African American

As teenagers, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love....

When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for ‘kidnapping’ the white child she’s actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events.... 

Ike Randolph has been out of jail for fifteen years, with not so much as a speeding ticket in all that time. But a Black man with cops at the door knows to be afraid....

When Zikora, a DC lawyer from Nigeria, tells her equally high-powered lover that she’s pregnant, he abandons her. But it’s Zikora’s demanding, self-possessed mother, in town for the birth, who makes Zikora feel like a lonely little girl all over again....

 Luster is a painfully funny coming-of-age story told by a fresh new voice....

Effia and Esi: two sisters with two very different destinies. One sold into slavery; one a slave trader's wife....

If there’s any one thing Pierre and Logan have in common, it’s their ability to invite snap judgements based on shallow views of who they are....

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby....

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James....

Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of 20th-century African-American life....

These poems reveal the realities of life lived here, on the ground, where a daughter is imprisoned in the basement by her own father, and where celebrities and pop stars walk among us....

Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s....

It is the 1990s, and Gloria is living in a London psychiatric ward. She is unapologetically loud, audacious and eternally on the brink of bursting into song....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, this novel about a resilient and courageous woman has become a Broadway show and a cultural phenomenon....

From the best-selling author of Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade - and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave....

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career....

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters....

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple....

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly....

Cora ist nur eine der unzähligen Schwarzen, die auf den Baumwollplantagen Georgias schlimmer als Tiere behandelt werden. Alle träumen von der Flucht...

Brought to you by Penguin. Every slave plantation is a house of spies and intrigue. No slave walks a straight line or has a single story - deep within their hearts is betrayal and insurrection....

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies....

Nach dem Triumph von Underground Railroad der neue Roman von Colson Whitehead Florida, Anfang der 1960er-Jahre. Der sechzehnjährige Elwood lebt...

Losing everything doesn't have to be the end. Sometimes, it's a chance to find something different....

Maya Angelou’s unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters....

Reign, Serenity, and Myra have the same goal: to make it out of Indianapolis and into the music industry. Reign, a rapper from the eastside ghetto, will do anything to protect her family, her man, and her goals. Serenity is a singer, and with her best friend Reign is trying to make it big, but her love life with Kalvin becomes more important than her goals. Myra, another rapper with big dreams, has been scamming her whole life, but now, she’s scamming for her mother’s health. With different struggles and hustles, who will make it out and who will succumb to the pressure?

While Karyn served four years in prison for an unthinkable crime, she embraced salvation through the Crowns for Christ outreach ministry. After her release, Karyn stays strong and confident, despite the stigma society places on ex-offenders. Levi Tolliver, for the most part, is a practicing Christian. One contradiction is he doesn't believe in turning the other cheek. He's steadfast there is a price to pay for every sin committed, especially after the untimely death of his wife during a robbery. Then Karyn enters Levi's life.

Venus has the chance of a lifetime to take a trip alone. No children, no husband. The women's retreat promises daily massages, meditation, and divine meals prepared by a top chef. What she doesn't see in the ad are locked gates, militia-style security guards, and a mysterious driver who isn't who he appears. The trip she deserves turns into a dangerous, heart-pounding, sexy adventure she will never forget.

Carly Inghram’s poems explore the day-to-day experiences of a Black queer woman who is ceaselessly bombarded with images of mass-consumerism, white supremacy, and sexism, and who is forced, often reluctantly, back indoors and away from this outside chaos. The poems in The Animal Indoors seek to understand and define the boundaries between our inside and outside lives, critiquing the homogenization and increasing insincerity of American culture and considering what safe spaces exist for Black women.

Brielle is the quiet woman who loves everyone. She can also be the same woman you don’t want to cross. With a man like Jaquan by her side, she thought everything would be perfect. That’s until all his skeletons tumble out the closet, revealing everything he tried to keep hidden. Heartbroken, Brielle falls into the hands of another man by accident, who captures her attention. After learning who he is and the family he comes from, she has to make a choice if she wants to stay or go. 

1907: Twelve-year-old Celestine spends most of his time locked in an attic room of a large house by the sea. Taken from his homeland and treated as an unpaid servant, he dreams of his family in Africa even if, as the years pass, he struggles to remember his mother’s face, and sometimes his real name. Decades later, Lowra, a young orphan girl born into wealth and privilege, will find herself banished to the same attic. 

Handsome lyricist Lemere Webster is successful in every aspect of his life except for love. His rap career is soaring. His family is taken care of, and he’s well-respected in and out of the hood. Finally, the work he put in has come to fruition. The only thing missing is the Bonnie to his Clyde. Amree Haylin has devoted all her time and energy to becoming one of the top journalists in the entertainment industry. Her love life and men are something she has no time for; her past experiences were enough. The last thing she expected was to fall for the man who has the world at his feet.

He came into my life like the storm I'd never expected, forcing his way into my life with all the cocky arrogance that a man who built his way up from the bottom could possibly have. Like a god in human form, he seduced me with ease, and though I tried to play hard to get, he knew from the beginning that he would be getting me. There are a million and one reasons why I shouldn't love him. A million and one reasons why I shouldn't want him. Gucci is intoxicatingly toxic, a devil in designer shoes. He's the last man on Earth that I should ever want. But I want him anyways.

Janiece Hawkins never thought she’d find herself involved in a love triangle—especially with a married man. KP, the man of her dreams, sweeps her off her feet long before he tells her he is married with two kids. Too deep in love to let go, she becomes accustomed to being KP’s other woman. She doesn’t have a problem with her role as KP’s mistress until she meets Isaiah. He’s ready to commit and make Janiece his. He will stop at nothing to win her over, even though Janiece is stuck on KP. Who will she run to when she is ready to love?

Nyesha has been through hell, both physically and mentally. After being abandoned by her first love, Yohan, she turns to the streets for comfort. She gets into the drug game as a way to provide for her children, oblivious that the streets are cruel and have no room for a trap girl. Kymani isn’t your typical dope boy. He’s a smooth talker with a dark past and deadly intentions. Anyone who crosses him or the people he loves will definitely be dealt with. His weakness for a bad female will have him drawing for this chick. Take a ride as this couple fights to keep their love alive.

At the height of the civil rights movement, amidst an America convulsed by the 1960s, a pregnant young woman and her brash, profane aunt embark upon an audacious road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles to confront a decades-old mystery from 1920s Black Hollywood in this haunting novel of historical fiction from the author of Wild Women and the Blues. 

They didn't know her story before, because she hadn't told them. She didn't reveal how being so deeply tethered to a man who didn't take care of that precious connection, had wrecked her body and soul, making it nearly impossible to breathe some days. She didn't want them to know the ugly parts of her existence; had only hoped to give her girls the good in her, and on that, most days she'd failed. But so much goodness surrounded her now, by way of self-healing and a good man, Solomon.

Los Angeles, 1963. African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King’s Freedom Rally, Ingram risks becoming a victim at every crime scene he photographs.  

In 2016, Lawrence Jackson accepted a new job in Baltimore, searched for schools for his sons, and bought a house. It would all be unremarkable but for the fact that he had grown up in West Baltimore and now found himself teaching at Johns Hopkins, whose vexed relationship to its neighborhood, to the city and its history, provides fodder for this captivating memoir in essays.

Forty-something widow Jessie Tucker is beloved throughout Lexington, Alabama, for her kind heart and endless generosity. But she feels it's past time she rewarded herself—especially when upstanding Hubert Wiggins tragically loses his wife and son. Making herself indispensable, yet discouraged by Hubert’s lack of romantic interest, Jessie cooks up a deception she knows will make pious Hubert do right by her....