. -- Jewell Parker Rhodes - America

Jazz - Toni MorrisonIn the afterglow of her Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Beloved, Morrison moves to even higher ground--the story of Joe Trace, a door-to-door salesman in his 50s, his mentally unstable wife, and his 18-year-old lover. Set in Harlem in the 1920s, the story captures the rhythms of the city and the bittersweet mood of African American life at a moment in our history we assumed we understood.

Middle Passage - Charles JohnsonFrom a critically acclaimed, award-winning and bestselling author comes a compelling adventure that "The Seattle Times" hailed as "a work of art that is a rattling good sea yarn as well as a profound meditation on the nature of self-knowledge".

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination - Toni Morrison A Pulitzer Prize-winning author illuminates the "Africanist" presence shaping the American imagination in a landmark work of literary criticism. "Morrison challenge(s) some of the most widely accepted generalizations about our literary history."--San Francisco Chronicle.

Push - SapphireIn an electrifying novel, a black street girl, sixteen years old and pregnant, again, with her father's child, speaks. In a voice that shakes us by its language, its story, and its unflinching honesty, Precious Jones records her journey up from Harlem's lowest depths... For Precious, miraculously, hope appears and the world begins to open up when a courageous black woman - a teacher hellbent to teach - bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary: to discover the truth of her life. Day after day they go over the pages, translating the illiterate but developing language of Precious' journals. The learning process itself, as vividly revealed as the most brutal aspects of Precious' daily existence, is the heartbeat of a novel that will disturb, galvanize, and stay in the mind.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man - James Weldon Johnson "The Autobiography's unprecedented analysis of the social causes and artistic consequences of a black man's denial of the best within himself constitutes perhaps James Weldon Johnson's greatest service to African-American culture, the 'force stronger than blood' that, unlike the ex-colored man, Johnson always revered and never deserted." -- William L. Andrews

Sounder - William H. ArmstrongAngry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and with the help of the devoted dog Sounder.

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