Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment

Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment

by Steve Harvey

Steve Harvey, the host of the nationally syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show , can't count the number of impressive women he's met over the years, whether it's through the "Strawberry Letters" segment of his program or while on tour for his comedy shows. These are women who can run a small business, keep a household with three kids in tiptop shape, and chair a church group all at the same time. Yet when it comes... (more)

Disappearing Acts

by Terry McMillan

Terry McMillan is hotter than ever: "If Ntozake Shange, Jane Austen, and Danielle Steel collaborated on a novel of manners, <Disappearing Acts> might be the result." ( New Yorker ) "Contains someting increasingly rare in books or films today: a full-blown, sophisticated love affair between two African-American adults." ( Denver Post ) "A funny, earthy novel..ribaldly realistic.... (more)

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

by Nathan McCall

Examining the complexities of the problems of black youths from an insider's perspective, an African-American journalist recalls his own troubled childhood, his rehabilitation while in prison, and his successful Washington Post career. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

Some People, Some Other Place

by J. California Cooper

For generations Eula Too’s family has been making a journey North, year after year, step by painful step; and she’s determined to be the one to make it all the way to Chicago. In and out of school, taking care of her fourteen brothers and sisters, she can see no way out. But when a new family burden threatens to overwhelm her, she at last leaves for the city, only to find that her life gets even tougher. Ranging... (more)

Selah's Bed: A Novel

by Jenoyne Adams

With this sensual, heartrending second novel, bestselling author Jenoyne Adams further establishes herself as a stunning talent. Probing and engaging, Selah's Bed explores how a woman can use sex to gain acceptance, escape her past, and even endanger her soul. Selah Wells looks for salvation through sex and in her photography of nude black men. She feels most alive under the touch of new hands. But she's... (more)

Triangular Road: A Memoir

by Paule Marshall

In Triangular Road , famed novelist Paule Marshall tells the story of her years as a fledgling young writer in the 1960s. A memoir of self-discovery, it also offers an affectionate tribute to the inimitable Langston Hughes, who entered Marshall’s life during a crucial phase and introduced her to the world of European letters during a whirlwind tour of the continent funded by the State Department. In the course of... (more)

Good Hair

by Benilde Little

Alice Andrews has her hands full living in Manhattan, working as a reporter in Newark, and trying to forget the smooth-talking investment banker she thought was Mr. Right. When she meets Jack Russworm, a handsome, Harvard-educated doctor, it seems as though things are finally falling into place. But as their romance starts to heat up, their differences start bubbling to the surface. Will they sizzle together, or... (more)

Waiting to Exhale

by Terry McMillan

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author comes the contemporary classic of women, triumph, revenge, and comradeship in a special new trade edition. McMillan's tale of four thirty-something women supporting each other through thick and thin-and through the frustrating search for a good man-has already sold millions. Now even more can experience this smash hit in a beautiful new trade edition.

My Soul to Keep

by Tananarive Due

When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about himis just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must... (more)

Sag Harbor: A Novel

by Colson Whitehead

The warm, funny, and supremely original new novel from one of the most acclaimed writers in America The year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of... (more)

Pocho

by Jose Antonio Villarreal

Villarreal illuminates here the world of "pochos," Americans whose parents come to the United States from Mexico. Set in Depression-era California, the novel focuses on Richard, a young pocho who experiences the intense conflict between loyalty to the traditions of his family's past and attraction to new ideas. Richard's struggle to achieve adulthood as a young man influenced by two worlds reveals both the... (more)

FLIGHT OF THE BLACKBIRD: A Novel

by Faye McDonald Smith

Members of the black professional elite in Atlanta, Mel and Builder Burke work hard and enjoy the benefits of private school for their daughter and two vacations a year, but their dream begins to fade when Mel loses her job and Builder's business crumbles. A first novel. 40,000 first printing. Tour.

Brothers and Sisters by Bebe Moore Campbell

Brothers and Sisters by Bebe Moore Campbell

by Bebe Moore Campbell

The River Where Blood Is Born (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

The River Where Blood Is Born (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

This astonishing novel takes us on a journey along the river of one family's history, carving a course across two centuries and three continents, from ancient Africa into today's America. Here, through the lives of Mother Africa's many daughters, we come to understand the real meaning of roots: the captive Proud Mary, who has been savagely punished for refusing to relinquish her child to slavery; Earlene, who... (more)

Child of God

by Lolita Files

Everybody knows everybody else's business in Downtown, Tennessee. Neighbors while away afternoons at the local bar, swapping rumors about voodoo, incest, and illegitimate children. Usually they're gossiping about the Boten clan. In this epic family saga, Lolita Files unveils the hidden lives of three generations of the Boten family. She introduces us to Grandma Amalie, a mother so fiercely protective, she will... (more)

Erasure

by Percival L. Everett

Hailed by the New York Times as "both a treatise and a romp," a bold and brilliant novel of a man coming to terms with himself. Now in paperback, this provocative tale within a tale details the life of avant-garde novelist and college professor Thelonious "Monk" Ellison. Monk, frustrated with his dismal book sales, composes a fierce parody of exploitative ghetto literature entitled My Pafology , which is... (more)

Billy

by Albert French

Vividly capturing the heat, dust, and poverty of 1930s Mississippi, the story of ten-year-old Billy Lee Turner, convicted and executed for murdering a white girl in 1937, is an unsentimental, heartrending saga of racial injustice. A first novel. Reprint.

Eden

by Olympia Vernon

Olympia Vernon's fearless and wildly original debut novel explodes on the first page and sustains a tightrope intensity until the last. Eden is a lyrical tale about a young black girl in the Deep South who comes to confront the realities of sex, race, disease, and mortality. When fourteen-year-old Maddy Dangerfield draws a naked woman on the pages of Genesis in fire-engine-red lipstick during Sunday school, the... (more)

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted: A Memoir

by E. Lynn Harris

“In many ways writing saved my life. It’s my hope that sharing my experience will give hope to others who are learning to deal with their “difference.” I want them to know they don’t have to live their lives in a permanent “don’t ask, don’t tell” existence. Truth is a powerful tool. “But my hope for this book doesn’t stop there. I think there is a message here for anyone who has ever suffered from a lack of... (more)

Ralph Ellison: A Biography

by Arnold Rampersad

The definitive biography of one of the most important American writers and cultural intellectuals of the twentieth century—Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man . In 1953, Ellison’s explosive story of an innocent young black man’s often surreal search for truth and his identity won him the National Book Award for fiction and catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison went on to earn many... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: authors of color

by Steve Harvey

by Terry McMillan

by Nathan McCall

by J. California Cooper

by Jenoyne Adams

by Paule Marshall

by Benilde Little

by Terry McMillan

by Tananarive Due

by Colson Whitehead

by Jose Antonio Villarreal

by Faye McDonald Smith

by Bebe Moore Campbell

by Sandra Jackson-Opoku

by Lolita Files

by Percival L. Everett

by Albert French

by Olympia Vernon

by E. Lynn Harris

by Arnold Rampersad