The setting this time is the Badlands, one of the toughest and poorest communities in Philadelphia.Bad Girlz takes you into the mysterious and often dangerous lives of young women who turn to the streets and strip clubs as a means of survival. These are girls who, along the way, suffer bad breaks and find themselves ripe for exploitation by men and women who pretend to be their saviors.Tender and Goldie were taken under wing by Kat, a veteran stripper, who enjoyed the life and the risks she had to take to stay in the mix of the sex trade. Both of these young and beautiful girls had ended up in dire straits and in need of Kat's help in different ways, but ultimately for the same reasons: They lacked the love and support that most of us expect to get at home and in our communities. Where they live, illegal money is often the only money to be made, and the difference between the law and the outlaw is tough to discern.Holmes tells a page-turning story of sex, money, and murder in the name of survival and reveals the many ways that good girls, trying to get by in desperate situations, become Bad Girlz.

    After the loss of their mother at their father’s hand, Aja has kept a close watch over her siblings. The three siblings much find a way to recover from their family’s history, but it’s not clear how. Tired of carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, Aja is finally ready for a change that she hopes could lead her down the path of recovery: find someone to love. Her best friend, Roxie, knows just what to do—she sets Aja up on a date with one of the most sought-after bachelors in town, handsome sportscaster Charles Clayton. Charles is everything Aja has ever dreamed of—sensitive, sexy, and charming. But "happily ever after" isn't that simple. While Aja has begun to heal from the loss of her parents, her sister and brother have not. Jada is lost in a world of silence with no way for Aja to reach her, and Eric's uncontrollable rage is wreaking havoc on his life. As Aja sees her brother heading down the same violent path that destroyed their family, she makes it her business to stop the cycle—even if it means putting her own life, and her own chance at love, on hold. My Brother's Keeper is a poignant novel about a resilient family learning that sometimes you have to forgive in order to find the strength to move on.

    In the early 1960s, nowhere but "The Big House" attracts so many renowned jazz and blues musicians—and no one but Miss Honeybee attracts talented lost souls like Forestine Bent and Viola Bembrey.The two singers come from separate worlds: one the Brooklyn projects, the other the Baptist, rural South. One has a God-given voice and the ambition to be a star, the other a more subtle gift and a handful of hazy fantasies. But both learn the destructive consequences of following their hearts. They find sanctuary together under Honeybee's tender guidance, struggling to find the balancing point where music doesn't overpower love. Including a passel of characters both wildly raunchy and remarkably dignified, Andrea Smith has woven an unforgettable tale overflowing with energy, heart, and humanity.

    Wise beyond her years and wildly creative, Varl must choose between the only life she's knownher Mamalee, her friends (especially her beloved Dob), the farmland she's explored since childhoodand her growing need for self-determination. Standing in her path, waiting to quash her spirit, is her master, the cunning Peter Perry, "a collector of rare things" who aims to add Varl herself to his perverse assortment of oddities.With Slave Moth, Thylias Moss shows herself yet again to be "a visionary storyteller" (Charles Simic). Written in gorgeous verse, it is an explosion of life in the face of servitude.

    Theatergoers who have followed August Wilson’s career will find in Gem a touchstone for everything else he has written.”—Ben Brantley, The New York Times“Wilson’s juiciest material. The play holds the stage and its characters hammer home, strongly, the notion of newfound freedom.”—Michael Phillips, Chicago TribuneGem of the Ocean is the play that begins it all. Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, it is chronologically the first work in August Wilson’s decade-by-decade cycle dramatizing the African American experience during the 20th century—an unprecedented series that includes the Pulitzer Prize–winning plays Fences and The Piano Lesson. Aunt Esther, the drama’s 287-year-old fiery matriarch, welcomes into her Hill District home Solly Two Kings, who was born into slavery and scouted for the Union Army, and Citizen Barlow, a young man from Alabama searching for a new life. Gem of the Ocean recently played across the country and on Broadway, with Phylicia Rashad as Aunt Esther.Earlier in 2005, on the completion of the final work of his ten play cycle-surely the most ambitious American dramatic project undertaken in our history-August Wilson disclosed his bout with cancer, an illness of unusual ferocity that would eventually claim his life on October 2. Fittingly the Broadway theatre where his last play will be produced in 2006 has been renamed the August Wilson Theater in his honor. His legacy will animate the theatre and stir the human heart for decades to come.