J. D. Jackson
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.3 - AR Pts: 17
Lexile measure
900L
Language
English
Description
When a federal judge and his secretary fail to appear for a scheduled trial and panicked clerks call for an FBI investigation, a harrowing murder case ensues and culminates in the imprisonment of a lawyer who imparts the story of who killed the judge and why. Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
They call it the Taskforce. Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government. Protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape. Designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Trained to exist on the ragged edge of human capability. Pike Logan was the most successful operator...
Author
Language
English
Description
Big city politics, nasty secrets, a dirty cop, and a deranged sociopath set the stage for a riveting journey deep into the urban jungle. The last scion of a once-powerful political family, Worcester mayor John O'Toole has his sights set on vastly higher aspirations. When night shift paramedic Thomas Archer uncovers a secret that could upend the mayor's career, O'Toole is set on silencing him, and sends Eamon Conroy, a brutal former cop, to ensure...
Author
Language
English
Description
Lorenzo Brown loves his work. In his job as an officer for the Humane Society, he cruises the city streets, looking for dogs that are being mistreated - underfed, unclean, trained to kill. He takes pride in making their lives better. And that pride helps Lorenzo resist the pull of easier money doing the kind of work that got him a recent prison bid. Rachel Lopez loves her work, too. By day she is a parole officer, helping people - Lorenzo Brown among...
Author
Language
English
Description
A chilling and blisteringly relevant literary novel of social horror centered around a brutal killing that takes place in a full-contact haunted escape room-a provocative exploration of capitalism, hate politics, racial fetishism, and our obsession with fear as entertainment. On April 27, 1997, four contestants make it to the final cell of the Quigley House, a full-contact haunted escape room in Lincoln, Nebraska, made famous for its monstrosities,...
Author
Language
English
Description
Inspired by the atmospheric poetry of Langston Hughes and set in the heart of Denver's black community, this gripping crime novel pits three characters in a race against time to thwart a gross miscarriage of justice--and a crooked detective who wreaks havoc...with deadly consequences. What happens to a dream deferred--especially when an innocent man's life hangs in the balance? Langston Brown is running out of time and options for clearing his name...
7) Taft
Author
Language
English
Description
A New York Times Notable Book
"As resonant as a blues song. . . . Expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett's fiction."—New York Times Book Review
An ex-jazz drummer wants nothing more than to be a good father in this moving family novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Dutch House.
When John Nickel's lover takes away his son, Nickel is left only with his
...Author
Language
English
Description
"Warren Duffy has returned to America for all the worst reasons: his marriage to a beautiful Welsh woman has come apart; his comic shop in Cardiff has failed; and his Irish-American father has died, bequeathing to Warren his last possession, a roofless, half-renovated mansion in the heart of black Philadelphia. On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures in the grass outside; when he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear....
Author
Language
English
Description
"The thirteen gripping tales in THE LAST SUSPICIOUS HOULDOUT deftly chronicle poignant moments in the lives of an African American community located in a "sliver of southern suburbia." Spanning from 1992 to 2007, the stories represent a period during which the Black middle class expanded, while stories of "welfare queens," "crack babies," and "superpredators" abounded in the media. Characters spotlighted in one story reappear in another, providing...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 6.5 - AR Pts: 10
Lexile measure
HL 940L
Language
English
Description
"In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Ten heavenly stories that chronicle ineffable events in ordinary lives. When Randall Kenan's first collection was published, The New York Times called it "nothing short of a wonder-book." With comparable inventiveness but seasoned by maturity and shot through with humor, his second collection, If I Had Two Wings, riffs on the human relationship with the transcendent. Rooted in Kenan's fictional territory of Tims Creek, NC, this book also travels...
12) Midnight Atlanta
Author
Series
Darktown novels volume 3
Language
English
Formats
Description
"When Arthur Bishop, editor of Atlanta's leading black newspaper, is killed in his office, cop-turned-journalist Tommy Smith finds himself in the crosshairs of the racist cops he's been trying to avoid. To clear his name, he needs to learn more about the dangerous story Bishop had been working on. Meanwhile, Smith's ex-partner Lucius Boggs and white sergeant Joe McInnis--the only white cop in the black precinct--find themselves caught between meddling...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Deftly spinning genres of his feverish literary invention, Rion Amilcar Scott creates his very own Yoknapatawpha County with fictional Cross River, Maryland. Established by the leaders of America's only successful slave revolt, the town still evokes the fierce rhythms of its founding. Among its residents are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God's last son; Tyrone, a ruthless PhD candidate, whose dissertation about a childhood...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Diana Wolf likes to think she has it all: a rock-god husband, an empty nest, a wine cellar, and a dream home in the woods. Life is good. It has to be. But when she hires a cartographer, Kerry Perkins, to survey and map her estate in rural Tennessee, she pulls back a frayed corner of the lie that is her fairytale life. On his first night at Wolf Hollow, Kerry stumbles across a young girl's skeleton buried in the woods. But what really scares Diana...