Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
"When two wealthy white landowners are found dead, the whole country immediately thinks it must be Jerome Washington, the hired help, who killed them. He was standing over the bodies when the police responded to an anonymous call and the only one on the property at the time of death. As far as the state is concerned, it's an open and shut case. Jack Lee, born and raised in Freeman County, knows that every man deserves a solid defense and agrees to...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long...
3) Booked
Author
Series
Lexile measure
660L
Language
English
Description
Twelve-year-old Nick loves soccer and hates books, but soon learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams.
Twelve-year-old Nick learns the power of words as he wrestles with problems at home, stands up to a bully, and tries to impress the girl of his dreams. Helping him along are his best friend and sometimes teammate Coby, and The Mac, a rapping librarian who gives...
Author
Language
English
Description
"In the summer of 1974, a heatwave blankets Boston and Mary Pat Fennessy is trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collectors. Mary Pat has lived her entire life in the housing projects of Southie, the Irish American enclave that stubbornly adheres to old tradition and stands proudly apart. One night Mary Pat's teenage daughter Jules stays out late and doesn't come home. That same evening, a young Black man is found dead, struck by a subway train...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Thirteen-year-old Amari, a poor Black girl from the projects, gets an invitation from her missing brother to join the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs and join in the fight against an evil magician.
Amari Peters has never stopped believing her missing brother, Quinton, is alive. Not even when the police told her otherwise, or when she got in trouble for standing up to bullies who said he was gone for good. So when she finds a ticking briefcase in his...
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...
Author
Series
Lexile measure
HL 500L
Language
English
Description
Maverick feels strongly about family ties, making choices he feels necessary to help support his mom while his King father serves time, and leave him literally holding his son in a doctor's waiting room after he gets paternity test results back and his babymomma ghosts. Now the child he's raising is impacting the lives of his family and his girlfriend, and the gang life he led to support them all financially could leave them all bearing his responsibilities...
Author
Series
Lexile measure
1050L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...
Author
Series
Tristan Strong volume 1
Lexile measure
HL 680L
Language
English
Description
Seventh-grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in. Tristan is dreading the month he's going to spend on his grandparents' farm. But on his first night there, a sticky creature shows up and steals Eddie's notebook. Tristan chases after it, and a tug-of-war ensues between them underneath a...
Author
Lexile measure
720L
Language
English
Formats
Description
When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of a safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.
12) On the come up
Author
Lexile measure
HL 550L
Language
English
Description
Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an undersground hip-hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri's got massive shoes to fill. But it's hard to get your come up when you're labeled a hoodlum at school and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri purs her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral ... for all the...
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Lexile measure
HL 710L
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Queer black girls team up to overthrow the patriarchy in the former kingdom of Cinderella" -- Provided by publisher.
Two hundred years after Cinderella found her prince, the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl's display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen are never heard from again. Sophia would much rather marry Erin,...
14) Rebound
Author
Series
Lexile measure
780L
Language
English
Description
In the summer of 1988, twelve-year-old Chuck Bell is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers jazz and basketball and learns more about his family's past.
15) White smoke
Author
Language
English
Description
Believing her new home to actually be alive, especially when her brother almost dies, Marigold and her new blended family won't be safe until she brings the truth to light once and for all.
The phantoms of her old life keep haunting Marigold, but a move with her newly blended family from their California beach town to the Midwestern city of Cedarville might be the fresh start she needs. Her mom has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation...
16) Sounder
Author
Series
Newbery Medal award volume 1970
Lexile measure
900L
Language
English
Formats
Description
Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and with the help of the devoted dog Sounder.
Author
Series
Tristan Strong volume 3
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
The Strong family is having a reunion in New Orleans, and twelve-year-old Tristan is supposed to be keeping an eye on his younger cousin Terrance when several things happen at once: he sees his archenemy, King Cotton, and a mysterious girl grabs his magic cellphone. Her name is Seraphine, and she seems to know everything about Tristan and the god Anansi (currently inhabiting the cellphone). She has a mission for Tristan, one that is going lead to...
18) Honey girl
Author
Language
English
Description
With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, 28-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls' trip to Vegas to celebrate. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn't know, until she does exactly that. This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father's plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn't feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the...
Author
Series
Gaither sisters volume 3
Lexile measure
740L
Language
English
Description
"It's the summer of 1969, and Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are off to Alabama to visit Big Ma and her eighty-two-year-old mother, Ma Charles. Pa can't remind them enough that the South's not like Brooklyn, and that you can't get more southern than Alabama. Across the field, through the pines, and over the creek is the Trotter home, where Ma Charles's half sister, Miss Trotter, lives. The two half sisters haven't spoken in years, each determined to...
20) One crazy summer
Author
Pub. Date
2010
Edition
1st ed.
Lexile measure
750L
Physical Desc
218 pages ; 22 cm
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In the summer of 1968, after travelling from Brooklyn to Oakland, California, to spend a month with the mother they barely know, eleven-year-old Delphine and her two younger sisters arrive to a cold welcome as they discover that their mother, a dedicated poet and printer, is resentful of the intrusion of their visit and wants them to attend a nearby Black Panther summer camp.