African American Historical Fiction

Amidst the whir of city life, a girl from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she’s hired to use her knives to strike fear amongst its most dangerous denizens. But the ghosts from her past are always by her side - and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she loves most. Can one woman ever sacrifice enough to save an entire community? Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel - a magical love story, a compelling chronicle of interracial tension, and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

It is 1938, and a despondent president travels incognito on a mission to reconnect with the country. He hitches a ride with a 13-year-old boy on his journey of a lifetime: to deliver a Lincoln Zephyr convertible—a car of historic significance. Together, they travel the backroads of the South toward Virginia. The Secret Service plans to protect the president go awry during an overnight, nationwide calamity, and when a psychotic killer sets upon the pair, the joy of traveling becomes a race for survival. My Friend the President is a fun-filled adventure for old and young.

A powerful story about love, courage, sacrifice, resilience, and hope, True Grace, set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties, chronicles the journey of an immigrant, mixed-raced woman from the Congo, England, and Jamaica, fighting for her family's survival. Inspired by real people and events, Grace must navigate the misogyny and racism of the courts, banks, child welfare system, and bad actors to hold her family together. Calling on her grit, determination, and grace, she must overcome harrowing circumstances.

Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the listener’s guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.

Sloan had a hard enough time being a female bounty hunter in the West. With only her trusty steed Whiskey by her side, she went through town after town writing wrongs. Her methods worked well until she encountered the Franklin brothers terrorizing the women in a small town. Sloan always had a soft spot for women, and she will not let these ruffians have their way with them. Will enlisting the help of a local legend be enough to defeat her new foes?

Esi Edugyan won wide acclaim for her stunning novel Half-Blood Blues - a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, 83-year-old Sid Griffiths remembers his time during WWII playing in a Berlin jazz band called the Hot Time Swingers. When jazz music was denounced by the Nazis, Sid and his bandmates fled to Paris - a move that put Hieronymous, the band's brilliantly talented trumpeter, in constant danger due to his Afro-German heritage.

At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of black power, three coeds from New York City - Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks - pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College. It is the beginning of a journey that will change their lives irrevocably.

Charlie and Ralph’s mom has waited a long time to vote because countless obstacles have been put in Black people’s way to stop them from having a say in elections—obstacles that it took a lot of hard work to tear down. But now, in 1969, Madear is going to vote for the very first time, and the boys are coming along on this exciting day. A day that puts a new bounce in their mom’s step, and enables them all to begin to dream of a better future.

Featuring 18 trailblazing Black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations. Among these biographies, listeners will find heroes, role models, and everyday women who did extraordinary things - bold women whose actions and beliefs contributed to making the world better for generations of girls and women to come.

Au milieu des années 1960, Grace, jeune fille noire exilée du Sud ségrégationniste vers un New York en pleine lutte pour les droits civiques, tombe enceinte en même temps qu'elle découvre l'amour. On ne lui permet pas de garder l'enfant. C'est Delores, une femme traumatisée dans sa chair et dans son âme, qui va adopter et élever sa fille, Rae, en tentant de la préserver du poids de ses souvenirs. Mais à l'heure de devenir mère à son tour, Rae devra affronter cet héritage et faire la paix avec sa famille adoptive aussi bien qu'avec l'inconnue qui l'a mise au monde.

Fourteen-year-old Audrey Martin, with her Poindexter glasses and her head humming the 3/4 meter of gospel music, knows she'll never get out of Kentucky - but when her fingers touch the piano keys, the whole church trembles. Her best friend, Caroline, daydreams about Hollywood stardom, but both girls feel destined to languish in a slow-moving stopover town in Montgomery County. That is, until chance intervenes and a booking agent offers Audrey a ticket to join the booming jazz scene in Harlem.

The 28 days of Black History Month are commemorated with descriptions of the men, women, and events that have been vital in defining our understanding of African American history. From Crispus Attucks to Barack Obama, Harriet Tubman to Malcolm X, Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, the entries move chronologically from 1770 to the present and encompass all walks of life, from the armed forces and performing arts through sports and civil rights activism.

A Poet of the Invisible World follows a boy named Nouri, born in 13th-century Persia with four ears instead of two. Orphaned as an infant, he's taken into a Sufi order, where he meets an assortment of dervishes and is placed upon a path toward spiritual awakening. As he stumbles from one painful experience to the next, he grows into manhood. Each trial he endures shatters another obstacle within - and leads Nouri on toward transcendence.

Old loves, festering hatreds, and buried family secrets collide in this sweeping tale of Jazz Age New York. David McKay has returned from the dead, and he's on a mission to uncover the truth about his sister's brutal death in the glittering world of the Harlem Renaissance. As a civil rights attorney, he disappeared while investigating a lynching, but now he's back and determined to expose the lies, hypocrisy, and betrayal that lurk behind the facade of the Jazz Age. But with each day that passes, he gets closer to the dangerous secrets that could lead to his downfall. Will his enemies ...

The book tells the story of Henry, a slave who escapes from his plantation and meets the notorious pirate Blackbeard. Together, they embark on a journey filled with danger and adventure, facing challenges such as wanted posters, royal navy battles, and the threat of losing Blackbeard's treasure.

Moved by the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver decides to abandon his career as a professional leg breaker and pursue a life of quiet moments and generous helpings of banana pudding in the company of his new, sensuous lover.

Georgia Gilmore was cooking when she heard the news Mrs. Rosa Parks had been arrested - pulled off a city bus and thrown in jail all because she wouldn't let a White man take her seat. To protest, the radio urged everyone to stay off city buses for one day: December 5, 1955. Throughout the boycott - at Holt Street Baptist Church meetings led by a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr. - and throughout the struggle for justice, Georgia served up her mouth-watering fried chicken, her spicy collard greens, and her sweet potato pie.

Chima is an outcast among outcasts. He's on the verge of giving up on life entirely when he encounters the sacred Biafran lion. Gifted with an incredible power and introduced to a world beyond belief, Chima thinks his life may finally be turning around. When a rival nation kidnaps Chima's father, his world is shattered. To save his family and the Biafran people, he must learn to believe in himself and his newfound power. As he fights back against a secret weapon, he wonders if his efforts to protect his adopted home could doom them all.

Everybody knows about the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence in 1776. But the founders weren't the only ones who believed that everyone had a right to freedom. Mumbet, a Massachusetts enslaved person, believed it too. She longed to be free, but how? Would anyone help her in her fight for freedom? Could she win against the richest man in town? Mumbet was determined to try. Mumbet's Declaration of Independence tells her story for the first time in a biography. Her brave actions set a milestone on the road toward ending slavery in the United States.

Hand in Hand presents the stories of 10 men from different eras in American history, organized chronologically to provide a scope from slavery to the modern day. The stories are accessible, fully drawn narratives offering the subjects' childhood influences, the time and place in which they lived, their accomplishments and motivations, and the legacies they left for future generations as links in the "freedom chain".