A Neteru---a hunter or a huntress---is born every thousand years in favor of the Warriors of Light as they fight against the Dark Realms. But Damali Richards is the Millennium Neteru. The one who will play a pivotal role in the Final War. The Warriors of Light had been waiting for her and the Dark Realms will do anything to either possess or destroy her. What they did not account for was the man who would love her.

Damali Richard has been to hell and back---literally---and she is not eager to repeat the trip. A Vampire civil war has been averted, but there were casualties and she believes that Carlos Rivera, former lover turned master vampire, is one of them. His death has not only shaken her emotions, but weakened her powers as well. But then Damali gets word that horrific killings are taking place in Brazil. The vampire civil war has left a small door to hell open and new and dangerous foes have risen from the Dark Realms. The leader, a deadly female, is set on a path of destruction. However, her blood lust hides a nefarious plan and the newly resurrected Carlos Rivera is at the heart of it. But Damali is not about to lose her man a second time, so she plans to send this old girl right back to hell she came from---no matter who stands in her way.  MORE

Grown Folks' Business by Victoria Christopher Murray

Sheridan's husband wanted to stop living a lie, but how was she going to live her life knowing the truth?

"There's no other way to say this. I'm in love with someone else." With these words, Sheridan Hart's life as she knows it comes to a crashing halt. She thought she was living every woman's dream: for the past seventeen years of marriage, Quentin had been a model husband, father, and business partner. But for all those years, he'd been hiding a secret from her. In fact, he had kept his secret from everyone. His startling confession is a lifelong attraction to men, and he is leaving her to be with his lover.

While coming to grips with the destruction of her marriage, Sheridan must also deal with the emotional reactions of her sixteen-year-old son and ten-year-old daughter. When word gets out about Quentin, everybody has something to say -- her family, her friends, and her church community all have advice to give and judgment to dole out. But at the end of the day, Sheridan must lean on her faith and her heart to decide what's best for her family.
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Best Kept Secret by Rochelle Alers

With Best Kept Secrets, bestselling author Rochelle Alers offers her most ambitious and sensual novel to date, reaching back into the rich history of Florida and Cuba to tell the story of a family destined for greatness — and haunted by secrets that could destroy them all.

With the tumult of the Great War finally at an end, ambitious Samuel Cole returns from Europe determined to forge his own destiny as a wealthy entrepreneur. The lush lands of the Caribbean will provide the means to wealth, but they offer private bounty as well — a bride.

Marguerite-Josefina Diaz is the toast of Havana, the convent-educated daughter of a wealthy cigar manufacturer. Beautiful and intelligent, M.J. dreams of distant lands and a liberated future for herself — and she believes charming, handsome Samuel will deliver both.   MORE

Seasons of Beento Blackbird by Akosua Busia

A provocative novel dissecting the issues of marriage and African identity, featuring a cast of finely drawn characters. The story of Solomon Wilberforce, a successful and loveable children's book author who writes under the pseudonym of Beento Blackbird. Solomon also happens to be polygamous; he spends his winters in the Caribbean with his first wife, and summers in Ghana with his second wife. Everything's fine until he's forced to de-compartmentalize his life.   MORE
 

Bestselling author Tracy Price-Thompson returns with another steamy novel, packed with wife swapping, down-low desires, racial self-hatred, and sexual swinging. . . .

Kevin Lawson has a secret. This hard-charging army sergeant is drawn to seedy sex dens, adult bookstores, and kinky encounters with multiple partners. To hide his cravings, Kevin uses his wife to solicit bedroom playmates and to indulge his ever-growing fantasies.

A preacher’s daughter, college graduate, and ex-stripper, “Freak Nasty” Fancy Lawson has done it all and loved every moment of it. But now Fancy must face the truth of her husband’s sexual addiction or risk losing the one constant in her ever-changing world. MORE

My Life is All I Have by V. Anthony Rivers

Packed with suspense and vivid descriptions of some of Los Angeles’ toughest streets, My

Life Is All I Have tells the gripping story of a young girl who will do anything to leave her troubled past behind her.

Leesha Tyler is about to commit robbery when memories from her past start to consume her.

Leesha looks back on her life and remembers the chaotic household she lived in—with her mother and herself always at odds. Thoughts of the death of her grandmother and other untimely events only sadden Leesha further and make her more determined that the only solution to her problems is to get out of Los Angeles. And the only way to do that, or so she thinks, is to commit armed robbery. MORE

Chasing Destiny by Eric Jerome Dickey

Eight-time New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey’s new novel is filled with intrigue, speed, and sex appeal. And an unforgettable female narrator rides her sexy yellow motorcycle right through it all.

Billie (aka "Ducati") is known as much for her extraordinary beauty as for the sexy yellow motorcycle she rides through the mean streets of Los Angeles. Tough, talented, and self-assured, Billie's used to doing things her way—but that was before love threw an oil slick in the road and spun her life into chaos.

Billie's first problem is simple: she's pregnant.

Her second problem is that her lover, Keith, is still married. MORE

Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

A vacant lot, rat-infested and filled with garbage, looked like no place for a garden. Especially to a neighborhood of strangers where no one seems to care. Until one day, a young girl clears a small space and digs into the hard-packed soil to plant her precious bean seeds. Suddenly, the soil holds promise: To Curtis, who believes he can win back Lateesha's heart with a harvest of tomatoes; to Virgil's dad, who seems a fortune to be made from growing lettuce; and even to Mariclea, sixteen and pregnant, wishing she were dead.

Thirteen very different voices--old, young, Haitian, Hispanic, tough, haunted, and hopeful tell one amazing story about a garden that transforms a neighborhood. MORE
 

JULY

Cameisha Douglass has it all -- a sprawling home in a posh neighborhood, a fancy car, three healthy children, and a husband, Fashad, who is devoted to her. Her biggest worry is catching her daytime soap operas before the kids come home from school and her husband returns from work, "businesses" that everyone knows are mere fronts through which he launders his drug-dealing money. But as the emotional and sexual secrets of her family come to the surface, she can no longer deny that her life is not all that it seems. While family members point fingers at one another, the real threat may come from the outside, specifically from Smokey, a mixed-race twenty-year-old high school dropout and would-be rapper whose issues with sexual and racial identity fuel his inner rage.

Written by a daring young author with a compelling voice, 5 Minutes and 42 Seconds is a fast-paced and edgy thriller that explores the questions of identity and sexuality with refreshing vigor.  MORE

AUGUST

72 Hour Hold by Bebe Moore Campbell

In this novel of family and redemption, a mother struggles to save her eighteen-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness by forcing her to deal with her bipolar disorder. New York Times best-selling author Bebe Moore Campbell draws on her own powerful emotions and African-American roots, showcasing her best writing yet.

Trina suffers from bipolar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and violent. Watching her child turn into a bizarre stranger, Keri searches for assistance through normal channels. She quickly learns that a seventy-two hour hold is the only help you can get when an adult child starts to spiral out of control. After three days, Trina can sign herself out of any program.

Fed up with the bureaucracy of the mental health community and determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal intervention. The Program is a group of radicals who eschew the psychiatric system and model themselves after the Underground Railroad. When Keri puts her daughter’s fate in their hands, she begins a journey that has her calling on the spirit of Harriet Tubman for courage. In the upheaval that follows, she is forced to confront a past that refuses to stay buried, even as she battles to secure a future for her child.  MORE

SEPTEMBER

The Sistherhood of Blackberry Corner

Canaan Creek, South Carolina, in the 1950s is a tiny town where the close-knit African-American community is united by long-term friendships and church ties. Bonnie Wilder has lived here, on Blackberry Corner, all her life, and would be content but for her deep desire to have a child. She and her husband Naz cannot conceive, and he refuses to adopt. Even the support of her outrageous best friend Thora–to whom Bonnie tells everything–can’t help fill the emptiness inside her.

Then Naz finds a blanketed infant on the banks of Canaan Creek, and suddenly Bonnie’s life is transformed. She has found her calling. Together with Thora and the rest of the hilarious, tough, and all-too-human women from her church group, Bonnie creates an underground railroad for unwanted babies. But one of these precious gifts will come back to haunt her: a deception begun in good faith comes full circle, ultimately forcing Bonnie to find the courage to confront a difficult truth at the center of her own life.

Filled with compassion, humor, and tenacity in the face of almost insurmountable odds, here is a rich, inspiring tale of friendship and family, sisterhood and mother love…and of finding grace where you least expect it.  MORE

3rd Qtr
Classic/Ole School

Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan

ROBIN STOKES is a successful insurance professional recovering from a dead-end love affair. "They say love is a two-way street. But I don't believe it because the one I've been on for the last two years was a dirt road." After months of depression , shopping and dating all the wrong men, she's getting by with a little help from her friends -- and still determined to find the Real Thing...

BERNADINE HARRIS has the kids, the house, and the BMW, but a young white bookkeeper has her husband. Now, propped by her prescription for Xanax and her first pack of cigarettes in 106 days, she's entering a whole new world....

GLORIA MATTHEWS owns one of the few stylish beauty salons for black women in Phoenix, and finds solace in religion, her teenage son, other people's hair, and food. Her social and emotional bank accounts are low, but a sweet surprise is about to open up her life....

SAVANNAH JACKSON is a public relations executive -- educated, attractive, and unmarried. On the verge of moving to her fourth city in fifteen years, she's lobbying the Lord, "Could You send me a decent man? Could he be full of zest, and please, a slow, tender, passionate lover -- and could he already be what he aspired to?" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.  MORE
 

OCTOBER

OCTOBER (ALTERNATE)

A Love Noire by Erica Simone Turnipseed

When Noire, a hip, Afro-wearing Ph.D. student, walks into Brown Betty Books, her righteousness kicks into overdrive amid the self-identified "talented tenth" who wear their double degrees and five-hundred-dollar shoes like badges of honor. And then Innocent walks in, sits down beside her, and turns her on her head. A dashing, well-heeled investment banker originally from Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa, Innocent seems interested in her ... but he's one of them.

Before meeting him, Noire shunned the "bourgie" world of black monied cosmopolitans like Innocent, opting instead for socially conscious -- but economically challenged -- artists and urban intellectuals. Their mutual attraction blossoms into lust and eventually love, but it lives in the shifting sands of personal beliefs and professional ambitions that are often at odds.

Set in present-day New York City with jaunts to Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean, A Love Noire is the story of an unlikely couple that struggles to discover whether their passion will keep them together, or if their differences will tear them apart. Stripped to their barest selves, Innocent and Noire transcend all they've known to learn the redemptive power of love.

A Love Noire offers an insider's look at color and class struggles, urban living, life in Africa, the notoriously unpredictable and heady New York dating scene, and good old-fashioned love. A natural and potent storyteller, Ms. Turnipseed writes of love and family with grace, and A Love Noire, her debut, marks the arrival of a resonant, sparkling voice in contemporary fiction.  MORE
 

NOVEMBER

Behind the Veil by Suzetta Perkins

Overflowing with lies, deceit, dangerous (and illegal) weapon sales, and extramarital affairs, Behind the Veil weaves a tale of riveting suspense and never-ending intrigue.

Jefferson Myles, a successful businessman and CEO of his own securities firm, might be in over his head. For one thing, he's embezzling money from his clients to fund "Operation Stingray" -- an organization headed by Robert Santiago that steals ammunition from a military base to sell to a rebel group in Honduras. To make matters worse, Jefferson is cheating on his wife with his married neighbor, Linda Montgomery. And to top it all off, Blake, Linda's husband, knows about affair and knows that Jefferson is involved in some kind of illegal activity.

Gradually, some secrets are revealed that put people's lives at stake. Margo, Jefferson's wife, finally discovers the real reason why her husband has been distant and uncaring. As someone attempts to kill Jefferson, surprising truths begin to surface and Margo must decide what is best for her and her family. Filled with suspense, tension, and deeply engaging human emotions, Behind the Veil will hold readers captive until its exhilarating end. MORE
 

DECEMBER

Neo-Soul by Lindsay Williams

More than one hundred taste-tempting soul-food recipes.

From the grandson of Harlem's queen of soul food, Sylvia Woods, comes a new take on soul food-down-home cooking that tastes as good as the food you grew up with. Lindsey Williams knows soul food. He was raised in the kitchen of his grandmother's restaurant, Sylvia's, where he mastered the art of soul-food cooking. But being around all of that good food took its toll. When he tipped the scales at four hundred pounds, he knew he had to make some serious changes.

That's when he lost more than half his body weight and began his own brand of healthy soul-food cooking that's loved by the clients of his catering business. Now, with Neo Soul, we can all enjoy some guilt-free soul food.

Neo Soul features more than one hundred of Williams's delectable recipes, including Grandma's Roasted Turkey, Lenzo's Trout Stuffed with Collard Greens, Okra Gumbo, Neo Sweet Potato Pie, and Blueberry Buckle. They're all so good, you'll never miss the fat MORE
 

4th Qtr Ole School/Classic

The Conjure Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher

The first known mystery written by an African-American, set in 1930s Harlem
 

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