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African American Stars - Fiction

Books by African American authors - All Genres

• Rails Under My Back
  Author: Allen, Jeffrey Renard
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374246262
  KirkusLJ
  In an astonishing debut novel exploring the bonds and boundaries of an African-American family, Allen tracks the interwoven lives of two brothers married to two sisters.
• Daughter: A Novel
  Author: Bandele, Asha
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743211847
  LJ
  The gifted and charismatic author of the acclaimed memoir The Prisoner's Wife delivers a bold and heartrending first novel that explores the silence of black women and illuminates the fragile complexity of the mother-daughter bond.
  Suggested Reading: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 8.14.03
• Tuff
  Author: Beatty, Paul
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375401229
  PW
  When 19-year-old Winston "Tuffy" Foshay is offered $20,000 to run for city council, he gamely embarks on one of the most outlandish campaigns in political history, one that topples both his vision of the world and his place in it.
  
• Whispers in the Dark: Marti Macalister
  Author: Bland, Eleanor Taylor
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312203799
  BooklistPW
  Homicide detective Marti MacAlister, and her partner, Matthew Jessenovik, are assigned a most unusual case--all they have of their victim is an arm. Meanwhile, Marti's troubled best friend Sharon is lured to the Bahamas by a man who makes Sharon's friends and family uneasy.
  
• Scream in Silence
  Author: Bland, Eleanor Taylor
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312203780
  Booklist
  An arsonist on the loose in sleepy Lincoln Prairie appears to be graduating from simple blazes to sophisticated bombs. Before his acts become deadly, middle-aged homicide detective Marti MacAlister and her tired but dedicated partner, Matthew Jessenovik, must stop the culprit.
• 72 Hour Hold
  Author: Campbell, Bebe Moore
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24.95 ISBN: 1400040744 Date: 2005
  KirkusLJPW
  In this novel of family and redemption, Campbell draws on the powerful emotions of her own experience and African-American roots in this story of a mother who struggles to save her 18-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness by forcing her to deal with her bipolar disorder.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 5.23.05
• Singing in the Comeback Choir
  Author: Campbell, Bebe Moore
  Publisher: Putnam Price: $ 24.95 ISBN: 0399142983 Date: 1998
  Booklist
  Bebe Moore Campbell, acclaimed as one of the "most important African-American writers of this century" ("Washington Post Book World"), now presents an unforgettable tale about second chances. Successful Los Angeles TV producer Maxine McCoy faces a whole new set of challenges when she learns she must return to her home in a working-class neighborhood of Philadelphia to care for the grandmother who had reared her.
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  
• Coq Au Vin
  Author: Carter, Charlotte
  Publisher: Mysterious Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0892966785 Date: 1999
  PWBooklist
  A poetry-spouting jazz-playing, French-speaking Black American Princess searches for her missing aunt in this sexy and hilarious mystery set in Paris, France.
  
• The Emperor of Ocean Park
  Author: Carter, Stephen L.
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375413634
  KirkusBooklist
  The Emperor of Ocean Park is as brilliant in its suspense as in its acute social observation. Set in the privileged world of New York-Washington-Martha's Vineyard upper-crust African-American society and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school, it tells the story of a complex family with a single seductive and dangerous link to the shadowlands of crime.
  
• Such Sweet Thunder
  Author: Carter, Vincent O.
  Publisher: Steerforth $ 25.95 ISBN: 1586420585
  PWBooklist
  Written in 1963 but never published, this literary portrait of black urban life in pre-World War II America, an era marred by racial segregation and relentless daily injustices, is told from the perspective of a young boy growing up during the 1920s and 1930s in Kansas City.
  they can't get out of their minds.
  Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction
  Updated 4.16.03
• The Bondwoman's Narrative
  Author: Crafts, Hannah, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
  Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446530085
  PW
  Possibly the first novel written by a black woman slave, this work is both a historically important literary event and a gripping autobiographical story in its own right.
  
• Joplin's Ghost
  Author: Due, Tananarive
  Publisher: Atria $ 25 ISBN: 0743449037 Date: 2005
  PW
  An acclaimed suspense writer's latest chilling tale examines how the daughter of a musician and jazz club owner finds her life changed when she becomes haunted by the ghost of Scott Joplin.
  Suggested Reading: Ghosts | Music
  Updated 7.25.05
• The Black Rose: The Magnificent Story of Madame C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire
  Author: Due, Tananarive
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345439600
  Kirkus
  Before his death in 1992, Alex Haley embarked on the research and planning of a major novel based on C.J. Walker's life. Now critically acclaimed writer Due brings Haley's work to inspiring completion in a compelling, richly textured narrative.
  
• The Pride of Carthage: A Novel of Hanibal's War
  Author: Durham, David Anthony
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 26.95 ISBN: 0385506031 Date: 2005
  PWLJBooklist
  Featuring a vast cast of characters and nationalities, twists of fate, and tales of inspired leadership, this epic work of literary fiction chronicles the superb military leader of Carthage, Hannibal Barca, and his struggle against the mighty Roman Republic.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 1.18.05
• Walk Through Darkness
  Author: Durham, David Anthony
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385499256
  PW
  The second novel by the acclaimed author of Gabriel's Story is history infused by myth, the intense narrative of an escaped slave trying to reunite with his pregnant wife.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars
• Gabriel's Story
  Author: Durham, David Anthony
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385498144
  PWBooklistKirkus
  In this literary debut, Durham recounts the adventures and trials of a black pioneer family in the late 1870s. At the center of the story is Gabriel, a young man who moves reluctantly from the urban North with his mother and younger brother to join his stepfather, a homesteader in Kansas. When he runs away to become a cowboy, his search for excitement brings trouble and danger.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars & Western Stars
  
• American Desert
  Author: Everett, Percival L.
  Publisher: Hyperion $ 24.95 ISBN: 078686978 Date: 2004
  KirkusPW
  A man is decapitated in a car accident, then astonishingly comes back to life in this experimental, satirical, bizarre and oddly funny novel, which lampoons the press, religion, academia and our culture.
  Updated 2.23.04
• Damned If I Do: Stories
  Author: Everett, Percival
  Publisher: Graywolf $ 15 ISBN: 1555974112 Date: 2004
  LJ
  Percival Everett is a master storyteller who ingeniously addresses issues of race and prejudice by simultaneously satirizing and celebrating the human condition. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 11.22.04
• Bombingham
  Author: Grooms, Anthony
  Publisher: Free Press $ 24 ISBN: 0743205588
  Publishers Weekly
  In the 1960s, unsolved racially motivated bombings in Birmingham, Alabama gave the town the nickname of Bombingham. This is the backdrop for Grooms story as a young African-American boy and his family strive for peace and understanding through the decade.
  
• Not a Day Goes By
  Author: Harris, E. Lynn
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385498241
  PW
  In a book destined to enlarge his readership, bestselling author Harris soars to new heights with Not a Day Goes By, a wicked little love story that will be a beach read favorite. "What's got audiences hooked? Harris's unique spin on the ever-fascinating topics of identity, class, intimacy, sexuality, and friendship".--"Vibe".
• The Salt Roads
  Author: Hopkinson, Nalo
  Publisher: Warner $ 22.95 ISBN: 0446533025 Date: 2003
  LJKirkus
  "Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, this latest novel by Hopkinson (Skin Folk; Midnight Robber) is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey."--Publishers Weekly.
  Updated 10.8.03
• My Fine Lady
  Author: Joe, Yolanda
  Publisher: Dutton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0525948082 Date: 2004
  Booklist
  Joe has wowed thousands of fans with her lively storylines and savvy heroines. Now she introduces Imani, a rising star whose dreams and challenges will capture the hearts of many more. A delight on every page, My Fine Lady presents the dilemmas of romance, family, and career with Joe's signature wit and flair.
  Updated 1.15.04
• Hunting in Harlem
  Author: Johnson, Mat
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 23.95 ISBN: 1582342725 Date: 2003
  Booklist
  Johnson has created vividly memorable characters and a story that stands out as one of the most controversial and explosive in years. As sure to ignite debate as it is to entertain, Hunting in Harlem is an old-fashioned page-turner with a fresh and brave voice.
  Updated 5.14.03
• The Known World
  Author: Jones, Edward P.
  Publisher: Amistad $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060557540
  KirkusLJBooklist
  Henry Townsend, a black bootmaker and former slave in antebellum Virginia, becomes a proprietor of his own plantation--as well as his own slaves. This modern masterpiece explores what happens when he dies and "the known world" unravels.
  Suggested Reading: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
  Updated 10.2.03
• Red On a Rose
  Author: Jones, Patricia
  Publisher: Avon $ 14 (trade paper) ISBN: 0380817306 Date: 2001
  PW
  In her second captivating novel, Jones addresses issues that hit at the heart of the African-American community while, at the same time, rendering them universally provocative.
  Updated 10/11/01
• Pipe Dream
  Author: Jones, Solomon
  Publisher: Villard $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375756604
  BooklistKirkus
  Debut novelist Jones plumbs the depths of the drug world as four addicts are pursued for a murder they didn't commit. The story winds through the streets of Philadelphia as the four struggle to escape not only from the police but from the hungers that have all but swallowed them whole.
  
• The Big Mango
  Author: Kelley, Norman
  Publisher: Akashic $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1888451106 Date: 2000
  PW
  Picking up where Black Heat, the first installment of the Nina Halligan trilogy, left off, The Big Mango takes the reader to the tropical island-nation of Misericordia. A recent popular uprising, led by local folk hero, Father Pierre-Pierre Bernard, provided the island's poor mulatto masses with a rare moment of freedom. Less skilled in making decisions than in weighing the merits of each position, "the Hamlet of the Caribbean" cowered in the face of the harsh realities of political life on the island and was soon deposed to exile in the U.S. by a right-wing military coup. - Publisher Marketing.
  Updated 9/21/00
• The Big Mango
  Author: Kelley, Norman
  Publisher: Akashic $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1888451106
  PW
  
• The Ecstatic
  Author: Lavalle, Victor
  Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0609610147
  PW
  Something is wrong with Anthony, and it's getting worse. Schizophrenia runs in his family's blood, picking off an uncle here, a mother there, and has now found a home in Anthony's mind. From the acclaimed author of the short-story collection Slapboxing with Jesus comes this inventive, funny, and heartbreaking first novel.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction Debuts
• Sap Rising
  Author: Lincoln, Christine
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 20 ISBN: 0375421408
  Library Journal
  A powerful debut collection of wise and assured stories includes tales of bedeviled and struggling young African Americans whose lives unfold in rural settings as distinctive as the characters themselves.
  
• Shackling Water
  Author: Mansbach, Adam
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385502052
  LJBooklistKirkus
  In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Adam Mansbach captures the rhythms of jazz in a remarkable debut novel about a young man looking for his muse in Harlem.
  
• The Fisher King
  Author: Marshall, Paule
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0684872838
  KirkusPW
  Hailed as "one of our finest American novelists" (San Francisco Chronicle), the author of Brown Girl, Brownstones returns with a moving and revelatory story of jazz, love, family conflict, and the artist's struggles in society.
  Suggested Reading: Music & Fiction
  
• Miracle at St Anna
  Author: McBride, James
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222127
  LJ
  Based on the historical incident of an unspeakable massacre at the site of St. Anna Di Stazzema, a small village in Tuscany, and on the experiences of the famed Buffalo soldiers from the 92nd Division in Italy during World War II, Miracle at St. Anna is a singular evocation of war, cruelty, passion, and heroism. It is the story of four American Negro soldiers, a band of partisans, and an Italian boy who encounter a miracle--though perhaps the true miracle lies in themselves.
  Suggested Reading: World Wars
  
• The Interruption of Everything
  Author: McMillan, Terry
  Publisher: Viking $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670031445 Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  Suggested Reading: African American Stars
  Updated 4.19.05
• A Day Late and a Dollar Short
  Author: McMillian, Terry
  Publisher: 0670896764 $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670896764
  KirkusPW
  Long-awaited, this high-spirited new novel introduces the Price family: matriarch Viola, her sometimes-husband Cecil, and their four adult kids, each of whom sees life--and one another--through thick and thin, and entirely on their own terms. With her hallmark exuberance and sassy cast of characters, the author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back takes readers ever further into the hearts, minds, and souls of America.
• Where to Choose
  Author: Mickelbury, Penny
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster Price: $22 ISBN: 0684837420 Date: 1999
  Booklist
  One year after her husband was murdered, Carol Ann Gibson still hasn't put her life together. When she investigates problems in the racially mixed neighborhood of her childhood, she soon becomes a target herself.
• The Vow
  Author: Millner, Denene, Burt-Murray, Angela, Miller, Mitzi
  Publisher: Amistad $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060762276 Date: 2005
  PW
  Bling meets Bergdorf Blondes when three best friends make a pact to land the role of a lifetime--Hollywood wife--within a year. Set against the backdrop of money, power and sex, these women will find the desire to find a husband isn't as important as finding themselves.
  Updated 9.20.05
• Love
  Author: Morrison, Toni
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375409440
  KirkusBooklistPW
  From the internationally acclaimed Nobel laureate comes a richly conceived novel that illuminates the full spectrum of desire. More than the wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort, Bill Cosey shapes the yearnings of six women for father, husband, lover, guardian, friend--yearnings that dominate their lives long after his death.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars
  Updated 9.08.03
• The Man in My Basement
  Author: Mosley, Walter
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0316570826 Date: 2004
  LJ
  Stepping away from his summertime thriller series featuring Easy Rawlins and Fearless Jones, Mosley delivers a literary novel of astonishing originality and power.
  Updated 12.29.03
• Fearless Jones
  Author: Mosley, Walter
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316592382
  Kirkus PW
  Mosley returns to mysteries at last with his most engaging hero since Easy Rawlins. When Paris Minton meets a beautiful new woman, before he knows it he has been beaten up, slept with, shot at, robbed, and his bookstore burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he has no choice but to get his friend, Fearless Jones, out of jail to help him.
• Free: Stories
  Author: Nailah, Anika
  Publisher: Doubleday $21.95 ISBN: 0385502931
  Booklist
  In spare, elegant stories, Anika Nailah brilliantly exposes the injustices and struggles African Americans confront, the skills they develop in order to survive, and the psychological and spiritual costs of survival.
• Haarlem
  Author: Neff, Heather
  Publisher: Broadway $ 14 ISBN: 0767917502 Date: 2005
  PW
  Welcome to Abel's search for salvation in another tight page turner from Heather Neff.
  Updated 6.13.05
• Sexual Healing
  Author: Nelson, Jill
  Publisher: Agate $ 23.95 ISBN: 0972456201 Date: 2003
  PW
  Nelson, bestselling author of Volunteer Slavery and Straight, No Chaser, has written a steamy and uproarious debut novel that tells the story of Lydia and Acey, two successful midcareer professionals. But their career success is matched by their romantic and sexual frustrations.
  Updated 5.12.03
• Freshwater Road
  Author: Nicholas, Denise
  Publisher: Agate $ 23.95 ISBN: 1932841105 Date: 2005
  PW
  Celeste Tyree, a young black collegian, leaves Michigan for Mississippi in the summer of 1964 to help found a Freedom School and a voter registration project. As Freedom Summer unfolds, Celeste confronts not only the political realities of race and poverty in this tiny town, but also truths about herself and her own family.
  Updated 7.11.05
• Dancing in the Dark
  
• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
  Author: Packer, Z.Z.
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222348
  KirkusPWLJ
  Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is the highly anticipated debut of a remarkable writer of short stories and winner of the Whiting Writers' Award and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
  Suggested Reading: All Stars | First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 1.16.03
• West of Rehoboth
  Author: Pate, Alexs D.
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 038097679x
  KirkusBooklist
  Set in the early 1960s, West of Rehoboth is the moving story of twelve-year-old Edward Massey. Each summer, to escape the heat of Philadelphia, Edward's family moves to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The "coloreds only" side of a pristine resort on Rehoboth Beach offers work for his mother and a sandy playground for his sister. But for Edward -- an imaginative, inquisitive boy -- it offers the chance to understand his reclusive, curmudgeonly Uncle Rufus, a man caught in a swirl of hard luck and bad choices.
  Forging a tenuous bond, their relationship will take Edward on a harrowing journey through Rufus's past, facing the violence, disappointment, and frustration that shaped his destiny. Award-winning author Alexs Pate tells a mesmerizing story -- of family, of coming of age, of reconciliation -- revealing the extraordinary compassion and healing power of one unforgettable boy. - Publisher Marketing.
• A Distant Shore
  Author: Phillips, Caryl
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 1400041090 Date: 2003
  BooklistPW
  From the acclaimed author of The Nature of Blood and The Atlantic Sound comes a masterful new novel set in contemporary England about an African man and an English woman whose hidden lives are revealed in their fragile, fateful connection.
  Updated 10.2.03
Author: Phillips, Caryl
Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 1400043964 Date: 2005
Booklist PW LJ
This novel reimagines the remarkable, tragic, little-known life of Bert Williams, the first black entertainer in the U.S. to reach the highest levels of fame and fortune. W.C. Fields called him "the funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew."
Suggested Reading: Biographical Fiction | Historical Fiction | All Stars
Updated 7.11.05
• The Darkest Child
  Author: Phillips, Delores
  Publisher: Soho $ 26 ISBN: 1569473455 Date: 2004
  Kirkus
  Rozelle Quinn is so fair skinned that she can pass for white. Yet everyone in her small Georgia town knows Rozelle's ten children by ten different daddies are mostly light too. They sleep on the floor in her drafty, rickety three room shack, but they are all vital to her--and not for well-intentioned reasons.
  Updated 9.25.03
• Pushkin and the Queen of Spades
  Author: Randall, Alice
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 24 ISBN: 0618433600 Date: 2004
  PW
  Balancing sharp-witted humor with profundity, sexiness with psychological depth, this exhilarating ride through the racially divided heart of contemporary America probes the universal question of what it means to be a good mother.
  Updated 3.1.04
• The Wind Done Gone
  Author: Randall, Alice
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 061810450x
  Kirkus
  In a brilliant act of literary invention, Randall revisits the world of Gone With the Wind from an African-American point of view as Scarlett's mulatto half-sister--beautiful and brown--gets to tell "her" story.
  
• My Jim
  Author: Rawles, Nancy
  Publisher: Crown $ 19.95 ISBN: 1400054001 Date: 2005
  Kirkus
  A spare and beautiful meditation on love and loss, this novel follows the life of Sadie, the abandoned wife of the escaped slave Jim from Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
  Updated 11.9.04
• Orange Laughter
  Author: Ross, Leone
  Publisher: Farrar Strauss Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374226768
  Booklist
  Set in 1990s New York City and 1960s North Carolina, Orange Laughter is a multitude of tales: of Tony who fights madness; of Mikey, Tony's childhood friend, whose hopes and dreams now live on in his daughter; and of Agatha, who has a heart full of painful secrets.
• Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature 1976 - 2002
  Author: Rowell, Charles H. (ed)
  Publisher: St Martins $ 17.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0312288980
  PW
  A stunning anthology of African-American literature featuring some of today's most prominent authors, this volume is a compelling collection of poetry and fiction, all previously published within the pages of Callaloo.
  
• Changing Faces
  Author: Roby, Kimberla Lawson
  Publisher: Morrow $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060780770 Date: 2006
  LJ
  The "New York Times" bestselling author of The Best-Kept Secret pens an outstanding tale that probes the true meaning of friendship as three women face a wave of unexpected troubles.
  Updated 12.27.05
• Hotel Alleluia
  Author: Roy, Lucinda
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060193956
  PW
  From the critically acclaimed author of Lady Moses comes a powerful new novel of sisterhood and racial identity set against the violence of revolution-torn Africa.
• The Ties That Bind
  Author: Snoe, Eboni
  Publisher: BET $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 1583143386
  Booklist
  The conclusion to the Family Reunion series finds Essence Stuart confronting her biological father, politician Cedric Johnson, after he cruelly rejects her. Essence also has a chance encounter with detective Titan Valentine, who Cedric has hired to investigate her. When they fall in love, it takes Grandfather Johnson's meddling to get the couple to admit their feelings and take a chance at love.
  >
• Third Girl From the Left
  Author: Southgate, Martha
  Publisher: Houghton $ 24 ISBN: 0618470239 Date: 2005
  LJ
  Three African-American women's lives in the 1970s are portrayed in stunning detail in Southgate's second novel. It's up to the granddaughter to heal the rift between her mother and grandmother as the trio struggles against all odds to express what lies deepest in their hearts.
  Updated 7.12.05
• Boaz Brown
  Author: Stimpson, Michelle
  Publisher: Walk Worthy $ 22.95 ISBN:0446532479 Date: 2004
  LJ
  Prejudices that exist in the African-American church are addressed in this daring debut novel about a young Christian woman who finds her own racist attitudes--as well as those of her family, friends, and church--challenged when she is drawn to a man of a different race.
  Suggested Reading: Christian Fiction Stars
  Updated 6.1.04
• Soul City
  Author: Toure
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 19.95 ISBN: 0316741582 Date: 2004
  LJ
  From the popular author of the groundbreaking debut The Portable Promised Land comes an inventive and hilarious first novel about an African-American utopia threatened by the darker side of human nature.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts
  Updated 10.7.04
• Portable Promised Land: Stories
  Author: Toure
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316666432
  Library Journal
  With stunning language and dazzling characters, this debut by Tour introduces Soul City, a wholly imagined utopia where magic happens and black is beautiful.
  Suggested Reading: First Fiction Debuts
  
• Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven
  Trice, Dawn Turner
  Crown Pub List Price: 23.00 ISBN: 0517704285 Date: 1997
  Kirkus
  BCALA Honor Book
  This brilliantly crafted, vibrant debut novel tells a story of friendship, betrayal, and the loss of childhood innocence. Even though her family has been chosen to "move on up" to Lakeland, a upscale part of Chicago for professional blacks, 11-yr-old Tempestt Saville is drawn to the world outside the fence, populated by colorful, often dangerous characters.
• The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart
  Author: Walker, Alice
  Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679455876
  Library JournalPW
  Fictional stories based on Walker's life, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart is a wise and moving treasure about love and life by the author of The Color Purple and By the Light of My Father's Smile.
• John Henry Days
  Author: Whitehead, Colson
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385498195
  KirkusPWBooklist
  From the author of The Intuitionist comes a retelling of the legend of John Henry that sweeps across generations and cultures in a stunning, hilarious, and unsettling portrait of American society.
  
• God's Gym: Stories
  Author: Wideman, John Edgar
  Publisher: Houghton $ 23 ISBN: 0618515259 Date: 2005
  KirkusLJ
  The first story collection in more than a decade from one of the most celebrated African-American authors of modern-day literature contains stories that move from the intimate to the political, from shock to transcendence.
  Updated 1.23.05
• Inner City Blues: Charlotte Justice
  Author: Woods, Paula
  Publisher: W.W. Norton Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 039304680x Date: 1999
  Kirkus
  This debut novel featuring black LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice is set during the epochal L.A. riots. Justice saves a curfew-breaking black doctor from a potentially lethal beating - only to discover nearby the body of a one-time radical.
  Suggested Reading: Debuts