"For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household's all-black staff, along with "Miss Mamie," the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices - the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to "civilize" - boys like August. But the Barclays' fortunes have fallen, and their...

In August 1965, twelve-year-old Eden's older cousin from Mississippi comes to visit her in Los Angeles, and while the Watts Riots erupt around them, they continue their investigation of the disappearance of Winter's father ten years ago.

The new and exciting historical thriller by Lyndsay Faye, author of Edgar-nominated Jane Steele and Gods of Gotham, which follows Alice "Nobody" from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland's the Paragon Hotel. The year is 1921, and "Nobody" Alice James is on a cross-country train, carrying a bullet wound and fleeing for her life following an illicit drug and liquor deal gone horribly wrong. Desperate to get as far away as possible from New York City and...

"In 1920 Galway, amid the Irish War of Independence, the daughter of a British landlord becomes an apprentice jeweler to the descendant of the creator of the famed Claddagh ring. As the two learn to work together and see each other in a new light, they start to uncover the true meaning of love, loyalty, and friendship"--

A beautiful, arresting short story by Toni Morrison--the only one she ever wrote--about race and the relationships that shape us through life, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old and spent four moths together as roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. Inseparable at the time, they lose touch as they grow older, only to find each other later at a diner, then at a grocery store,...

In the future, a Black girl known only as Inmate Eleven is kept confined -- to be used as a biological match for the president's son, should he fall ill. She is called a Blue -- the color of sadness. She lives in a small-small room with her dog, who is going wolf more often - he's pacing and imagining he's free. Inmate Eleven wants to go wolf too, she wants to know why she feels so Blue and what is beyond her small-small room. In the present, Imogen...

In 1941 a black youth, sadistically teased by two white boys in rural Mississippi, severely injures one of them with a tire iron and enlists Cassie's help in trying to flee the state.

"Opal Pruitt is just about to turn 18 in the oppressively hot summer of 1936. She works hard at her job, takes care of her beloved Granny, and dreams about boys with her cousin Lucille. The young black teenager's journey to adulthood will be forged in fire, though, as the Ku Klux Klan attacks her Colored Town neighborhood and she endures a vicious beating at the hands of an unknown white attacker. Although slavery is over, Parsons, Georgia is still...

"Bianca is Keira's best friend. At school, they are inseparable. But Keira questions their friendship when she learns more about the meaning of the Confederate flag hanging from Bianca's front porch. Will the two friends be able to overlook their distinct understandings of the flag? Or will they reckon with the flag's effect on yesterday and today? In That Flag, Tameka Fryer Brown and Nikkolas Smith graciously tackle the issues of racism, the value...

"Sent to the prestigious boarding school his family has attended for generations, Ben struggles to prove himself at the side of a marginalized roommate before realizing how much the school's realities differ from what he anticipated."--Publisher description. St. James is an exclusive New England boarding school known for grooming generations of leaders. Ben Weeks's ancestors helped found St. James, his older brother was a legend who taught him all...