Alex Mercer’s childhood has been far from idyllic. Orphaned as a child in southeastern Europe and eventually landing in the U.S., she endured a horrific foster family experience before ending up with a couple living in the San Francisco Bay area, who’d recently emigrated from South Korea. Now 18 and a freshman in computer engineering […]
Madeline Hill finds her life exhausting, but mostly plentiful, having built her family’s little organic farm in Tennessee into a destination for foodies and families alike. But the chip on her shoulder comes rushing back when her half brother Reuben shows up in a PT Cruiser with a trunkful of family secrets about her deadbeat […]
Three young Black friends mingle amid the crowd, “our hearts…full of love / as we move to the beats / pumping into the air.” Rainbow flags swirl around the protagonists, sending a message of love and inclusivity. Suddenly, rain clouds appear, drenching the participants and shifting the palette to hues of blacks and grays. The […]
Born Malcolm Little in Nebraska in 1925, he grew up in a household that openly defied white supremacy. In 1931, his dad died in an incident the police ruled accidental; his mom, however, believed her husband was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan offshoot called the Black Legion. Traumatized, Malcolm engaged in criminal behavior and […]
In truth, it’s quite a while before Mike takes center stage because half of these stories are told to him by his friend and mentor, retired warden Charley Stevens, whose narratives are provoked by events in the present. In “The Bear Trap,” Charley goes hunting for Sweet Tooth, a hermit who’s reported to have carried […]
The people of the kingdom of Glyndoria have yet to learn the shocking truth that Persephone and Azriel discovered about Mordesius’ role in the current king’s birth. Hoping to avoid execution, Azriel strikes a bargain with the Regent Mordesius: He and Princess Persephone will find the healing Pool of Genezing, which may only be the […]
Now that Susan’s back from Crete and her latest romance, her boss at Causton Books, Michael Flynn, wants her to work with Eliot Crace, a failed mystery author who’s writing a sequel to the late Alan Conway’s tales of detective Atticus Pünd, which she knows far too much about already. As she reads Eliot’s first […]
Cummings, who grew up in a military family, honors the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a division of the WACs, the only Black unit that served overseas. Made up of women of color, with 855 members, its mission was organizing, sorting, and moving out mail to soldiers during World War II. In a segregated army, […]
Even before the author could read, his grandmother wrote him letters almost weekly. “In fact,” he notes, “I have few memories that come before my remembrance of receiving regular missives from ‘Mama Ceal’ as we called her.” For almost 30 years (until his grandmother died in 1995), these letters were a constant presence in Pryor’s […]
“This book is never trying to say anything even close to important,” writes comedian Bargatze, whose following has been blowing up lately thanks to a couple of well-received Saturday Night Live appearances—a surprise, perhaps, given his G-rated approach to comedy. Yet Bargatze, a native Tennessean, does dig a little deeper into important territory here, writing, […]