Dion Graham
Author
Series
Description
"It's 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown, furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It's strictly the straight-and-narrow for him until he needs...
Author
Series
Harlem trilogy (Colson Whitehead) volume 1
Description
""Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a...
Author
Description
After seventeen-year-old Samuel "Sooley" Sooleymon receives a college scholarship to play basketball for North Carolina Central, he moves to Durham from his native, war-torn South Sudan, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season, but Sooley has a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America, working tirelessly on his game until he dominates everyone in practice, and when Sooley is called...
Author
Series
Dark star trilogy (Marlon James) volume 1
Description
"In the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search...
5) Dear Justyce
Author
Appears on list
Description
Incarcerated teen Quan Banks writes letters to Justyce McCallister, with whom he bonded years before over family issues, about his experiences in the American juvenile justice system.
Author
Series
Alex Cross novels volume 14
Description
When the home of Alex Cross's oldest friend, Ellie Cox, is turned into the worst murder scene Alex has ever seen, the destruction leads him to believe that he's chasing a horrible new breed of killer. When the elusive killer's trail turns up in Africa, Alex knows that he must follow. Alone.
Author
Series
Description
Maverick feels strongly about family ties, making choices he feels necessary to help support his mom while his King father serves time, and leave him literally holding his son in a doctor's waiting room after he gets paternity test results back and his babymomma ghosts. Now the child he's raising is impacting the lives of his family and his girlfriend, and the gang life he led to support them all financially could leave them all bearing his responsibilities...
Author
Description
"The author takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the 20 dollars a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup...
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Description
Washington Black is an eleven-year-old field slave who knows no other life than the Barbados sugar plantation where he was born. When his master's eccentric brother chooses him to be his manservant, Wash is terrified of the cruelties he is certain await him. But Christopher Wilde, or "Titch," is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor, and abolitionist. He initiates Wash into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky; where...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Description
"Ten-year-old Anthony Joplin has made it to double digits! Which means he's finally old enough to play in the spades tournament every Joplin Man before him seems to have won. So while Ant's friends are stressing about fifth grade homework and girls, Ant only has one thing on his mind: how he'll measure up to his father's expectations at the card table. Then Ant's best friend gets grounded, and he's forced to find another spades partner. And Shirley,...
11) Dear Martin
Author
Description
Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.
12) Her right foot
Author
Description
"I want to hold this book in one hand and a torch in the other and stand on an island someplace so everyone can see." —Lemony Snicket. If you had to name a statue, any statue, odds are good you'd mention the Statue of Liberty. Have you seen her? She's in New York. She's holding a torch. And she's in mid-stride, moving forward. But why? In this fascinating, fun take on nonfiction, Dave Eggers and Shawn Harris investigate a seemingly small trait...
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Description
A spare, powerful, timeless parable of two men, Western contractors sent to work far from home, tasked with paving a road to the capital in a dangerous and largely lawless country. "Four and Nine are partners, working for the same company, sent without passports to a nation recovering from ten years of civil war. Together, operating under pseudonyms and anonymous to potential kidnappers, they are given a new machine, the RS-90, and tasked with building...
14) Clean getaway
Author
Description
"For the life of him, William "Scoob" Lamar can't seem to stay out of trouble--and now the run-ins at school have led to lockdown at home. So when G'ma, Scoob's favorite person on Earth, asks him to go on an impromptu road trip, he's in the RV faster than he can say FREEDOM. With G'ma's old maps and a strange pamphlet called the 'Travelers' Green Book' at their side, the pair takes off on a journey down G'ma's memory lane. But adventure quickly turns...
15) Trombone Shorty
Author
Description
Hailing from the Tremé neighborhood in New Orleans, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews got his nickname by wielding a trombone twice as long as he was high. A prodigy, he was leading his own band by age six, and today this Grammy-nominated artist headlines the legendary New Orleans Jazz Fest.
Author
Formats
Description
On a hot summer afternoon in 1972, three teenagers drove into an unfamiliar neighborhood and six lives were altered forever. Thirty-five years later, one survivor of that day reaches out to another, opening a door that could lead to salvation. But another survivor is now out of prison looking for reparation in any form he can find it. The Turnaround takes us on a journey from the rock-and-roll streets of the 1970s to the changing neighborhoods
...17) Wildfires
Author
Series
Formats
Description
Learn all about wildfires—how they happen, why they're important, and when they're dangerous—in this fascinating reader. It's sure to ignite your interest, with color photographs, interesting facts, and more.
Author
Series
Kindle County novels volume 4
Formats
Description
In Kindle County, a woman is killed in an apparent random drive-by shooting. The woman turns out to be the ex-wife of a prominent state senator and an old acquaintance of Judge Sonia Klonsky, on whose desk the case lands. As the pursuit of justice takes bizarre and unusual turns, Judge Klonsky is brought face-to-face with a host of extraordinary personalities and formidable enemies bent on her destruction.
Author
Formats
Description
"Cassandra Williams is twelve, and her little brother Wayne is seven. One day, when they're alone together, an accident happens and Wayne is lost forever. Or so it seems. Though his body is never recovered, their mother, unable to give up hope, launches an organization dedicated to missing children. Their father simply leaves, starts another family somewhere else. As C grows older, she sees her brother everywhere: in coffee shops, airplane aisles,...
Author
Description
"Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy...