American Literature

Essence® best-selling authors Kiki Swinson and De’nesha Diamond are two rising stars in the world of urban fiction. Heist presents two novellas starring young women hustling their way to the top of the game through daring robbery schemes. In Swinson’s The Ultimate Heist, pampered Shannon Marshall is accustomed to a big-money lifestyle. Her world is shattered, however, when her man is thrown into prison for gun running.

Marianela era una muchachita huérfana, que vivía en las minas de un lugar llamado Socartes. Estaba debilucha y fea. Se había acostumbrado al rechazo de todos; incluso creía que “no servía para nada”, hasta que se convirtió en el lazarillo de un gallardo joven llamado Pablo, quien le hizo saber que su bondad y ternura la convertían en una persona hermosa.

With smoking hot hits like Lies Lovers Tell and What Love Tastes Like to her credit, Zuri Day has built a considerable fanbase for her scorching contemporary romances. When 40-year-old teacher Gwen Smith travels home to care for her sick mother, she meets a potential new mate who makes her head spin. A “black Fabio,” 26-year-old Ransom Blake knows his way around the bedroom—and he’s about to take Gwen back to school for some lust lessons.

Sportswriter Nina Richardson had the perfect life away from her family's famous shadow. But a social media blowup and rejection by her boyfriend brought her back to their peaceful Charleston, South Carolina B&B to figure out what went wrong. So there's no way she's going to trust the crazy-hot sparks flying between her and handsome new employee Clinton Jefferson. It's just reckless, rip-his-clothes-off, one-night-and-forget-it lust - right?

What does a sixteen-year-old girl do when she falls in love with her boss? She marries him! Milcah Saint Romain was able to escape the crowded house shared with herself, her parents, and eleven siblings. Rebelling against her upbringing, she was able to seduce her boss and live the life she's always dreamed of. Now at 26 Milcah is learning that, a good man, money and a mansion isn't always the easier road when traveling dangerously. The ride or die lifestyle can lead to a jail cell or a coffin. The double life and secret jobs finally catch up to the couple while working a gig. Who is ...

A hard-working daddy's girl, Precious Cummings is sure she's going to college. But when her father is murdered, she discovers he lied for years about money they never had - and hid a shocking family secret. Shattered and lost, she starts hangin' with savvy hood chick Keisha - and falls hard for DaVon, LA's most powerful drug dealer. As his new lady, Precious soon gets the best of every luxurious thing - and fast learns the ropes of her lover's lethal hustle.

These five salacious stories are filled to the brim with sizzling, steamy encounters for anyone who enjoys, fantasizes about, or simply craves girl-girl sex.

She killed her abusive boyfriend in self-defense. But in jail, violent female gangs paid off by her enemies keep her fearing for her life - and land her in the hospital. From there, a medical testing facility is her one dubious hope for some kind of safety. But from the moment she hits the yard, she and other prisoners are victimized by illegal medical experiments. Injected with lethal diseases and made a test subject for experimental vaccines, she's clinging to determination by the slimmest thread - until she forms an alliance with a Corrections Officer.

Having earned starred reviews and a fervent following for her urban Christian fiction, Leslie J. Sherrod delivers the first in a riveting new series. In Losing Hope, Sienna St. James thinks she’s finally close to getting over her long-lost, globetrotting husband. Or so she thinks. One Tuesday, everything begins to come apart when a succession of strange events - including the mystery surrounding a girl named Hope - brings her past, present, and future into question.

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."

Kimera Davis finds comfort in dating married men. It's easier that way. Her needs are taken care of, and she doesn't have to give more of herself than she wants to. No messy feelings involved. But when the man she's seeing poses an unexpected question, Kimera quickly realizes she's not the only woman pulled in by his charm. Their new arrangement doesn't require much from Kimera, but she soon discovers someone else is pulling the strings. She's not looking for complications, yet she can't help feeling there's something devious at play.

MacKinlay Kantor, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master storyteller, shows us how the South could have won the Civil War, how two small shifts in history (as we know it) in the summer of 1863 could have turned the tide for the Confederacy. What would have happened: to the Union, to Abraham Lincoln, to the people of the North and South, to the world?

Unafraid to use her assets, young Johnnie has wiled her way into the lives of several dangerous men. She also happens to be connected to three murders. Now that her enemies are closing in from all sides, it seems her luck may run out.

In Episode 2, LaLa takes her business on the road supplying the South's hip hop elite. As her name rings bells, her list of haters grows stronger. She meets a dude who matches her fly, but something is not quite right about this "perfect man." LaLa rebuilds a relationship with her sister Melody while things fall apart back home in the Chi. Will LaLa beat the odds in the drug game? Will she end up in jail or, worse...the grave? LABEL WHORE CHI, LABEL WHORE ATL & LABEL WHORE LA IS A 3 BOOK SERIES. COP THEM ALL TO COMPLETE THIS ACTION-PACKED URBAN FICTION STORY.

Audriana Escobar, a.k.a. Audi, is the 18-year-old leader of the Gucci Girlz - a crew made up of her closest friends. Growing up in poverty, their only current goal is to find a way out of the poor town of Aetna and achieve a life of happiness, love, and luxury. When they cross paths with another crew named the Tru Aetna Boyz, all of their wants and desires seem to be coming true.

Monica, a CEO with celebrity clients, loves her life. But when her man loses his high-powered corporate job and pressures her to start a family, Monica finds herself involved with a client who wants to mix business with pleasure - or else…Successful author Keesha is blowing through her money - and cheating on her fiancé. When her new friend, Jeremiah, discovers her deception, Keesha stands to lose everything....

New York Times best-selling author Walter Dean Myers and renowned filmmaker Bill Miles deftly tell the true story of the unsung American heroes of the 369th Infantry Regiment of World War I in The Harlem Hellfighters: When Pride Met Courage. At a time of widespread bigotry and racism, the African American soldiers of the 369th Infantry Regiment put their lives on the line in the name of democracy.

Tyesha Couvillier will never forget the rip-offs and brutal treatment she endured as a sex worker. So as the new director of the groundbreaking Lower East Side Women's Health Clinic, she'll take on the Ukranian mob and corrupt strip club bosses to stop local exotic dancers from being pressured into selling sex. And if she and her crew can pull off an elaborate heist, the evidence they steal could upend this vicious game - and give exploited women a chance at justice.

An American Tragedy is the story of Clyde Griffiths, who spends his life in the desperate pursuit of success. On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream.

Enzo and Angel are back and this time with a vengeance. Micah was hell-bent on forcing their hands and pushing them back into the lifestyle they'd left behind after Damien Orlando's demise. With time ticking away along with Enzo's desire to keep his career and family intact, he will become the monster Micah accused him of being. Enzo will embrace the darkness that flows freely through his veins and make Micah rue the day he awakened the sleeping giant.