Kenji Jasper

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Ohio

A Novel

All of them are looking for answers, but it is Thai who must find his own path out of the dark and into the clear light of moral responsibility and repentence for his actions."--BOOK JACKET.

Dark

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Mongo Beti

Gerald Moore

In Bomba the girls who are being prepared for Christian marriage live together in the women's camp. It is not clear whether the girls have to stay in the women's camp for such long periods for the good of their souls or for the good of the mission building program. Only gradually does it become apparent that the local churchmen have also been using the local girls for their own purpose.

The Poor Christ of Bomba

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Denise Michelle Harris

Chantell Meyers's father is on his deathbed. Desperate to somehow save him, hantell makes a promise to God that if He allows her father to live, she will become a better person. Now that her father has pulled through, she is determined to keep her word. But soon Chantell is faced with a series of trials, temptations, and revelations that test her faith. After she decides to stop having sex until she gets married, her boyfriend's response is devastating: he two-times her. Forced to break up with him, Chantell finds that the harder she tries to keep her promise to God and be a better person, the more complicated her life becomes. It is only by relinquishing her desire to "have it all" that Chantell is able to get everything she's ever wanted.

Sweet Bye-Bye

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Zora Neale Hurston

John Buddy Pearson, a young Black man who becomes a popular pastor at Zion Hope, is unable to reconcile his good intentions and his natural instincts

Jonah's Gourd Vine

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Jonah’s Gourd Vine; Mules and Men; Their Eyes Were Watching God

Midaq Alley; The Thief and The Dogs; Miramar

David Bradley

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award

"The Chaneysville Incident rivals Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon as the best novel about the black experience in America since Ellison's Invisible Man." -- Christian Science Monitor

The legends say something happened in Chaneysville. The Chaneysville Incident is the powerful story of one man's obsession with discovering what that something was a quest that takes the brilliant and bitter young Black historian John Washington back through the secrets and buried evil of his heritage.

Returning home to care for and then bury his father's closest friend and his own guardian, Old Jack Crawley, John comes upon the scant records of his family's proud and tragic history, which he drives himself to reconstruct and accept. This is the story of John's relationship with his family, the town, and the woman he loves; and also between the past and the present, between oppression and guilt, hate and violence, love and acceptance.

The Chaneysville Incident

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Jean Toomer

Waldo Frank

Cane (Warbler Classics)

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First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work--part drama, part poetry, part fiction--powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer's impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets. This iconic work of American literature is published with a new afterword by Rudolph Byrd of Emory University and Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard University, who provide groundbreaking biographical information on Toomer, place his writing within the context of American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance, and examine his shifting claims about his own race and his pioneering critique of race as a scientific or biological concept.

Cane

Sapphire

A courageous and determined young teacher opens up a new world of hope and redemption for sixteen-year-old Precious Jones, an abused young African American girl living in Harlem who was raped and left pregnant by her father.

Precious

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Edward Kelsey Moore

This diner in Plainview, Indiana is home away from home for Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean. Dubbed "The Supremes" by high school pals in the tumultuous 1960s, they've weathered life's storms for over four decades and counseled one another through marriage and children, happiness and the blues.
 
Now, however, they're about to face their most challenging year yet. Proud, talented Clarice is struggling to keep up appearances as she deals with her husband's humiliating infidelities; beautiful Barbara Jean is rocked by the tragic reverberations of a youthful love affair; and fearless Odette is about to embark on the most terrifying battle of her life.

With wit, style and sublime talent, Edward Kelsey Moore brings together three devoted allies in a warmhearted novel that celebrates female friendship and second chances.

 

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

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The Conjure-Man Dies

Un Pays Pour Mourir

Quicksand and Passing

Tina McElroy Ansa

The daughters of Mudear Lovejoy--strong sister Betty, restless divorce+a7e Emily, and Annie Ruth, a TV anchorwoman who is pregnant out of wedlock--gather in their mother's home to mourn her death. Reprint.

Ugly Ways

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Keith Lee Johnson

I’ll Gotten Gains

In this latest installment of the Little Black Girl Lost series, holier-than-thou courtesan Johnnie Wise must pay for her past indiscretions when the police believe that she is involved in several murders and the theft of two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Original.

Little Black Girl Lost 3

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Kamel Daoud

Emma Ramadan

Library Journal: Best World Literature of the Year 

A fable, parable, and confession, the second novel from the acclaimed author of The Meursault Investigation pays homage to the essential need for fiction and to the freedom from tradition afforded by an adopted language.
 
Having lost his mother and been shunned by his father, Zabor grows up in the company of books, which teach him a new language. Ever since he can remember, he has been convinced that he has a gift: if he writes, he will stave off death; those captured in the sentences of his notebooks will live longer. Like a kind of inverted Scheherazade saving his fellow men, he experiments night after night with the delirious power of the imagination.
 
Then, one night, his estranged half brother and the other relatives who would disown him come knocking at the door: his father is going to die and perhaps only Zabor is capable of delaying that fateful moment. Sitting next to the father who has ostracized him, the son writes compulsively, retracing an existence characterized by strangeness, abandonment, and humiliation, but also by wondrous encounters with fictional worlds that he alone in the entire village can access.

Zabor, or the Psalms

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Zakes Mda

A professional mourner, Toloki is reunited with Noria, a woman from his village, at the funeral of a young boy, and joins forces with her to heal the pain of the past and build new lives for themselves in post-apartheid South Africa. Original.

Ways of Dying

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Ernest J. Gaines

"A serious, powerful novel...[Gaines] is a writer of terrific energy."--The Nation

This is the story of Marcus: bonded out of jail where he has been awaiting trial for murder, he is sent to the Hebert plantation to work in the fields. There he encounters conflict with the overseer, Sidney Bonbon, and a tale of revenge, lust and power plays out between Marcus, Bonbon, Bonbon's mistress Pauline, and Bonbon's wife Louise.

Of Love and Dust

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Alexandre. Dumas

Keith Wren

With an Introduction and Notes by Keith Wren, University of Kent at Canterbury.

The Man in the Iron Mask is the final episode in the cycle of novels featuring Dumas' celebrated foursome of D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis, who first appeared in The Three Musketeers. Some thirty-five years on, the bonds of comradeship are under strain as they end up on different sides in a power struggle that may undermine the young Louis XIV and change the face of the French monarchy.

In the fast-paced narrative style that was his trademark, Dumas pitches us straight into the action. What is the secret shared by Aramis and Madame de Chevreuse? Why does the Queen Mother fear its revelation? Who is the mysterious prisoner in the Bastille? And what is the nature of the threat he poses?

Dumas, the master storyteller, keeps us reading until the climactic scene in the grotto of Locmaria, a fitting conclusion to the epic saga of the musketeers.

The Man in the Iron Mask

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Aminatta Forna

While a gifted young surgeon is haunted by memories of the civil war that has decimated his Sierra Leone home, a patient relates disturbing stories about the post-colonial years and a well-intentioned British psychiatrist draws all of them into the path of an enigmatic woman. By the award-wining author of Ancestor Stones. Reprint.

The Memory of Love

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Asali Solomon

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

"I didn't feel like I was reading this novel--I felt like I was living it." --Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

From award-winning author Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete is a tender, surprising novel of two women at midlife who rediscover themselves--and perhaps each other, inspired by Mrs. Dalloway, Sula, and Audre Lorde's Zami

Liselle Belmont is having a dinner party.

It seems a strange occasion--her husband, Winn, has lost his bid for the state legislature--but what better way to thank key supporters than a feast? Liselle was never sure about her husband becoming a politician, never sure about the limelight, never sure about the life of fundraising and stump speeches. Then an FBI agent calls to warn her that Winn might be facing corruption charges. An avalanche of questions tumbles around her: Is it possible he's guilty? Who are they to each other; who have they become? How much of herself has she lost--and was it worth it? And just this minute, how will she make it through this dinner party?

Across town, Selena Octave is making her way through the same day, the same way she always does--one foot in front of the other, keeping quiet and focused, trying not to see the terrors all around her. Homelessness, starving children, the very living horrors of history that made America possible: these and other thoughts have made it difficult for her to live an easy life. The only time she was ever really happy was with Liselle, back in college. But they've lost touch, so much so that when they ran into each other at a drugstore just after Obama was elected president, they barely spoke. But as the day wears on, memories of Liselle begin to shift Selena's path.

Inspired by Mrs. Dalloway and Sula, as well as Audre Lorde's Zami, Asali Solomon's The Days of Afrekete is a deft, expertly layered, naturally funny, and deeply human examination of two women coming back to themselves at midlife. It is a watchful celebration of our choices and where they take us, the people who change us, and how we can reimagine ourselves even when our lives seem set.

The Days of Afrekete

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Trisha R. Thomas

Hoping to get away from emotional baggage in Los Angeles, Venus and Jake move to Atlanta. Yet the constant cloud of the past follows them: a difficult pregnancy and Jake being charged for the murder of his accountant. Though Jake never spent one night in jail, he fears the case will be reopened and he'll once again have to fight for his freedom. And the timing couldn't be worse since Airic, the biological father of Venus' daughter Mya, suddenly demands parental rights with the child he hasn't seen since her birth. A nasty custody battle ensues. Airic's new wife, Trevelle Doval, a famous TV evangelist--may be behind his sudden interest. Venus is in for the biggest fight of her life.

Nappily Faithful

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Ntozake Shange

This is a unique and vividly told novel about a girl named Betsey Brown, an African American seventh-grader growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. While rendering a complete portrait of this girl, author Ntozake Shange also profiles her friends, her family, her home, her school, and her world. This world, though a work of fiction, is based closely and carefully on actual history, specifically on the nationwide school desegregation events of the Civil Rights movement in America’s recent past. As such, Betsey Brown is a historical novel that will speak to and broaden the perspectives of readers both familiar with and unaware of America’s domestic affairs of 1950s and 1960s. Shange has set her story in the autumn of 1959, the year St. Louis started to desegregate its schools. In May of 1954, in its ruling on Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka--a verdict now seen by many as the origin of the Civil Rights movement--the United States Supreme Court outlawed school segregation. The novel is firmly located in the wake of this landmark ruling; the plot of Shange’s novel and the history of America’s quest for integration during the Civil Rights era are fundamentally entwined. Thus textual references abound to the watershed events at Little Rock’s Central High School in the September of 1957, for example, and to "fire-bombings and burningcrosses" in the South as well as "'battalions of police and crowds of crackers'" at a demonstration in St. Louis. Betsey is the oldest child in a large, remarkable, and slightly eccentric African American family. Her father is a doctor who wakes his children each morning with point-blank questions about African history and Black culture while beating on a conga drum; her mother is a beautiful, refined, confident, and strong-willed social worker who is overwhelmed by the vast size of her young family and who cares very little for “all that nasty colored music.” Indeed, Betsey’s whole existence can be seen as a perceptive, adventuresome, and still-developing hybrid of her parents’ most distinctive qualities. Her feelings of internal conflict are often clearer or easier to identify when seen as the collision of her father’s dreams and her mother’s manners, or her father’s music and her mother’s cosmetics. There are several fascinating characters in this novel—and encountering, describing, and trying to figure out these characters will appeal to students of all backgrounds—but the two characters who, after Betsey, most influence the directions, themes, and issues of this tale are Betsey’s mother and father, Jane and Greer. Their her parents' difficult marriage, like the difficult era of desegregation that has only begun in St. Louis and the rest of America, is the realistic, conflicted, yet ultimately hopeful backdrop before which Betsey’s lip-synching, poem-reciting, soul-searching, truth-seeking, tree-climbing, and fact-finding take place. In fact, her parents' stubborn disagreements, heartfelt reconciliations, past glories, and future worries are all, at various times in the book, anchored or else set adrift by the activities of theireldest daughter (and first teenager!). Betsey’s running away sends her parents into a vicious fight, while her subsequent return seems to bring them closer together (if only temporarily). As a novel, Betsey Brown is panoramic yet personal. It tells us what being a Black student in the early days of American desegregation was like by showing us what being Betsey Brown is like. This is an episodic, character-driven saga of the Black experience in St. Louis at the end of the “Fabulous Fifties,” but it is also a story about the many and various—and basically familiar—growing pains of a precocious, passionate, spunky young protagonist. We see Betsey fall in love; make friends; say prayers; argue with, look after, inspire, and ignore her younger siblings; run away from home; return to those who love and value her above all else; and switch from a school she knows and enjoys to a school on the other side of town where she is a minority and an outcast. We see Betsey outside the very door of her womanhood, we are told all about the steps and path that have brought her to this door, and we are left to wonder at what she will find beyond it.

Betsey Brown

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The Book Butterfly

Browse by categories

Kenji Jasper

Dark

Mongo Beti; Gerald Moore

The Poor Christ of Bomba

Denise Michelle Harris

Sweet Bye-Bye

Zora Neale Hurston

Jonah's Gourd Vine

Zora Neale Hurston

Jonah’s Gourd Vine; Mules and Men; Their Eyes Were Watching God

Naguib Mahfouz

Midaq Alley; The Thief and The Dogs; Miramar

David Bradley

The Chaneysville Incident

Jean Toomer; Waldo Frank

Cane (Warbler Classics)

Jean Toomer

Cane

Sapphire

Precious

Edward Kelsey Moore

The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

Rudolph Fisher

The Conjure-Man Dies

Abdullah Taïa

Un Pays Pour Mourir

Nella Larsen

Quicksand and Passing

Tina McElroy Ansa

Ugly Ways

Keith Lee Johnson

Little Black Girl Lost 3

Kamel Daoud; Emma Ramadan

Zabor, or the Psalms

Zakes Mda

Ways of Dying

Ernest J. Gaines

Of Love and Dust

Alexandre. Dumas; Keith Wren

The Man in the Iron Mask

Aminatta Forna

The Memory of Love

Asali Solomon

The Days of Afrekete

Trisha R. Thomas

Nappily Faithful

Ntozake Shange

Betsey Brown

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