"Scarlett Wilcox is willing to live out her life as a spinster if it means being able to continue her medical research to help a friend in need. After all, few husbands would tolerate her dressing as a man to attend lectures at the Royal Academy of Science. If the Duke of Torrance finds her such a specimen, she'll agree to a marriage in name only, much to the dismay of her elder sister, the Viscountess. When she's unmasked at a lecture on ophthalmology,...
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads. Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase "intersectionality" to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while...
Sommy, a Nigerian woman comes to the United States for graduate school two weeks after her brother, Mezie, attempts suicide. Plagued by the guilt of leaving Mezie behind, Sommy struggles to fit into her new life as a student and an immigrant. Lonely and homesick, Sommy soon enters a complicated relationship with her boisterous Nigerian roommate, Bayo, a relationship that plummets into deceit when Sommy falls for Bryan, a biracial American, whose estranged...
"In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston's retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the "slaughter of the innocents," but a forerunner of Christ -- a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea. Portraying Herod within this...
Two women. Two pivotal moments. One dream for justice and equality. 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. Freda is reluctant to get involved, torn between a soon-to-be doctor her parents approve...
"When 276 schoolgirls are abducted from their school in Nigeria, Fidelis Ewerike, a Florida-based barrister, poet, and former POW of the Nigerian Civil War, begins to go mad, consumed by memories of his younger sister Ugochi, who went missing during that conflict. Consumed by survivor’s guilt and fearful that the same fate awaits Amara, his sixteen-year-old daughter who bears an uncanny resemblance to Ugochi, Fidelis locks her in her bedroom, offering...
Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was "grown." Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in prison, convicted of a carjacking and sentenced to twenty-two years. Overnight Keeonna had become a "mainline mama," a parent facing the task of raising a child -- while still growing up herself -- with an incarcerated partner....
"In Love, Rita Bridgett M. Davis tells the story of her beloved older sister Rita, who knew Bridgett before she knew herself. Just four years apart in age, as the two sisters grew into young adulthood they left behind their childhood rivalry and became best friends. Rita was a vivacious woman who attended Fisk University at age sixteen, and went on to become a car test driver, an amateur belly dancer, an MBA, and later a popular special ed teacher;...
"Living in a quiet seaside village with their overprotective mother, teenaged sisters Calliope, Clio, Melpomene, Terpsichore, and Thalia are talented performers with no audience. If Calli had her way, she'd pursue her dream of writing epic stories in the city of Thebes. But family comes first, and as the eldest, she'd never leave her beloved sisters behind. Then, following a disastrous public music performance, their mother reveals a shocking secret:...
"Sariyah Lee Bryant can hear what people need -- tangible things, like a pencil, a hair tie, a phone charger -- an ability only her family and her best friend, Malcolm, know the truth about. But when she fulfills a need for her friend Deja who vanishes shortly after, Sariyah is left wondering if her ability is more curse than gift. This isn’t the first time one of her friends has landed on the missing persons list, and she’s determined not to...
"The year is 1862 and murderous desires are simmering in England. Nineteen-year-old Sarah Bonetta Forbes (Sally), once a princess of the Egbado Clan, desires one thing above all else: revenge against the British Crown and its system of colonial 'humanitarianism,' which stole her dignity and transformed her into royal property. From military men to political leaders, she's vowed to ruin all who've had a hand in her afflictions. The top of her list?...
An essential journey through the American South-and the way it defines American identity-from one our most extraordinary writers on race and culture at work today
We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there, who have never even been there, can rattle off a list of signifiers that define the South for them: Gone with the Wind, the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan, cotillions, plantations, football, Jim Crow, and, of course, slavery....
From international bestselling author Lola Akinmade Åkerström, the highly anticipated follow-up to her debut novel, In Every Mirror She's Black, focusing on the lives of three Black women as they fight their own personal struggles in one of the most egalitarian societies, Sweden.
Can a career woman truly have it all?
Powerful marketing executive Kemi Adeyemi has finally found the man she needs, but Tobias Wikström thinks she's the most selfish...