Black Voices and Their Stories: Starting Conversation Through Diverse Literature

A powerful debut about a group of enslaved women rebelling against the plantation owners, Night Wherever We Go is a story of ultimate defiance. Presenting the stories of each individual woman while painting a portrait of their collective stand against injustice, this story is a brilliant entry into the fiction landscape.

Taking place in 1960s Memphis, The Two Lives of Sara is about a woman with nothing but secrets and a baby in her belly who leaves Chicago to outrun her past. Finding a warm welcome from Mama Sugar, the owner of the popular boardinghouse, she finds a segregated city with change on the horizon. As she finds her footing, she also starts to find romance with Jonas, a local school teacher, but Sara isn’t the only one with secrets. When Mama Sugar’s past has repercussions that affect both Sara and Jonah, Sara must make hard decisions that will impact the rest of their lives.

This luminous novel is an exploration of what womanhood, sacrifice, and longing looked like in pre-Roe America for young black women. Ruby and Eleanor live completely separate lives, but both are navigating the trials and tribulations of race, class, education, and motherhood. This is story about the price women pay for love, and the choices no one should have to make.

Following up his back-to-back Pulitzer Prize winning novels, Colson Whitehead returns with a vivid, wildly entertaining heist novel that makes you feel as if you’re walking down a bustling 125th Street in 1960s Harlem. A veritable page-turner from start to finish.

With echoes of Fiddler on the Roof running throughout this novel, On the Rooftop is a moving depiction of a family of performers and their neighborhood. The story of three sisters, their mother’s dream of their stardom, and their own personal desires, this book is perfect for readers who love historical fiction and want a new take on such a classic musical. Immerse yourself in a gentrifying 1950s San Francisco and a family full of ambitions and dreams.  

This is a family drama with fathers, mothers and daughters all scored with a soundtrack of jazz music. When one man must navigate the relationships between the women he loves and has loved in the past along with his own teenage daughter, Laura Warrell’s lyrical prose and sweeping story bring us on a ride. This novel has a lot of heart and power told through the kind of voices readers will return to again and again.

Ray McMillan has a dream, one that goes hand in hand with his gift. He’s going to be a world-class professional violinist if it’s the last thing he does, even if that means going against the life that’s been mapped up for him having grown up Black in rural North Carolina. Nothing will stop him, a fact only proven by the discovery that the beat-up family fiddle is actually a priceless Stradivarius. When Ray and his violin take the world by storm, only for it to be stolen the night before a cutthroat Tchaikovsky competition, Ray must find a way to reclaim his precious violin and to prove that within himself lies a brilliant musician both to himself and the world.  

If you loved Queenie, then you’ll be ecstatic to know that Candice Carty-Williams is back with a witty story about the impact family has, even when they’re more like strangers than family. This beautiful story about discovering family as an adult will keep readers enthralled with Candice Carty-Williams’ spectacular storytelling abilities!

Like most 20-somethings, Maddie wants to find her place in the world. Between serving as her ailing father’s primary caregiver and living on the whims of her difficult mother and nightmare boss, she’s ready to make some changes. Smart and touching, this brilliant debut explores what it means to live with an open heart. With wonderful narration by Heather Agyepong, this book makes an excellent listen as an audiobook.

Perfect for fans of Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, A Spell of Good Things is a riveting story of modern Nigeria that explores wealth, power, political corruption, and romantic obsession. Following Eniola and Wuraola, the children of wildly opposite families, the book explores the divide of the haves and have-nots after Eniola’s and Wuraola’s lives intertwine revealing the humanity in both. Perfect for book clubs, this book will linger in your mind long after you’ve finished reading. 

Alexa Martin is the author of The Playbooks Series of sports romance novels. Here, she takes a turn to the book lover in all of us. For shock that a character would think the movie is better than the book, fear not. Drew Young’s heartthrob follows a method of courting we are familiar with—a nice, long list of books to read! Turn the pages and watch things sizzle.

This delightful novel is perfect for anyone who adored Zeke in High School Musical, except instead of Crème Brulé and basketball, it’s cupcakes and football. When Jada Townsend-Matthews finds herself scorned by the country for turning down a proposal on a reality dating show, she returns home to recover and starts working at San Diego’s newest cupcake bakery where she meets Donovan Dell. A reporter thinks they are an item, and the two decide to fake a relationship to help Jada and the struggling bakery, and, to their surprise, they find that love is the cherry on top of it all.  

Get a Life, Chloe Brown has been a popular romance and for good reason! Heartfelt and humorous, Chloe’s story begins after she almost dies, sparking her to create seven goals to help her “get a life.” Accomplishing her objective is more challenging than she anticipated, so she enlists the help of Redford (Red) Morgan. His rough exterior leads her to think he’s the perfect man to help her. Perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Jasmine Guillory, and Helen Hoang, Get a Life, Chloe Brown is a kinetic and toe-crinkling love story full of high stakes and imperfect characters that you won’t be able to get enough of! 

We were so moved by S.A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland. No one tackles the depths of friends and family amid crises better than S.A. Cosby. Razorblade Tears continues his work of smart thrillers that explore race, poverty and crime.

With When No One is Watching, Alyssa Cole has now added suspense to her bag of historical, contemporary and sci-fi romances! This gripping thriller is perfect for fans of Rear Window and Get Out. A sinister story of a gentrifying neighborhood and the more deadly-than-advertised push to get neighbors to move out, When No One is Watching is an intense narrative with compelling characters that won’t let you go from beginning to end.   

Janelle Monae does it all: Singer-songwriter, actress, producer, fashion icon and now author, with the publication of The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, based on the album of the same name. Building off of speculative writers like Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor, The Memory Librarian explores themes of queerness, race, gender plurality, and love as well as space, time and the power of memory. Speaking of doing it all, Janelle Monáe also narrates the audiobook alongside Bahni Turpin!

A powerful and profound meditation on the horrors of American slavery, Butler’s time-travel classic is haunting, thought-provoking and one of the greatest works of speculative fiction ever written. This gorgeous new gift edition includes a stunning new cover design as well as a foil-embossed spine and colored endpapers.

The avatars of NYC are back in this stunning conclusion to the Great Cities Duology. This time, even the magic in the city that never sleeps will need to join forces with the other Great Cities of the world to bring down the mysterious Woman in White. Real-world themes of cultural identity, privilege and gentrification mix with magic and myth in this epic adventure from one of the greatest fantasy writers of all time.

Part mystery, part dystopic thriller, and part magical academia with a lot of heart. This read is a delight! It’s the perfect type of contemporary fantasy mash-up with just the right amount of supernatural and horror elements to keep you up at night. But it’s Ropa, our precocious narrator and resident ghostalker, who instantly becomes indelible by the end of the first page. Wise and seasoned beyond her years, as formed by modern Scotland as she is by her ancestral home of Zimbabwe, Ropa is tossed into a world of danger, magic, and dark discovery. We can’t wait for the next installment