Book picks similar to
Quality by Cid Ricketts Sumner
fiction
african-americans
40s
film-only
What is Told
Askold Melnyczuk - 1994
Tracing the lives of Zenon and Natalka Zabobon, who marry in the Ukraine on the day Archduke Ferdinand is shot in Sarajevo, 'What is Told' describes how they survived the hardships of war and emigration.
All We Lack
Sandra Moran - 2015
Maggie is a funeral director from Indiana who lives a double life. Bug is a ten-year-old boy in the Pennsylvania foster care system who is sent to live with an aunt he doesn't know. Jimmy is a former paramedic and prescription drug addict on his way to meet a woman he met online who thinks he's a successful doctor. Helen is a Chicago insurance investigator who is leaving her marriage in search of the woman she wants to be. Four strangers, all traveling to Boston in search of better lives, are tied together in ways they don't even realize. Each are trying to fill the void of what's missing in their lives. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to overcome all that we lack.
The Amish Nanny (Amish Maids #1)
Samantha Price - 2014
When the fancy Sonia Worthington and her grandson, Leo, meet Olive, Sonia offers Olive a lucrative job as her grandson's nanny and will not take no for an answer. The handsome widower, Blake Worthington, is furious with Sonia's impulsive decision to employ Olive. Is Blake's continual anger toward Olive because he does not want her there, or is something else causing his anger? Will Olive be able to keep her new job looking after the young Leo Worthington whom she adores? Also in the #1 BEST SELLING Amish Maids series: Book 2 "The Amish Maid" Book 3 "A Rare Amish Maid" New Release: Book 4 "In My Sister's Shadow" OUT NOW. All Samantha Price Amish books are sweet, clean romances.
The Human Bobby
Gabe Rotter - 2010
Bobby Flopkowski has it all. Until a complicated series of events snowball into a disaster that changes the course of his life forever. Now, with a tent on the beach as his only home and an addiction that has cut him off from everyone he once loved, Bobby has a revelation that could put him back on track: he believes he has solved the puzzling crime that led to his downfall. But as the reality he’s always known slips farther away, will he be able to convince someone—anyone—that his suspicions aren’t merely the pleas of a desperate man?
The Fisher King: A Novel
Paule Marshall - 2000
Now, decades later, his eight-year-old grandson is brought to Payne's old Brooklyn neighborhood to attend a memorial concert in his honor. The child's visit reveals the persistent family and community rivalries that drove his grandfather into exile. The Fisher King—a moving story of jazz, love, family conflict, and the artists' struggles in society—offers hope in the healing and redemptive power of one memorable boy.
Count the Waves: Poems
Sandra Beasley - 2015
A man and a woman sit at the same dinner table, an ocean of worry separating them. An iceberg sets out to dance. A sword swallower ponders his dating prospects. "The vessel is simple, a rowboat among yachts," the poet observes in "Ukulele." "No one hides a Tommy gun in its case. / No bluesman runs over his uke in a whiskey rage."Beasley's voice is pithy and playful, with a ferocious intelligence that invites comparison to both Sylvia Plath and Dorothy Parker. In one of six signature sestinas, she warns, "You must not use a house to build a home, / and never look for poetry in poems." The collection’s centerpiece is a haunting sequence that engages The Traveler's Vade Mecum, an 1853 compendium of phrases for use by mail, telegraph, or the enigmatic “Instantaneous Letter Writer."Assembled over ten years and thousands of miles, these poems illuminate how intimacy is lost and gained during our travels. Decisive, funny, and as compassionate as she is merciless, Beasley is a reckoning force on the page.
Talma Gordon
Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins - 2013
Her short story 'Talma Gordon,' published in 1900, is often cited as the first African-American mystery story.
Search Party: Collected Poems
William Matthews - 1982
Drawing from his eleven collections and including twenty-three previously unpublished poems, Search Party is the essential compilation of this beloved poet's work. Edited by his son, Sebastian Matthews, and William Matthews's friend and fellow poet Stanley Plumly (who also introduces the book), Search Party is an excellent introduction to the poet and his glistening riffs on twentieth-century topics from basketball to food to jazz.
Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920
Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore - 1996
She explores the pivotal and interconnected roles played by gender and race in North Carolina politics from the period immediately preceding the disfranchisement of black men in 1900 to the time black and white women gained the vote in 1920. Gender and Jim Crow argues that the ideology of white supremacy embodied in the Jim Crow laws of the turn of the century profoundly reordered society and that within this environment, black women crafted an enduring tradition of political activism. According to Gilmore, a generation of educated African American women emerged in the 1890s to become, in effect, diplomats to the white community after the disfranchisement of their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Using the lives of African American women to tell the larger story, Gilmore chronicles black women's political strategies, their feminism, and their efforts to forge political ties with white women. Her analysis highlights the active role played by women of both races in the political process and in the emergence of southern progressivism. In addition, Gilmore illuminates the manipulation of concepts of gender by white supremacists and shows how this rhetoric changed once women, black and white, gained the vote.
Williwaw
Gore Vidal - 1946
Battling the sea and struggling against each other as the dreaded williwaw approaches, strikes, and subsides, the men reveal the storms within their souls, stark, fierce, and compelling. And pervading all is the grim atmosphere, set down with a mastery of description, of the desolate Arctic and the harsh destructive storm.
Rain Falls Like Mercy
Jack Todd - 2011
IN THE TRADITION OF TRUE CRIME narratives such as In Cold Blood, acclaimed author Jack Todd’s new novel grips the reader from the first page; and as it spans continents and generations of one family, its taut and shocking undercurrent of violence builds to a stunning crescendo. Todd’s first novel, Sun Going Down, which introduced the Paint family, won praise from reviewers and major authors such as Michael Korda and Michael Blake. His second novel, Come Again No More, recounted the Paints’ saga of triumph and tragedy through the Great Depression, inspiring the Ottawa Citizen to label Todd “a first-rate novelist with a tender heart.” Rain Falls Like Mercy opens with the murder investigation of a young girl in Wyoming in mid- 1941. Tom Call, the young sheriff running the investigation, falls in love with Juanita, the wife of Eli Paint, whose son Leo and grandson Bobby Watson are on duty with the U.S. Navy. Almost overnight, the case is derailed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, disrupting the lives of all involved. Bobby mans an antiaircraft gun during the attack. Tom joins the U.S. Air Force and is deployed to England to fly bombers, still trying to pursue his murder investigation. His suspicion falls on Pardo Bury, the psychotic son of a wealthy rancher in Wyoming. As Pardo and Tom make their ways to their inevitable and shattering confrontation, Rain Falls Like Mercy displays Todd’s uncanny ability to zero in on his characters’ emotional lives while simultaneously painting a sweeping picture of the historical events that shape their destinies.
This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer
Kay Mills - 1993
"Riveting. Provides a history that helps us to understand the choices made by so many black men and women of Hamer's generation, who somehow found the courage to join a movement in which they risked everything." New York Times Book Review "One is forced to pause and consider that this black daughter of the Old South might have been braver than King and Malcolm." Washington Post Book World "An epic that nurtures us as we confront today's challenges and helps us Keep Hope Alive.'" Jesse L. Jackson "Not only does This Little Light of Mine recount a vital part of America"s history, but it lights our future as readers are inspired anew by Mrs. Hamer's spirit, courage, and commitment." Marian Wright Edelman "This book is the essence of raw courage. It must be read." Rep. John Lewis
The Flip Side of Sin
Rosalyn McMillan - 2000
"The Flip Side of Sin" takes readers on a journey through the lives of a group of unforgettable characters who must overcome life's toughest challenges to find true happiness. It is a book in which worlds collide and people are forever transformed by the tumultuous changes that occur in one man's life. The story begins with Isaac Coleman, a man whose tragic mistakes cost him years away from everyone and everything that mattered to him -- especially his wife and son. Alone, confused, and bitter, Isaac can only become whole by learning to love again. But when he re-enters the world he left and attempts to get reacquainted with his now teenage son, Peyton, he finds heartbreaking rejection.As Isaac struggles to understand and change his plight, his only form of self-expression is found in the keys of his saxophone. When he later meets up with Miracall Lake, a woman with whom he shares a painful past, she surprisingly helps him to face his fears and reach for his dreams. In this case, love indeed conquers all -- or so it tries to in this tale of good versus evil and love versus hate. "The Flip Side of Sin" is a poignant and memorable work from a writer of immense talent.
The Last of the Mohicans
Albert Lewis Kanter - 2007
in black-and-white. This action-packed edition of James Fenimore Cooper's famous adventure brings the wilds of the American frontier and the drama of the French and Indian War to vivid life.
The Colossus and Other Poems
Sylvia Plath - 1960
In such classics as "The Beekeeper's Daughter," "The Disquieting Muses," "I Want, I Want," and "Full Fathom Five," she writes about sows and skeletons, fathers and suicides, about the noisy imperatives of life and the chilly hunger for death. Graceful in their craftsmanship, wonderfully original in their imagery, and presenting layer after layer of meaning, the forty poems in The Colossus are early artifacts of genius that still possess the power to move, delight, and shock.