Last Updated: July 18, 2024
Acts of Forgiveness
by Maura Cheeks
In this big-hearted debut about ambition, race, and class, a family grapples with how much of their lineage they’re willing to unearth in order to participate in the nation’s first federal reparations program. With warm insight and powerful prose, Acts of Forgiveness asks how history shapes who we are, to consider the weight of success when it is achieved despite incredible odds, and what leaving behind a legacy truly means.
Grown Women
by Sarai Johnson
A novel about four generations of Black women contending with motherhood and daughterhood, generational trauma and the deeply ingrained tensions and wounds that divide them as they redefine happiness and healing for themselves.
Devil is Fine
by John Vercher
Our narrator is haunted. Haunted by panic attacks, a failed relationship, alcoholism, an academic career that wants to define him by his Blackness, and the trauma of the recent death of his 17-year-old son, Malcolm. When a letter arrives informing him that his maternal grandfather has left Malcolm a plot of land, our narrator leaves his life behind and heads to the seaside of the Northeast, where his identity is shaken by the dark and haunting secret that lies beneath this inherited land.
Daughter of the Merciful Deep
by Leslye Penelope
Jane Edwards hasn’t spoken since she was eleven years old, when armed riders expelled her family from their hometown along with every other Black resident. Now, twelve years later, she’s found a haven in the all-Black town of Awenasa. But the construction of a dam promises to wash her home under the waters of the new lake. Jane will do anything to save the community that sheltered her.
Masquerade
by O.O. Sangoyomi
Set in a wonderfully reimagined 15th century West Africa, Masquerade is a dazzling, lyrical tale exploring the true cost of one woman’s fight for freedom and self-discovery, and the lengths she’ll go to secure her future. Loosely based on the myth of Persephone, O.O. Sangoyomi’s Masquerade takes you on a journey of epic power struggles and political intrigue which turn an entire region on its head.
Great Expectations
by Vinson Cunningham
When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States’s first Black president. Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator’s presidential campaign.
No One Dies Yet
by Kobby Ben Ben
2019, The Year of Return. It has been exactly 400 years since the first slave ships left Ghana for America. Ghana has now opened its doors to Black diasporans, encouraging them to return and get to know the land of their ancestors. Elton, Vincent, and Scott arrive from America to visit preserved sites from the transatlantic slave route, and to explore the country’s underground queer scene.