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I Say a Little Prayer


E. Lynn Harris - 2003
    Lynn Harris is back with another sexy, shocking, and immensely satisfying novel that explores some of today’s toughest and most timely issues.Chauncey Greer is the owner of Cute Boy Card Company, a thriving company in Atlanta. As a teenager, he was a member of a popular boy band, but left in disgrace when word got out that he and his bandmate D were more than good friends. Chauncey is a free spirit, on the brink of forty with a body admired by both men and women. Not into being categorized, Chauncey’s been known to hook up with men and women, but now in the age of the “down low,” he’s found that women ask too many questions, so he’s just focusing on the fellas.After one too many bad dates, Chauncey finds himself in church, where the minister’s message inspires him to follow his dream of a singing career once again. Although he’s lost touch with D, as he starts writing songs his thoughts inevitably turn to his former lover. Chauncey’s powerful performance at the church earns him a standing ovation and an invitation to participate in an upcoming revival. But Chauncey soon discovers that an ambitious fundamentalist preacher plans to use the revival to speak out against gays and gay marriage. Feeling angry and betrayed, Chauncey and other gay members of the church decide to take a stand against the church’s homophobia by staging a “Day of Absence” when all of the gay members and their friends and family stay home. Everything is going as planned... until D appears on the scene and Chauncey has to confront his past and make some hard decisions about his future.I Say A Little Prayer is filled with the delicious plot twists, humor, compassion, and up-to-the-minute controversy fans expect from their beloved “E. Lynn.” Harris has returned with another gem of a novel that will rocket to the top of bestseller lists nationwide.

With You and Without You


Deborah J. Wolf - 2003
    That changed on the day a tragic accident ripped her husband away from her - and shattered everything.

Eden: A Novel


Olympia Vernon - 2004
    Set in Pyke County, Mississippi, Eden is a raw, heartbreaking, and enlightening novel that marks the emergence of a stunning and original talent. Narrated by fourteen-year-old Maddy Dangerfield, Eden opens in the moments after Maddy has impulsively drawn a naked woman on the pages of Genesis in bright red lipstick during Sunday service. The community is scandalized, and her devout, long-suffering mother’s response to her transgression is to force her to spend weekends nursing her dying Aunt Pip, an outcast who lives on the edge of town.From then on, Maddy must negotiate her two worlds: at the house where she lives with her hard-working, Bible-reading mother, Faye, and her father, Chevrolet—a one-armed drunk, gambler and womanizer—she is both a reluctant participant in and astute observer of the strange and confounding dynamics of her sometimes violent, sometimes tender family. (Years before, Maddy’s grandmother—her mother’s mother—chopped of Chevrolet’s arm and fed it to the pigs after he and Pip were found together in the back room as Faye entertained friends from the church—and ever since, he has been am emasculated, desperate man—drinking and gambling his wife’s money away, leaving her to clean up his mess time and again.) And then out on Commitment Road, she is caretaker to her Aunt Pip, whose only friend is her eccentric neighbor, Fat. Maddy’s time with Pip and Fat opens her eyes to the exhilaration of speaking your own mind, living your life on your own terms and without apology, and also to the cost extracted by both. She learns that there are strengths that belong to women alone, and also that there is a kind of ravaging vulnerability that is terrifying and inescapable, and uniquely female.The world Maddy inherits is one of injustice and hypocrisy, one that requires black people work for the whites for little to no pay; that sent her Uncle Sugar to jail for raping a white woman—no questions asked—when Maddy was just a baby; that preaches Christian love and forgiveness even as its actions reflect the very opposite. But Maddy soon learns that there is something that can work to oppose those truths, and that is knowledge; having the will and the ability to look beneath the surface, to question what others take as a given. By the end of the novel, newly acquainted with mortality and her own fierce strength, Maddy comes to bear both the burden and the blessing of that knowledge.In lush, vivid brushstrokes, Olympia Vernon conjures a world that is both intoxicating and cruel, and illuminates the bittersweet transformation of the young girl who must bear the burden and blessing of its secrets too soon. Eden is a haunting, memorable novel propelled by the poetry and power of a voice that is complex, lyrical, and utterly true.

Jonah's Gourd Vine


Zora Neale Hurston - 1934
    Originally published in 1934, it was praised by Carl Sandburg as "a bold and beautiful book, many a page priceless and unforgettable."

The View From Here


Brian Keith Jackson - 1997
    Evoking a world of casual prejudice and commonplace poverty, Jackson tells the haunting story of Anna Anderson Thomas, whose life in the rural South has edged slowly toward loneliness. Married in her youth to her beloved J.T., she has devoted her days to raising their five boys, all while stepping softly around her husband’s vast silences. But now, with their sixth child on the way—a girl this time, she is sure—Anna faces a challenge that threatens to destroy the family she’s fought so hard to preserve. Pulsing with raw emotional power and earthy humor, and narrated in part by the omniscient voice of Anna’s unborn child, The View from Here builds to a conclusion that both shocks and heals—and lays bare the universal truths that bind all families.

College Boy


Omar Tyree - 2003
    This is Troy Potter's story. He is an African American young man from inner-city Philadelphia. He grew up with dreams of becoming a basketball player but now that he's eighteen he must learn the rules to a whole new game: college. How will Troy survive at a predominantly white school? Will he be afforded the same quality of education as his fellow students? How will he learn to become a successful black man in a white world? This penetrating novel takes a close look at the world of academia from a youthful African American perspective.

Gonna Lay Down My Burdens


Mary Monroe - 2002
    Carmen Taylor finds her life spinning out of control when her best friend Desiree begins dating Chester Sheffield, the man Carmen has loved for years, and when Desiree gets pregant with his child, Carmen commits a reckless crime of passion that forces her, along with Desiree, to make some difficult choices that will change their lives forever.

The Bright Forever


Lee Martin - 2005
    Fact, speculation, and contradiction play off one another as the details about Katie's disappearance--and about the townspeople--unfold, creating a fast-paced story that is as gripping as it is richly human. A nuanced portrayal of the complicated give and take among people struggling to maintain their humanity in the shadow of a loss, The Bright Forever is a compelling and emotional tale about the human need to know even the hardest truth.

Cane River


Lalita Tademy - 2001
    They are women whose lives begin in slavery, who weather the Civil War, and who grapple with contradictions of emancipation, Jim Crow, and the pre-Civil Rights South. As she peels back layers of racial and cultural attitudes, Tademy paints a remarkable picture of rural Louisiana and the resilient spirit of one unforgettable family.There is Elisabeth, who bears both a proud legacy and the yoke of bondage... her youngest daughter, Suzette, who is the first to discover the promise-and heartbreak-of freedom... Suzette's strong-willed daughter Philomene, who uses a determination born of tragedy to reunite her family and gain unheard-of economic independence... and Emily, Philomene's spirited daughter, who fights to secure her children's just due and preserve their dignity and future.Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Cane River presents a slice of American history never before seen in such piercing and personal detail.

Changing Faces


Kimberla Lawson Roby - 2006
    However, this devoted troika is about to discover a wave of unexpected troubles. Whitney is a plus-size woman who just can't turn down a box of Krispy Kremes or find a man who will stay put. Taylor is in a long-term relationship with a boyfriend who's allergic to commitment. Charisse is married, with two adorable children, but somehow doesn't have what she really wants or needs. Then suddenly Charisse spins out of control. Her doormat husband manages to stand up to her and even threatens to go public with a very shady secret Charisse had hoped to keep hidden, especially from her interfering mother. Desperate, she decides that only a very risky scheme will save her. One constant for these women has been the support they've offered one another. But this time, how far can friendship go? In this witty, rollicking, deeply poignant story, Kimberla Lawson Roby demonstrates the storytelling magic that has won her legions of adoring fans and made her novels bestsellers.

Falling Together


Marisa de los Santos - 2011
    Now, six years later, Pen is the single mother of a five-year-old girl, living with her older brother in Philadelphia and trying to make peace with the sudden death of her father. Even though she feels deserted by Will and Cat, she has never stopped wanting them back in her life, so when she receives an email from a desperate-sounding Cat asking her to meet her at their upcoming college reunion, Pen goes. What happens there sends past and present colliding and sends Pen and her friends on a journey across the world, a journey that will change everything.

Why We Came to the City


Kristopher Jansma - 2016
    A heavy snowstorm is blowing through Manhattan and the economy is on the brink of collapse, but none of that matters to a handful of guests at a posh holiday party. Five years after their college graduation, the fiercely devoted friends at the heart of this richly absorbing novel remain as inseparable as ever: editor and social butterfly Sara Sherman, her troubled astronomer boyfriend George Murphy, loudmouth poet Jacob Blaumann, classics major turned investment banker William Cho, and Irene Richmond, an enchanting artist with an inscrutable past.Amid cheerful revelry and free-flowing champagne, the friends toast themselves and the new year ahead—a year that holds many surprises in store. They must navigate ever-shifting relationships with the city and with one another, determined to push onward in pursuit of their precarious dreams. And when a devastating blow brings their momentum to a halt, the group is forced to reexamine their aspirations and chart new paths through unexpected losses.Kristopher Jansma’s award-winning debut novel, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, was praised for its  “wry humor” and “charmingly unreliable narrator” in The New Yorker and hailed as “F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Wes Anderson” by The Village Voice. In Why We Came to the City, Jansma offers an unforgettable exploration of friendships forged in the fires of ambition, passion, hope, and love. This glittering story of a generation coming of age is a sweeping, poignant triumph.

View Park


Angela Winters - 2006
    Los Angeles-based cosmetics tycoon Steven Chase has come a long way from his humble beginnings. Steven's family, including socialite wife, Janet, and four grown children, live a life of privilege in exclusive View Park. But when Steven wants to expand his empire by adding a chain of hair salons, one woman stands in his way. Once Steven realizes he can't seduce her with money, he tries a different approach: his handsome attorney son, Carter... Meanwhile, spoiled debutante Haley Chase is busy getting into high-profile trouble on her lover's yacht, pediatrician Leigh Chase is determined to start a free clinic—against her parents' wishes—and Michael Chase is busy doing Daddy's dirty work. His only soft spot is for his wife, Kimberly, who has her own ambitions—plans that may one day shake the very foundations of the Chase dynasty—and change their view from the top forever...

The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses)


Terri-Lynne DeFino - 2018
    But now he's come to the Bar Harbor Home for the Elderly to spend the remainder of his days among kindred spirits: the publishing industry's nearly gone but never forgotten greats. Only now, at the end of his life, does he comprehend the price of appeasing every desire, and the consequences of forsaking love to pursue greatness. For Alfonse has an unshakeable case of writer's block that distresses him much more than his precarious health.Set on the water in one of New England's most beautiful locales, the Bar Harbor Home was established specifically for elderly writers needing a place to live out their golden years—or final days—in understated luxury and surrounded by congenial literary company. A faithful staff of nurses and orderlies surround the writers, and are drawn into their orbit, as they are forced to reckon with their own life stories. Among them are Cecibel Bringer, a young woman who knows first-hand the cost of chasing excess. A terrible accident destroyed her face and her sister in a split-second decision that Cecibel can never forgive, though she has tried to forget. Living quietly as an orderly, refusing to risk again the cost of love, Cecibel never anticipated the impact of meeting her favorite writer, Alfonse Carducci—or the effect he would have on her existence. In Cecibel, Alfonse finds a muse who returns him to the passion he thought he lost. As the words flow from him, weaving a tale taken up by the other residents of the Pen, Cecibel is reawakened to the idea of love and forgiveness.As the edges between story and reality blur, a world within a world is created. It’s a place where the old are made young, the damaged are made whole, and anything is possible…

Sittin' in the Front Pew


Parry A. Brown - 2002
    The author of the national bestseller The Shirt off His Back offers a laugh-out-loud look at how a family tries to reconcile their memories with their father's secret life in this novel about love, family, and honoring loved ones.