Book picks similar to
The Color Line by Walker Smith


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Queen Pin


Jemeker Thompson-Hairston - 2010
    Learning from her sources of a federal investigation, Jemeker went on the run. It was love for her young son that brought her back to Los Angeles, even though she knew she would be arrested. A subsequent 15-year sentence would cost her not only her legitimate business and the fortune she'd amassed through the drug trade, but the most precious thing of all: time with her child. But not all was lost. Fortunately, while Thompson-Hairston was serving out the fifteen-year sentence, one pivotal moment helped her turn her life around, setting her on a path to help and inspire others like her. Now, in Queen Pin, written with New York Times bestselling author David Ritz, she reveals in gripping detail her journey of redemption that readers won't soon forget.

Hidden Figures


Margot Lee Shetterly - 2016
    Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers’, calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these ‘coloured computers’ used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets and astronauts, into space. Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War and the women’s rights movement, ‘Hidden Figures’ interweaves a rich history of mankind’s greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world.

Queenbreaker: Perseverance


Catherine McCarran - 2016
    No one in her family expects Mary to go far; she's the middle daughter, sharp-tongued, not the favorite, not pretty. But when her cousin, the new Queen of England, Anne Boleyn invites a Shelton daughter to serve her at court, Mary proves to her parents she's their best choice when she boldly spies on them. Mary needs her penchant for breaking the rules if she's to survive at court.Surrounded by girls desperate for the same prize: a grand marriage—Mary quickly outshines them all when she discovers her talent for flirtation and catches the eye of the reckless yet beguiling Lord John de Vere. Thrilled by his attentions, she falls headlong into a passionate game of Pass-the-Time that promises Mary the love she craves and the advancement her family desires. But Mary's dazzling success brings her dangerous enemies who scheme to ruin her life at court. Mary must win Queen Anne’s favor to escape their plots and win her future with Lord John. When Mary forgets that love at court is always a game, she finds herself used in a vicious revenge designed to destroy the most powerful noble in England. With her greatest enemy ready to reveal her worst secret, Mary has just one chance to save her herself from total ruin. It means lying to her family, deceiving Lord John, and defying the Queen. It’s the game Mary was born to play...if she dares.

Long As You Know Who You Belong To


Bri Noreen - 2015
    New to LA with a couple mil to flip, Grey opens South Beach, the newest addition to the Los Angeles club scene. In the midst of starting his business, he meets an exotic beauty by the name of Nakami. Enamored by her beauty and fiery personality, Grey courts her not knowing that her father, Hero, is the biggest drug lord on the West Coast. Nakami and her father prove to be the connect that Grey needs in order to get back to his hustle. But at what cost? Kimani Summers, Grey's younger brother, is making a name for himself in the modeling industry and is also pursuing a career in acting. When he hears that his brother has relocated to LA, he's not happy. Knowing Grey and the trouble that tends to follow behind him, Kimani is reluctant to interact with the brother he hasn't seen or talked to in over five years. Hesitantly taking Grey up on the invitation to attend the grand opening of his new club, Kimani meets Nakami's best friend, Blu. After losing the last woman he loved tragically, Kimani doesn't want to fall for Blu, but he can't help it. When these four lives are intertwined, things get crazy! And when everything is all said and done, friends will become enemies, business and personal relationships will crumble, and lines will be crossed that will affect the lives of all parties involved.

Wicked Love: Seven Wicked Historical Love Stories


Christina McKnight - 2017
    As the illegitimate daughter of London's disreputable Craven House Madame, Miss Samantha Pengarden has never had to face society alone--until now. When Samantha is named Elijah's mistress in White's betting book, her reputation is in ruins--and only Elijah can save her.Surrendering to My Spy by Dawn BrowerA rogue, a marquess and a spy... Each an integral part of Dominic Rossington's life and he does them all rather well. Love throws him off balance and he'll do everything in his power to protect the one who holds his heart, Lady Rosanna. Danger lurks on the horizon and he'll have to put it all on the line to save her.Scandalous Redemption by Amanda MarielCan two wary people overcome past hurts, an old scandal, and social strictures to embrace true love?For The Love of A Viscount by Callie HuttonBluestocking Lady Elise Smith and content bachelor Lord St. George made a pact to thwart Lady Elise's father's plans for her to marry. What they don't understand is a pretend courtship can only if work if you don't fall in love . . .Beauty and the Rake by Erica MonroePolice inspector Michael Strickland sees the beauty inside Abigail Vautille, not the scarred beast she believes herself to be--and he'll do anything to protect her from the blackguard who left her disfigured.Wicked Designs by Lauren SmithEmily, a rebellious debutante, is kidnapped by a devilish duke and his infamous league of rogues as part of a revenge plan, but Emily gives the duke more than he's bargained for.Mad About the Marquess by Elizabeth EssexLady Quince Winthrop has been robbing from society's rich and giving to the poor for years--but when the Marquess of Cairn returns to Edinburgh, Quince discovers love is even harder to resist than temptation.

The Trees


Percival Everett - 2021
    When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till.The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

Don't Tell Your Cousin


Veronica E. Kelly - 2011
    As the mountain of lies come tumbling down and the drama unfolds, Amanda is forced to hold a mirror to herself and come to terms with a reflection she struggles to accept.

Only Passing Through


Anne Rockwell - 2000
    She told of a slave girl who was sold three times by age 13, who was beaten for not understanding her master's orders, who watched her parents die of cold and hunger when they could no longer work for their keep. Sojourner's simple yet powerful words helped people to understand the hideous truth about slavery. The story she told was her own.Only Passing Through is the inspiring story of how a woman, born a slave with no status or dignity, transformed herself into one of the most powerful voices of the abolitionist movement. Anne Rockwell combines her lifelong love of history with her well-known skill as a storyteller to create this simple, affecting portrait of an American icon.From the Hardcover Library Binding edition.

Ella Price's Journal


Dorothy Bryant - 1997
    Ella’s growing consciousness begins to shake the foundations of her life, and she comes to the realization that she is irrevocably changed—and that to be true to herself, she must make painful choices.First published in 1972, Ella Price's Journal is a deeply authentic literary rendering of a woman’s struggle to give voice to what Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique called “the problem that has no name,” and a novel that affirms the possibility of growth toward a richly intense and authentic life at any age.

The Office of Historical Corrections


Danielle Evans - 2020
    With The Office of Historical Corrections, Evans zooms in on particular moments and relationships in her characters' lives in a way that allows them to speak to larger issues of race, culture, and history. She introduces us to Black and multiracial characters who are experiencing the universal confusions of lust and love, and getting walloped by grief—all while exploring how history haunts us, personally and collectively. Ultimately, she provokes us to think about the truths of American history—about who gets to tell them, and the cost of setting the record straight.In "Boys Go to Jupiter," a white college student tries to reinvent herself after a photo of her in a Confederate-flag bikini goes viral. In "Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain," a photojournalist is forced to confront her own losses while attending an old friend's unexpectedly dramatic wedding. And in the eye-opening title novella, a black scholar from Washington, DC, is drawn into a complex historical mystery that spans generations and puts her job, her love life, and her oldest friendship at risk.

Ever Is A Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi's Dark Past A Memoir


W. Ralph Eubanks - 2003
    Part personal journey, part social and political history, this extraordinary book reveals the burden of Southern history and how that burden is carried even today in the hearts and minds of those who lived through the worst of it.Author Ralph Eubanks, whose father was a black county agent and whose mother was a schoolteacher, grew up on an eighty-acre farm on the outskirts of Mount Olive, Mississippi, a town of great pastoral beauty but also a place where the racial dividing lines were clear and where violence was always lingering in the background. Ever Is a Long Time tells his story against the backdrop of an era when churches were burned, Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King were murdered, schools were integrated forcibly, and the state of Mississippi created an agency to spy on its citizens in an effort to maintain white supremacy. Through Eubanks's evocative prose, we see and feel a side of Mississippi that has seldom been seen before. He reveals the complexities of the racial dividing lines at the time and the price many paid for what we now take for granted. With colorful stories that bring that time to life as well as interviews with those who were involved in the spying activities of the State Sovereignty Commission, Ever Is a Long Time is a poignant picture of one man coming to terms with his southern legacy.

A Traitorous Heart


Tammy Jo Burns - 2013
    Then upon returning to England she loses even more…He lost his new wife in a brutal attack six months ago during one of the first battle surges by Le Grande Armée. Left with an injury to remind him of that time he reluctantly takes up his mantle as a Peer of the Realm and uses his skills with numbers and letters to help the War Office as a code specialist.Nothing could surprise him more than walking into a government safe house to question a suspected traitor and find his supposedly dead wife lying injured with no memory of their time together. Is she a traitor? Where has she been all this time? And is their love strong enough to survive or will the truth tear them apart forever?

Border Brotherhood: Heroes of Medieval England and Scotland


Claire Delacroix - 2014
    Does she dare trust in their future, despite the shadow of his past? “A lyrical medieval-era romance!”—Publishers Weekly on THE BEAUTY BRIDE, a Quill Award nominee and a #1 Kindle Bestseller.From Amazon’s Multi-#1 Bestselling Medieval Romance author Kathryn Le Veque, FRAGMENTS OF GRACE is an epic historical romance with power, passion, and a paranormal element set within the reign of Edward II. Can a knight with a tragic past find love again? “Kathryn Le Veque takes you on an emotional roller coaster!”—Amazon reviewsIn Amazon’s Bestselling author and RONE Award winner Suzan Tisdale’s ROWAN’S LADY, Lady Arline is doing her best to survive her third marriage when her husband kidnaps a little girl. When the child’s father, Rowan Graham, comes to rescue his daughter, he finds he must also rescue the woman who has been caring for her. 2014 RONE Winner for Best Historical Romance and #1 Kindle Bestseller.Be swept away to the Borders of Scotland to savor the chivalry and adventure of an era when knights and Highlanders fought for principle—and for love. Meet a trio of valiant heroes, each determined to win the heart of his lady forever, no matter the price.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story


Nikole Hannah-JonesNikole Hannah-Jones - 2019
    In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story builds on The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project,” which reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on the original "1619 Project, "weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This legacy can be seen in the way we tell stories, the way we teach our children, and the way we remember. Together, the elements of the book reveal a new origin story for the United States, one that helps explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of what makes the country unique. The book also features an elaboration of the original project’s Pulitzer Prize–winning lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones on how the struggles of Black Americans have expanded democracy for all Americans, as well as two original pieces from Hannah-Jones, one of which makes a case for reparative solutions to this legacy of injustice.

The Blooding of the Guns


Alexander Fullerton - 1976
    One hundred and fifty British ships, manned by sixty thousand sailors, stand ready for battle in the icy waters…Nicholas Everard, a sub-lieutenant on a destroyer, is going into combat. Little does he know what is in store for himself and his shipmates. How it feels to be in a small ship, racing to launch torpedoes into a line of dreadnoughts’ blazing guns; how it feels to be inside a battleship’s fifteen-inch turrets; or on the bridge of a cruiser under pulverising bombardment.This is battle at sea. How can Everard survive the onslaught? Dramatic, action-packed and meticulously researched, The Blooding of the Guns launches the epic career of Nicholas Everard in this unforgettable series, sure to enthral readers of Douglas Reeman and Philip McCutchan . The Nicholas Everard Naval Thrillers The Blooding of the Guns Sixty Minutes for St. George Patrol to the Golden Horn Storm Force to Narvik Last Lift from Crete All the Drowning Seas A Share of Honour The Torchbearers The Gatecrashers