African American Short Stories

This debut collection is a complicated love letter to Washington, DC, and to those who call it home: a TSA agent who's never flown, a girl braving new worlds to play piano, and a teacher caught up in a mayoral race. These characters navigate life's "training school" - with lessons on gentrification and respectability - and fight to create their own sense of space and self.

Gayl Jones, who was first edited by Toni Morrison, has been described as one of the great literary writers of the 20th century and was recently a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. This new collection of short fiction is only the second in her rich career, and one that displays her strengths in the genre in many facets. Opening with two novella-length works, “Butter” and “Sophia,” this collection features Jones’s legendary talents in a range of settings and styles.

In her dynamic debut, Halle Hill’s Good Women delves into the lives of twelve Black women across the Appalachian South. A woman boards a Greyhound bus barreling toward Florida to meet her sugar daddy’s mother; a state fair employee considers revenge on a local preacher; a sister struggles with guilt as she helps her brother plan to run away with a man he's seeing in secret; a young woman who works for a scam for-profit college navigates the lies she sells for a living.

A striking mosaic of prose, poetry, and dramatic dialogue, Jean Toomer’s Cane has come to be considered a masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance. Structured as a series of vignettes ripe with longing, passion, violence, and revenge, the haunting novel gives a powerful voice to the interior lives of African Americans in the rural South and urban North. Championed for its unsparing honesty and psychological insight by such luminaries as Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou, Cane shines as a beacon to generations of African-American writers.

In this episode V of confessions of an Ex-Boyfriend, Cameron, Brandon and Clint decide to be a throuple but this situationship doesn’t last long when one of them becomes extremly jealous. My Confession: "I'm falling for my girlfriend's old man." Cameron is straight. He planned on marrying his girlfriend Samantha after graduation, but when he caught her cheating with his best friend, Bradley, his heart broke in two and he temporarily gave up on love. Later that evening, an older, masculine, and muscular man named Clint showed up at his door. He needed assistance with a problem that only ...

Around the Way Girls 10, like its predecessors, is a fast-paced look at the lives of some street-smart women who think they know it all but are about to get the lessons of their lives.

The collection contains 12 provocative tales that explore the emotional and mental terrain of a diverse cast of characters, from the innocent to the insane. In each, Jones displays her unflinching ability to dive into the most treacherous of psyches and circumstances: the title story examines the identity and relationship conundrums of a Black man who can pass for white, earning him the name “White Rat” as an infant; “The Women” follows a girl whose mother brings a line of female lovers to live in their home.

Tamela Ann Davenport is recovering from the death of her parents and the weight issues that disguised all her problems to reclaim her life for the better. While she creates a new career for herself, she struggles with finding her authentic self to determine if the mysterious Sanders Quinn or the mild-mannered gentleman Remi Randall is the man for her. Through it all she depends on family and friends that want the best for her.

Maryland Romances Short Story Series presents Journie Counts It All Joy. Journie Lynn Davenport is an excited business woman with all work on her mind until the handsome, emerald green-eyed multimillionaire tycoon, Dakota Branch buys a cup of coffee from her establishment, Journie's House of Java. Eventually, the handsome stranger makes a proposal that Journie cannot refuse that will alter her life forever.

Deon doesn’t know who she wants, her girlfriend Mya of four years or the one person she has loved her whole life; but didn’t know it until they made a deal to a Fake Engagement. They each agreed on the terms for their own selfish reasons, but they would soon realize that they were falling hard in love with each other. The one thing Keven didn’t want to do was admit his feelings for Deon, yeah she was his best friend for years but he cared for her more than a friend and when the opportunity came up for him to be in a fake engagement with her he took it. He knew that then and there he ...

A group of women contemplate violence after they’re sent into foreign territory to make husbands of the enemy. A support network of traumatized joggers meets to discuss the bodies they’ve found on their runs. And a town replaces its Confederate monument with a rotating cast of local residents. Slippery but muscular, sly but electric, this stunning debut collection moves from horror to magical realism to satire with total authority. In these stories, characters build and remake their sense of home, be it with one another or within themselves.

The woman she’s had a crush on for years needs a fake girlfriend, and Elana is ready to volunteer for the job! Toya is in a bind. Her little sister is getting married, and her mother is insisting she bring her girlfriend to the wedding. She’d told a little white lie to get her mom off her back, but now it’s backfiring. Her mom thinks she’s in a committed relationship, so Toya needs to find a pretend girlfriend, and fast. Elana fell in love with Toya the minute she set eyes on her. Unfortunately, she somehow went right into the friend zone. Elana has been hesitant to rock the boat, ...

"Stay Scheming": Karlie Houston is broke, betrayed - and running from a bounty on her head. Turns out the real owners of the payday loan office she ripped off weren't cool with her idea of employment bennies. "Who Can You Trust?": Struggling bank teller Porsha has no time for Cinderella fantasies. She's working overtime to keep her tragedy-struck family off the streets. But her new boyfriend, Game, is smart, seductive - and sure-thing successful. So why not work his rock-solid plan to steal from her bank?

Humorous, poignant, perceptive, and full of grace, Kathleen Collins' stories masterfully blend the quotidian and the profound in a personal, intimate way, exploring deep, far-reaching issues - race, gender, family, and sexuality - that shape the ordinary moments in our lives.

Following in the successful footsteps of its predecessors, Around the Way Girls 6 features three popular authors presenting their versions of the tough, street-smart girls that everyone loves.

The Other Kate's (TOK) African American short stories: three from the plantation and one from the space station The Right Reverend Doctor 44's Floaters Legend Uncle Texas Pete's Missing Gold Legend The Wailer and the Sea Breeze Dancer Mystery Needs of MIT Mars Institute of Technology Love Experimenters

High school sweethearts, Monica and Robert fight to save their marriage when Robert decided to take his relationship with God seriously. His new commitment to his new found faith forces Monica to feel judged and alone. Refusing to support Roberts life changing efforts, Monica becomes rebellious and negligent as a wife and mother. She is desperate to keep her unhealthy marriage and questions the God who she feels is tearing them apart.

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Madeline Harper, an 87-year-old career-focused woman who spent her life chasing ambition, has a sudden accident while preparing for Thanksgiving. When she wakes, she is thrust into a vivid, dreamlike experience where she is hosting the Thanksgiving of her dreams—filled with family, love, and bittersweet humor. But reality hits hard when she wakes up in a hospital to find she has no one to take her home. What follows is a heartfelt, funny, and emotional journey as Madeline reconnects with the only person who ever held her heart, finding hope and love when she thought all was lost.

Autumn, a young woman trapped in a world of the unknown, has the bright idea to move to Paris, the City of Love. " ...there I was, sobbing in-between hugs, farewells and well-wishes. It was almost too much all at once…” Autumn lost her dream job after the business cut off many staff members, and she became lost in her mind with no-one but herself; and a piece of paper. Although Losing her job is what drove Autumn to the city of Paris, love is what made her stay. Have you ever seen a man, and instantly your heart raced? Olivier is a handsome Frenchman; tall, toned body, has an ...