Catalog Search Results
Author
Lexile measure
HL 770L
Language
English
Description
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. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft...
22) The color purple
Author
Series
Lexile measure
HL 670L
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning novel is now a new, boldly reimagined film from producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, starring Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, and Fantasia Barrino.
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar...
A PBS Great American Read Top 100 Pick
Celie has grown up poor in rural Georgia, despised by the society around her and abused by her own family. She strives to protect her sister, Nettie, from a similar...
23) Take my hand
Author
Language
English
Description
"Inspired by true events that rocked the nation, a profoundly moving novel about a Black nurse in post-segregation Alabama who blows the whistle on a terrible wrong done to her patients, from the New York Times bestselling author of Wench. Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"The explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black, about two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own. Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising...
Author
Pub. Date
2016.
Lexile measure
910L
Language
English
Description
"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath...
26) Redwood Court
Author
Pub. Date
2024
Language
English
Formats
Description
REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “[A] richly textured and deeply moving debut” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s.
“A triumph . . . Redwood Court is storytelling at its best: tender, vivid, and richly complicated.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times...
“A triumph . . . Redwood Court is storytelling at its best: tender, vivid, and richly complicated.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times...
27) The hate u give
Author
Lexile measure
HL 590L
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters...
28) Kindred
Author
Series
Lexile measure
580L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned across the years to save him. After this first summons, Dana is drawn back, again and again, to the plantation to protect Rufus and ensure that he will grow to manhood and father...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the small north Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues behind. There were no witnesses, no real suspects, no one with a motive. The police soon settled on Quincy Miller, a young black man who was once a client of Russos. Quincy was framed, convicted, and sent to prison for life. For twenty-two years he languished in prison with no lawyer, no advocate...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In the fall of 1863, the Union army is in control of the Mississippi river. Much of Louisiana, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is occupied. The Confederate army is retreating toward Texas, and being replaced by Red Legs, irregulars commanded by a maniacal figure, and enslaved men and women are beginning to glimpse freedom. When Hannah Laveau, an enslaved woman working on the Lufkin plantation, is accused of murder, she goes on the run with...
Author
Language
English
Description
"I, Maggie Banks, solemnly swear to uphold the rules of Cobblestone Books. If only, I, Maggie Banks, believed in following the rules. When Maggie Banks arrives in Bell River to run her best friend's struggling bookstore, she expects to sell bestsellers to her small-town clientele. But running a bookstore in a town with a famously bookish history isn't easy. Bell River's literary society insists on keeping the bookstore stuck in the past, and Maggie...
32) Crook manifesto
Author
Series
Ray Carney volume 2
Language
English
Description
"It's 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown, furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It's strictly the straight-and-narrow for him until he needs...
33) Cross down
Author
Series
Alex Cross volume 31
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"For the first time, John Sampson is on his own. The brilliant crime-solving duo of Washington, DC's, Metro PD and the FBI has a proven MO: Detective Alex Cross makes his own rules. Detective John Sampson enforces them. When military-style attacks erupt, brutally sidelining Cross, Sampson is sent reeling. The patterns are too random--Sampson's friend, his partner, his brother--have told him. Don't trust anyone. As a shadow force advances on the nation's...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"After dropping her child off at preschool, Marla Hancock, a stay-at-home mother, disappears. She had recently left her verbally abusive husband in rural Indiana and moved in with her sister, Shelly, who simply can't believe that her sister would ever willingly vanish without her children. But with limited support from the town's police department or media resources, Shelly fears that Marla's disappearance won't get the attention it deserves, or worse,...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
A leader has fallen, and the procession route from Capitol Hill to the White House is lined with hundreds of thousands of mourners. None feel the loss of a President more keenly than Alex Cross, who has devoted his life to the public good. A sniper's bullet strikes a target in the heart of DC. Alex Cross's wife, Bree Stone, newly elevated chief of DC detectives, faces an ultimatum: solve the case, or lose the position for which she's worked her entire...
36) The crossover
Author
Series
Lexile measure
GN 670L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
"Feyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again. It's been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she's almost a new person now-an artist with her own studio, and sharing a brownstone apartment with her ride-or-die best friend, Joy, who insists it's time for Feyi to ease back into the dating scene. Feyi isn't ready for anything serious, but a steamy encounter at a rooftop party cascades into a whirlwind summer she could...
Author
Lexile measure
HL 940L
Language
English
Description
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 "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood...
40) Triple Cross
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2022.
Language
English
Description
Detective Alex Cross hunts down a serial killer who targets entire families--and who will next be coming for the Crosses. A precise killer, he always moves under the cover of darkness, flawlessly triggering no alarms, leaving no physical evidence. Cross and Sampson aren't the only ones investigating. Also in on this most intriguing case is the world's bestselling true-crime author, who sees patterns everyone else misses. The writer, Thomas Tull, calls...