Celebrate Black Authors + History (Adults)

The 1921 Broadway hit Shuffle Along, the first successful all-Black musical, shows how composers and comedians harnessed the energy of the Harlem Renaissance to break racial barriers.

Drawing on primary source material from World War II-era Black newspapers and magazines, this powerful book profiles the Black artists who drew--mostly covertly behind the scenes--superhero, horror, and romance comics in the early years of the industry.

When three siblings are found shot to death in the still-segregated town of West Mills, North Carolina, in 1976, and the white authorities show no interest in solving the case, Josephine Wright sets out to prove the innocence of her childhood sweetheart,Olympus "Lymp" Seymore, the murder victims' half-brother and the leading suspect in the case. 1976. In the still-segregated town of West Mills, North Carolina in 1976, three siblings-- Marian, Marva,...

After the murder of a white man in Jim Crow Mississippi, two Black sisters run away to different parts of the country...But can they escape the secrets they left behind? Two sisters on the run--one from the law, the other from social shame. What they don't realize is that there's a man hot on their trails. This man has his own brand of dark secrets and a disturbing motive for finding the sisters that is unknown to everyone but him. --Adapted from...

"When a young red-haired woman is found brutally murdered in downtown Chicago, one detail stands out: the red lipstick encircling her wrists and ankles. Detective Harriet Foster is on the case, even though she's still grieving the sudden death of her partner. As a Black woman in a male-dominated department, Foster anticipates a rocky road ahead acclimating to a new team--and building trust with her new partner isn't coming easily. After another victim...

Nigeria. Korede's sister, Ayoola, is the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola's third boyfriend in a row is dead. Korede knows the best solutions for cleaning blood, the trunk of her car is big enough for a body. Not that she gets any credit. A kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where Korede works is the bright spot in her life. One day Ayoola shows up to the hospital uninvited and he takes notice, asking Korede...

In Jason Mott's Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott's novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. As these characters' stories build and build...

"The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called 'Double Consciousness,' a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and...

"A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward. In Jesmyn Ward's first novel since her National Book Award-winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi's past and present that is both an intimate portrait...

"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath...