The Bluest Eye is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a black girl in an America whose love for its blonde, blue-eyed children can devastate all others, who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

"Ray McMillian loves playing the violin more than anything, and nothing will stop him from pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. Not his mother, who thinks he should get a real job, not the fact that he can't afford a high-caliber violin, not the racism inherent in the classical music world. And when he makes the startling discovery that his great-grandfather's fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius, his star begins to rise....

Mika Tabor spends much of her time in the care of loved ones, listening to their stories and witnessing their struggles. On Redwood Court, a cul-de-sac in an all-Black working-class suburb of Columbia, South Carolina, she learns important lessons from those who raise her: her exhausted parents, who work long hours at multiple jobs and still make sure their kids experience the adventure of family vacations; her older sister, who, in a house filled...

"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other,...

New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe's heart-stopping tale about a woman who's suffered too much to give up on herself, even if everyone else has. . .

Growing up, Annette Goode thought all men were as low-down as the father who abandoned her, including the boarder who abused her for years and the men she slept with to earn the money she needed to run away from her life. Now, after decades of heartache and severing ties with her

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"Ghanaian-American Angela Appiah has checked off all the boxes for the "Perfect Immigrant Daughter." Enroll in an elite medical school; Snag a suitable lawyer/doctor/engineer boyfriend; Surround self with a gaggle of successful and/or loyal friends. But then it quickly all falls apart: her boyfriend dumps her, she bombs the most important exam of her medical career, and her best friend pulls away. And her parents, whose approval seems to hinge on...

"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...

"Brooklyn, 2001.  Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, sixteen-year-old Melody celebrates her coming of age wearing a custom-made dress - the very same dress that was sewn for Melody's mother for a celebration that ultimately never took place.  Unfurling the history of Melody's family - from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to post 9/11 New York - Red at the Bone explores sexual desire, race, class and the life-altering facts of parenthood,...

"When Aisha's fisherman father goes missing, she takes to the sea on a skeleton boat to rescue him. Guided by a talking scholar's cat, who sparks her interest in the mysterious House of Rust, she encounters three monsters hidden beneath the waves. All Aisha wants is for things to return to normal. But a showdown with the father of all sharks looms, and at home, things only grow stranger."--

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...