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In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity -- powerfully imagined and written with a savage,...
3) Native son
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Series
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The story of a young African American man caught in a downward spiral after murdering a white woman in a monment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930's, it is an unsparing reflection of the poverty and hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and what it means to be black in America.
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Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921. A white woman and a black man are alone in an elevator. Suddenly, the woman screams, the man runs out, and the chase to capture and lynch him begins. When Joe, a young man trying to be the next Houdini, is accused of rape, he must perform his greatest escape by eluding a bloodthirsty lynch mob. And Mary, the motherless daughter of a farmer who tries to marry her off to the farmhand who viciously raped her, must find the courage...
Author
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It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished his most virulent accuser. Coleman Silk has a secret. But it's not the secret of his affair, at seventy-one, with Faunia Farley,...
6) Chiefs
Author
Series
Summary
When a teenaged boy is found dead, the chief of police in a small Georgia town in 1920 begins an obsessive hunt for the boy's tormentor, which leads him to two former chiefs of police, one a murderer and the other the concealer of a secret.
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 12
Summary
We last saw Easy Rawlins in Blonde Faith, fighting for his life after his car plunges over a cliff. True to form, the tough WWII veteran survives. Soon, he and his murderous sidekick, Mouse, are cruising the mean streets of L.A. in all their psychedelic 1967 glory to look for a young black man who disappeared during an acid trip. Fueled by an elixir called Gator's Blood, brewed by the conjure woman Mama Jo, Easy experiences a physical, spiritual,...
9) Blonde faith
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 11
Summary
Fearing his friend, Christmas Black, has met his demise when the ex-Marine's daughter is left on his doorstep, reluctant L.A. detective Easy Rawlins finds the challenges of caring for a child further complicated by another friend's murder accusation.
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Benjamin January volume 1
Summary
A lush and haunting novel of a city steeped in decadent pleasures . . . and of a man, proud and defiant, caught in a web of murder and betrayal.
It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted—by murder.
Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has...
It is 1833. In the midst of Mardi Gras, Benjamin January, a Creole physician and music teacher, is playing piano at the Salle d'Orleans when the evenings festivities are interrupted—by murder.
Ravishing Angelique Crozat, a notorious octoroon who travels in the city's finest company, has...
11) Half of paradise
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Summary
Meet Avery Broussard, the last in a line of once-substantial land owners whose weakness for alcohol lands him in prison; J.P. Winfield, a dirt-poor singer who makes it to the top of hillbilly music only to be destroyed by drug addiction; and Toussaint Boudreaux, a black longshoreman who is set up for a crime he didn't commit. How the three men struggle to escape the bondage that links them makes for a tale of atmosphere and suspense in Burke's first...
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When her wedding to John “Basil” Henderson didn’t come off as planned, Yancey Harrington Braxton flew off to L.A. and remade herself as mega-diva Yancey B. And Basil started concentrating on his career as a high-powered sports agent. But then Yancey’s first single, “Any Way the Wind Blows,” hit the charts, and now it threatens to blow Basil’s cover—if anyone learns who it’s really about. And it looks...
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Summary
The critically acclaimed novel about four women who learn how to carry on while leaning on each other from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back and It's Not All Downhill From Here.
When the men in their lives prove less than reliable, Savannah, Bernadine, Gloria, and Robin find new strength through a rare and enlightening friendship as they struggle to regain stability and an...
When the men in their lives prove less than reliable, Savannah, Bernadine, Gloria, and Robin find new strength through a rare and enlightening friendship as they struggle to regain stability and an...
Author
Series
Summary
Fearless Jones and Paris Minton, stars of the bestsellers Fearless Jones and Fear Itself, return in a high-velocity, larger-than-life thriller about family, betrayal, and revenge.
"I'm in trouble, Paris." Paris Minton has heard these words before. They mean only one thing: that his neck is on the line too. So when they are uttered by his lowlife cousin Ulysses S. Grant, Paris keeps the door firmly closed. With family like Ulysses —...
"I'm in trouble, Paris." Paris Minton has heard these words before. They mean only one thing: that his neck is on the line too. So when they are uttered by his lowlife cousin Ulysses S. Grant, Paris keeps the door firmly closed. With family like Ulysses —...
17) Fear itself
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Written with the voice and vision that have made Mosley one of the most entertaining writers in America, "Fear Itself" marks the return of a master at the top of his form.
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For freed slave Honey Boutrille, "justice" is a word that no longer bears any weight. After he saves the life of a prostitute by shooting her white, would-be killer, the price on Honey's head sends him on the run. As he narrowly escapes scrape after scrape, he learns to keep one eye in front of him and one eye on his back.
In California, "Twice" Emmerson begins a crime spree. His inflated pride and deadly temper make him a threat to anyone who...
Author
Series
Easy Rawlins mystery volume 14
Summary
Life for Easy Rawlins is surprisingly... easy. He's living off the proceeds of his last case, trying to keep out of trouble. Of course it's not going to last. Because Easy's old friend Mouse knocks on his door. Mouse is one of the deadliest men in America. And Mouse wants a small favor. He wants Easy to help a man he says is wrongly imprisoned, a friend of Charcoal Joe. Charcoal Joe is a mythical figure in the LA underworld - he pulls all the strings...