The Goode-Brown family, led by matriarch and pillar of the community Minnie Mae, is plagued by old secrets and embarrassment over mental illness and illegitimacy. Meanwhile, single mother Francine Clark is haunted by her dead, lightning-struck husband and forced to fight against both the moral judgment of the community and her own rebellious daughter, Mona. The residents of Opulence struggle with vexing relationships to the land, to one another, and...

The talk of the Jazz-Era Fillmore, The Salvations--sisters Ruth, Esther and Chloe--find their personal ambitions on a collision course with those of their mother, whose dreams of musical stardom for them forces her to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter.

"Discovering she's pregnant--after she was told she may not be able to have biological children--Tabitha throws herself headfirst into the world of 'single mothers by choice.' When an unexpected turn of events draws Marc--her on and off-again ex-boyfriend--back into her world with surprising demands, and the situation at work begins to threaten her livelihood and her identity, Tabitha must make some tough decisions. It takes a village to raise a child,...

"The Freedom Race, Lucinda Roy's explosive first foray into speculative fiction, is a poignant blend of subjugation, resistance, and hope. In the aftermath of a cataclysmic civil war known as the Sequel, ideological divisions among the states have hardened. In the Homestead Territories, an alliance of plantation-inspired holdings, Black labor is imported from the Cradle, and Biracial "Muleseeds" are bred. Raised in captivity on Planting 437, kitchen-seed...

"Precious miraculously survives her brush with death, but the celebration is cut short when tragedy strikes. Convinced that Nico Carter is responsible for ripping her world apart, Precious's sole purpose for living is to make him pay in blood. The street life that she left behind calls her name as [she] wreaks havoc on anyone who stands in her way of getting revenge"--Back cover.

"'Black girls must die exhausted' is something that 33-year-old Tabitha Walker has heard her grandmother say before. Of course, her grandmother (who happens to be white) was referring to the 1950s and what she observed in the nascent times of civil rights. With a coveted position as a local news reporter, Marc--a 'paper-perfect' boyfriend-- and a standing Saturday morning appointment with a reliable hairstylist, Tabitha never imagined how this phrase...

-- Sula is a work that overflows with life.

"A wildly original, incendiary story about race, redemption, the dangerous imbalances that continue to destabilize society, and speaking out for what's right. One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York-the same night her grandmother dies-or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared....

A mother-daughter story of reinvention-about an African American woman who unexpectedly inherits a sugarcane farm in Louisiana. Why exactly Charley Bordelon's late father left her eight hundred sprawling acres of sugarcane land in rural Louisiana is as mysterious as it was generous. Recognizing this as a chance to start over, Charley and her eleven-year-old daughter, Micah, say good-bye to Los Angeles. They arrive just in time for growing season...

In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.