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Black Authors, Black Protagonists
| A Love Song for Ricki Wilde by Tia Williams Genre: Literary, Contemporary Romance 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. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| The American Daughters by Maurice Carlos Ruffin Genre: Historical Fiction, Inspirational Ady, a curious, sharp-witted girl, and her fierce mother, Sanite, are inseparable. Enslaved to a businessman in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the pair spend their days reminiscing about their family’s rebellious and storied history and dreaming of a loving future. When mother and daughter are separated, Ady is left hopeless and directionless until she stumbles into the Mockingbird Inn and meets Lenore, a free Black woman with whom she becomes fast friends. Lenore invites Ady to join a clandestine society of spies called the Daughters. With the courage instilled in her by Sanite—and with help from these strong women—Ady learns how to put herself first. So begins her journey toward liberation and imagining a new future. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| What You Leave Behind by Wanda M. Morris Genre: Thriller, Suspenseful Deena Wood’s life has fallen apart in the aftermath of losing her beloved mother, her marriage, and her prestigious job at an Atlanta law firm; she returns to her childhood home in Brunswick, Georgia, to heal. But her return is anything but the respite she thought it might be. One day, she unwittingly finds herself on the oceanfront property of a loner widower who is fighting to keep land that has been in his family since the end of the Civil War. He threatens her and then disappears, and his very expensive property is quickly put up for sale. Deena digs into his disappearance and finds a family legacy at risk. What starts out as a bit of curious snooping, turns into a deadly game of illegal land grabs and property redevelopment in poor and rural communities with dark and powerful forces at work. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| Missing White Woman by Kellye Garrett Genre: Mystery, Thought-Provoking A Black woman alone in a new city, Bree is stranded and out of her depth—especially when it becomes clear the dead woman is none other than Janelle Beckett, the missing woman the entire Internet has become obsessed with. There’s only one person Bree can turn to: her ex-best friend, a lawyer with whom she shares a very complicated past. As the police and a social media mob close in, all looking for #JusticeForJanelle, Bree realizes that the only way she can help Ty—or herself—is to figure out what really happened that last night. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris Genre: Relationship Fiction, Multiple Perspectives While fighting to save their ancestral home, the Solomon siblings must also save themselves from the secrets they've been holding onto. Junior, the oldest son and married to his wife for eleven years, is secretly in love with another man. Second son Mance can't control his temper, which has landed him in prison more than once. CeCe, the oldest daughter and a lawyer in New York City, has embezzled thousands of dollars from her firm's clients. Youngest daughter Tokey wonders why she doesn't seem to fit into this family, which has left an aching hole in her heart that she tries to fill in harmful ways. As the Solomons come together to fight for the Kingdom, each of their façades begins to crumble and collide in unexpected ways. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| The Queen of Sugar Hill by Hattie McDaniel & ReShonda Tate Genre: Historical Fiction, Biographical Fiction It was supposed to be the highlight of her career, the pinnacle for which she’d worked all her life. And as Hattie McDaniel took the stage in 1940 to claim an honor that would make her the first African-American woman to win an Academy Award, she tearfully took her place in history. Between personal triumphs and tragedies, heartbreaking losses, and severe setbacks, this historic night of winning best supporting actress for her role as the sassy Mammy in the controversial movie Gone With the Wind was going to be life-changing. Or so she thought. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| The Bookshop Sisterhood by Michelle Lindo-Rice Genre: Relationship Fiction, Feel-Good Stories After years of hard work, four best friends—Celeste, Yasmeen, Toni and Leslie—are finally on the verge of opening the bookstore of their dreams. A place where their community can find solace with an intriguing new read, a comforting beverage and book-loving friends, but as the bookstore’s grand opening fast approaches, the four women must lean on each other now more than ever to navigate their grief and uncertainty. And together, they’ll learn that sometimes, even life’s most unexpected plot twists can lead to beautiful new beginnings. Also available on Libby as an ebook. | |
| Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengetsu Genre: Literary Fiction, Immigration Stories After abandoning his once-promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush meets Hannah—a photographer whose way of seeing the world shows him the possibility of finding not only love but family. Now, five years later, with his marriage to Hannah on the verge of collapse, he returns to the close-knit immigrant Ethiopian community of Washington, DC, that defined his childhood. At its center is Mamush’s stoic, implacable mother, and Samuel, the larger-than-life father figure whose ceaseless charm and humor have always served as a cover for a harder, more troubling truth. But on the same day that Mamush arrives home in Washington, Samuel is found dead in his garage. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. | |
| 54 Miles by Leonard Pitts, Jr. Genre: Historical Fiction, Multiracial Identity Adam, who has been raised in Harlem by his white father and Black mother, goes back to his parents’ home state of Alabama to participate in the voting rights campaign, only to be brutalized in the Bloody Sunday melee. He is still recovering from this when he is struck a heavy emotional blow, learning of a family secret that sends him spiraling and plunging further into danger. Meanwhile, Adam’s uncle is also spiraling, but in a different way. Forty-two years after his parents were lynched before his eyes, Luther has found the murderer and is suddenly forced to relive it all again as he grapples with the awful question of what justice now demands. Also available on Libby as an ebook. | |
| Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray Genre: Historical Romance, Biographical Fiction In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. Amidst rumors of a tumultuous affair with her boss, W.E.B. Dubois, and the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor, Jessie is determined to prove herself. Under her leadership, The Crisis thrives and every African American writer in the country wants their work published there, but as Jessie strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success. | |
| The Love Lyric by Kristina Forest Genre: Contemporary Romance, Feel-Good Stories Iris Greene used to be a woman with a plan. But all of that changed after she met the love of her life at twenty-five, got pregnant and married, then became a widow and a single mother all in a little over two years. By all accounts, pop R&B singer Angel Hughes has it made. He’s a successful musician and has just scored a brand ambassador deal with an emerging beauty company. But he’s still not fulfilled; he’s not producing songs he’s passionate about, and there’s a gaping hole in his love life. Despite their obvious attraction to each other, they must stay professional throughout the campaign tour—a goal that doesn’t quite pan out. | |
| People of Means by Nancy Johnson Genre: Historical Fiction, Parallel Narratives In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope, carrying a suitcase and the voice of her father telling her she’s part of a family legacy of greatness. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she’s thrust into a movement for social change. In 1992 Chicago, Freda’s daughter Tulip is an ambitious PR professional on track for an exciting career, if workplace politics and racial microaggressions don’t get in her way. But with the ruling in the Rodney King trial weighing heavily on her, Tulip feels called to action. When she makes an irreversible professional misstep as she seeks to uplift her community, she must decide, just like her mother had three decades prior, what she’s willing to risk in the name of justice and equality. | |
| Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions by Nalo Hopkinson Genre: Science Fiction, Short Stories In Nalo Hopkinson’s first collection of stories since 2015, a woman and her cyborg pig eke out a living in a future waterworld; two scientists contemplate the cavernous remains of an alien life-form; a trans woman at a funeral might be haunted by more than just bad memories; and an artist creates nanotechnology that asserts Blackness where it is least welcome and most needed. Also available on Libby as an ebook. | |
| Model Home by Rivers Solomon Genre: Intense Thriller, Multiple Perspectives The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned. As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. Also available on Libby as an ebook and an audiobook. |