In May 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston - the sole black student at the college - was living in New York, "desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world". During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American...

-- W.E.B. Du Bois• “A Carol of Color” by -- Fanny Jackson Coppin• “Mollie’s Best Christmas Gift” by -- Lelia Plummer• “Mirama’s Christmas Test” by -- Margaret Black• “Three Men and a Woman” by -- Valena Minor Williams A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories celebrates a rich storytelling tradition and will be cherished by readers for years to come.

-- Stone Cold Liar

"An incisive, intersectional essay anthology that celebrates and examines romance and romantic media through the lens of Black readers, writers, and cultural commentators, edited by Book Riot columnist and librarian Jessica Pryde. Romantic love has been one of the most essential elements of storytelling for centuries. But for Black people in the United States and across the diaspora, it hasn't often been easy to find Black romance joyfully showcased...

Bestselling author Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension, both with his extraordinary fiction and gripping writing for television. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley's most accomplished short stories to display the full range of his remarkable talent. Mosley presents distinct characters as they struggle to move through the world in each of these stories-heroes who are awkward, nerdy, self-defeating, self-involved,...

In this first time collaboration between authors Ran Walker and Sabin Prentis, they explore the lives of four people who occupy a brownstone in a heavily gentrified neighborhood in the city of New Hollis. With stories ranging from the owner who wrestles with the pressure to sell her building to the former DJ who is finding a new life after parole, the four stories in Four Floors examine the intersection of gentrification, hip-hop, love, life, and...

"Exciting new fiction from James McBride, the first since his National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird. The stories in Five-Carat Soul--none of them ever published before--spring from the place where identity, humanity, and history converge. They're funny and poignant, insightful and unpredictable, imaginative and authentic--all told with McBride's unrivaled storytelling skill and meticulous eye for character and detail. McBride explores...

-- Winner of the Weatherford Award in Fiction -- A young woman descended from Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings driven from her neighborhood by a white militia. A university professor studying racism by conducting a secret social experiment on his own son. A single mother desperate to buy her first home even as the world hurtles toward catastrophe. Each fighting to survive in America. Tough-minded, vulnerable, and brave, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson’s...

-- Praise for Mary Monroe   “Mary Monroe is an exceptional writer and phenomenal storyteller!”—Kimberla Lawson Roby,  -- The Secret Wife of Aaron Burr “Readers who enjoy watching characters’ fortunes rise and fall will relish this tumultuous family.” — -- —RT Book Reviews on Lost Daughters

In 1859, eleven-year-old Elijah Freeman, the first free-born child in Buxton, Canada, which is a haven for slaves fleeing the American south, uses his wits and skills to try to bring to justice the lying preacher who has stolen money that was to be used to buy a family's freedom.