Finkelstein Memorial Library - Library Collection - African-American Reading List

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Below is a sampling of recent
contemporary adult and young
adult African American fiction

Chains As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight...for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.	Laurie Halse Anderson
What Doesn't Kill You When it rains, it pours for Tee Hodges, the spirited, stiff-upper-lipped protagonist of DeBerry and Grant's latest. Yet even when she finds her world swirling out of her grasp, she maintains the image that she has everything together. "This is the anti-pity party: snappy, fun and inspiring." Publishers Weekly	Virginia DeBerry & Donna Grant
We Take This Man Dwight and Tracey Wilson are living the ideal life with their two children in a brand new home in Florida. They are both excited when Dwight is offered a promotion at work, but the downside is that the job is located in Maryland. After much discussion, Tracey decides that she does not want to leave their new house. Dwight makes the decision to accept the position and return home on weekends. Meanwhile, Alicia Dixon has spent her life hating and not trusting men after her father mistreated her mother, but she can't help but fall for the new guy in her company...Dwight. They both try to fight their attraction to one another, but it proves to be a losing battle-Alicia is everything that his southern wife is not.	Candice Dow and Daaimah S. Poole
Red River Four generations of African-American Southerners claw their way up from the ruins of Reconstruction in this engrossing family saga by the author of the bestselling Cane River. Tademy begins with a harrowing recreation of the notorious 1873 massacre at Colfax, La., where 150 blacks, gathered in defense of local Republican officials—and their own citizenship—were killed by white supremacists.	Lalita Tamedy
Sunrise over Fallujah In 2003, in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, young Robin Perry already wonders about "an enemy we can't identify and friends we're not sure about." Myers dedicates this novel to the men and women who serve in the United States Armed Services and to their families, and he offers a powerful study of the strange war they have been sent to fight, where confusion and randomness rule. Narrated by Robin, nephew of Richie Perry, the main character of the landmark Fallen Angels (1988), this companion expertly evokes the beauty of Iraq and the ugliness of war. Given the paucity of works on this war, this is an important volume, covering much ground and offering much insight.	Walter Dean Myers
Diamond Playgirls Four beautiful, professional women, living on separate floors of a Harlem brownstone are about to discover they have a lot more in common than just their address. One by one, each woman crosses paths at a local club on Valentine's Day--and the secrets about to be revealed will forever change their lives...	Daaimah S. Poole
One in a Million In the first novella by the New York Times bestselling author of the Reverend Curtis Black series, a wife and a husband receive a surprise that will change their lives forever. This is a poignant and satisfying story of hope, Kimberla Lawson Roby's One in a Million beautifully shows us the difference between what we think we want and what we actually need to be truly happy.	Kimberla Lawson Roby
Not Even if You Begged Widow Traci Evans happily sits in on meetings with the lovely ladies of the Invincible Sisterhood solely because they reached out to her first. A loner, Traci feels for the first time she belongs. All of the official members are sweet older women who have lost the love of their lives, their husbands. Unknown to them, Traci is more angry than she is grief-stricken because her husband died while in the midst of cheating on her with another woman. Her husband’s deception has hardened Traci’s heart until a playful kiss from the right man turns passionate.	Francis Ray
A la Carte Seventeen year old Lainey dreams of becoming a world famous chef one day and maybe even having her own cooking show. (Do you know how many African American female chefs there aren’t?) But when her best friend—and secret crush—suddenly leaves town, Lainey finds herself alone in the kitchen. With a little help from Saint Julia (Child, of course), Lainey finds solace in her cooking as she comes to terms with the past and begins a new recipe for the future. Peppered with recipes from Lainey’s notebooks, this delicious debut novel finishes the same way one feels finishing a good meal—satiated, content, and hopeful.	Tanita S. Davis
Midnight A young Sudanese immigrant struggles to hold onto his traditional values while growing up on New York's meanest streets.Fleeing Africa at age seven with his young pregnant mother, Umma, the boy later known as Midnight is not seeking a better life so much as hiding out from the political fallout of his powerful father's role in the Sudanese government. Adrift without any friends or much money, the once-wealthy family has to start fresh, forcing Midnight to act as de facto patriarch of the clan. They first settle in a Brooklyn housing project, where gentle Umma creates a peaceful Islamic household in a neighborhood that is anything but.	Sister Souljah
Blackbird, Farewell Damion Madrid, the godson of Denver bail bondsman CJ Floyd, takes center stage in Greer's solid eighth CJ Floyd novel (after 2007's The Mongoose Deception). Best friends Madrid and Shandell Bird led Colorado State's basketball team to the NCAA finals, where they lost to UCLA. When Bird, the NBA's second overall draft choice, is gunned down along with a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, Madrid determines to find out who and why.	Robert Greer
A Mercy Nobel laureate Morrison returns more explicitly to the net of pain cast by slavery, a theme she detailed so memorably in Beloved. A slave at a plantation in Maryland offers up her daughter, Florens, to a relatively humane Northern farmer, Jacob, as debt payment from their owner. The ripples of this choice spread to the inhabitants of Jacob's farm, populated by women with intersecting and conflicting desires. Jacob's wife, Rebekka, struggles with her faith as she loses one child after another to the harsh New World. A Native servant, Lina, survivor of a smallpox outbreak, craves Florens's love to replace the family taken from her, and distrusts the other servant, a peculiar girl named Sorrow. When Jacob falls ill, all these women are threatened. "Morrison's unflinching narrative is all the more powerful for its relative brevity; it takes hold of the reader and doesn't let go until the wrenching final-page crescendo." -- Publishers Weekly	Toni Morrison