African American Historical Fiction

Rain soaks Tessa Scott as she runs from her car to the old vine-covered property she has been called to survey. She’s too busy to accept a new job, but doing this favor for the grandmother of her childhood sweetheart delays a painful decision she must make about her controlling boyfriend. When Tessa finds a tattered journal carefully hidden inside the house’s ancient fireplace, the tragic story of how Ona was ripped from her mother’s arms to live and work in the palatial Mount Vernon, and the heart-shattering betrayal that led her to risk her life and run, has Tessa spellbound.

The galaxy remembers Hadrian Marlowe as a hero: the man who burned every last alien Cielcin from the sky. They remember him as a monster: the devil who destroyed a sun, casually annihilating four billion human lives - even the emperor himself - against Imperial orders. But Hadrian was not a hero. He was not a monster. He was not even a soldier. Fleeing his father and a future as a torturer, Hadrian finds himself stranded on a strange, backwater world.

Set in 1950s New Orleans, Little Black Girl Lost is a powerful tale filled with sex, greed, and the explosive political and social climates of an America long gone. Fifteen-year-old beauty Johnnie Wise lives her life devoted to God. But her innocence is shattered when her mother, who has been a prostitute for years, sells Johnnie's body to lecherous insurance man Earl Shamus.

A solid marriage, a thriving business, and the esteem of their close-knit Alabama community - Joyce and Odell Watson have every reason to count their blessings. Their marriage has given well-off Joyce a chance at the family she's always wanted - and granted Odell a once-in-a-lifetime shot to escape grinding poverty. But all that respectability and status comes at a cost. Just once, Joyce and Odell want to break loose and taste life's wild side, without consequences.

Belle Palmer is finally free! Separated from her father on the harrowing escape, Belle is lost and alone until she finds shelter with the Bests, the first free family she's ever known. For the first time in her 16 years, Belle can speak her mind - except for her feelings for a certain dark-eyed young man - The Beau. Educated and handsome, at 18, Daniel Best is engaged to the prettiest girl around. So when the bedraggled girl his parents take under their wing suddenly turns into a vibrant, lovely young woman, his attraction to her is a complete - and complicated - surprise.

Abigail was the last keeper of the house, the last to know the Howland family's secrets. Now, in the name of all her brothers and sisters, she must take her bitter revenge on the small-minded Southern town that shamed them, persecuted them, but could never destroy them.

Life in 1925 Atlanta, Georgia, makes Truck realize three things: He must demand respect … Be uncompromising in the protection of his family … And see Josephine for who she really is … When his family is faced with losing everything, Truck embarks on a path from which there is no turning back. Ignite is a complicated tale of passion and unconditional love while navigating the Jim Crow South.

One of Jane Austen’s most beloved works, Pride and Prejudice, is vividly brought to life by Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike ( Gone Girl). In her bright and energetic performance of this British classic, she expertly captures Austen’s signature wit and tone. Her attention to detail, her literary background, and her performance in the 2005 feature film version of the novel provide the perfect foundation from which to convey the story of Elizabeth Bennet, her four sisters, and the inimitable Mr. Darcy.

Fifteen-year-old Faith Wilson takes her little sister Hope’s hand. In worn-down shoes, they walk through the choking heat of the Dust Bowl, toward a new life in California. But when a storm blows in, the girls are separated from their parents. Starving and forced to sleep on the streets, Faith thinks a room in a small boarding house will keep her sister safe. But the glare in the landlady’s eye, as Faith leaves in search of their parents, has her wondering if she’s made a dangerous mistake.

They ran 1,000 miles to freedom and changed the country forever. The Vanishing Woman tells the true story of Ellen Craft, who escaped from slavery in 1848 by posing as a white man, while her husband William pretended to be her slave. They took trains and steamboats north, escaping in plain view. When other passengers looked at her, they saw only an ailing planter from Georgia. Ellen Craft had vanished. Ellen’s mother was a slave, but her father was her master, and she had skin as white as his. This enabled her to pose as a white man in one of the boldest escapes in American history. ...

Fifteen-year-old Amari witnesses the murder of her family and the destruction of her remote African village. She endures countless humiliations as she is beaten, branded, and forced to board a slave ship. The atrocities continue as she struggles through endless days of backbreaking work and daily degradation on a plantation.

The year is 2004: Lina Sparrow is an ambitious young lawyer working on a historic class-action lawsuit seeking reparations for the descendants of American slaves. The year is 1852: Josephine is a 17-year-old house slave who tends to the mistress of a Virginia tobacco farm - an aspiring artist named Lu Anne Bell. It is through her father, renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers a controversy rocking the art world: Art historians now suspect that the revered paintings of Lu Anne Bell, an antebellum artist known for her humanizing portraits of the slaves who worked her Virginia tobacco farm, were actually the work of her house slave, Josephine.

Beverly Jenkins is an incredibly popular author of African-American romances. The Taming of Jessi Rose is the unforgettable tale of Jessi Rose Clayton. In trying to save her family ranch from falling into the greedy hands of the wrong people, Jessi finds a unique solution-hiring outlaw railroad robber Griffin Blake as her protector. Now, with this strong, bronze-bodied man on her side, Jessi might just be tempted to mix business with pleasure.

“Go and get a box and put yourself in it.” Henry Brown heard these words, but he didn’t know if he could believe them. A voice was telling Henry, a slave from Virginia, to climb into a wooden box and mail himself to freedom. The Disappearing Man is based on a true story—one of the most incredible escape attempts in the history of the Underground Railroad. In 1849, with the help of two friends, Henry Brown was placed in a box marked THIS SIDE UP WITH CARE. Then he was shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia, a harrowing, 27-hour ordeal at the mercy of cargo handlers and rogues of all ...

The year was 1877 and Reconstruction was working until Presidential politics removed the union troops from the South unleashing violent cold-blooded men to pray upon black Americans. Bertha and Tucker were raised in the ways of the Elders: maintain your dignity, know your history, and never compromise your values. Their children were more than sharecroppers. Junior, the oldest, was an astute businessman and new leader. Joan was a teacher. Joseph, the brother, no one wanted to fight. Rose fell in love with the wrong man. Gladys, the youngest, helped Rose through tough times. "If the Elders ...

Welcome to Bailey's Café, the most mythically real diner you've ever walked into. Presided over by Bailey and his helpmate, Nadine, it is a magnet that draws a wide variety of the "colored" people of 1948, each with a story to tell.

College student Joe Talbert has the modest goal of completing a writing assignment for an English class. His task is to interview a stranger and write a brief biography of the person. With deadlines looming, Joe heads to a nearby nursing home to find a willing subject. There he meets Carl Iverson, and soon nothing in Joe's life is ever the same. Carl is a dying Vietnam veteran-and a convicted murderer. With only a few months to live, he has been medically paroled to a nursing home after spending thirty years in prison for the crimes of rape and murder.

Jazz-Age Chicago comes to vibrant life in Denny S. Bryce's evocative novel that links the stories of an ambitious chorus girl and a modern-day film student, both coming to grips with loss, forgiveness, and the limitations - and surprises - of love.

The son of Maya Angelou, Guy Johnson is a critically acclaimed author and poet in his own right. Echoes of a Distant Summer is the story of Jackson St. Clair Tremain, a San Francisco civil servant who thought he had left his old life far behind. In 1982, Jackson is summoned to Mexico to confer with his dying grandfather, the brutal hustler King Tremain. When King dies, Jackson inherits $50 million - and the unwanted attentions of a malevolent bayou crime lord named Pug DuMont.

The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love—even where they’re not supposed to.