Black Page Turners

Hittin’ It Out the Park by: Allison Hobbs, Karen E. Quinones Miller
Secrets abound in this scintillating, drama-fuelled novel about a love triangle between a multi-millionaire baseball star, his wife, and the groupie who’s trying to ruin their marriage—if a long-held secret doesn’t destroy it first.

Cheryl Blanton is married to a superstar baseball player who has won three Gold Gloves and recently signed a $120 million, five-year contract with the New York Yankees. He’s wealthy and handsome, and all the groupies are after him, but Cheryl is gorgeous and her sex game has her man on lock. There’s just one little secret she’s been keeping from him: her husband doesn’t realize that she’s nine years his senior. And so far Cheryl’s had no problem hiding her age—her husband only has eyes for her. That is, until twenty-one-year-old Sexy Sanchez comes on the scene.

Sexy blatantly goes after Cheryl’s man, and a series of catfights ensue between them. Cheryl realizes she’s in the battle of her life to keep her man and plots to get rid of her nemesis. But when she hires a private investigator to dig up some dirt on Sexy, she discovers that getting rid of her rival might not be easy, and could also reveal some devastating secrets she’d rather keep to herself…
Release: 3/31/15
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Ordinary Light: A memoir by:Tracy K. Smith
From the dazzlingly original Pulitzer Prize-winning poet hailed for her “extraordinary range and ambition” (The New York Times Book Review): a quietly potent memoir that explores coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter.

The youngest of five children, Tracy K. Smith was raised with limitless affection and a firm belief in God by a stay-at-home mother and an engineer father. But just as Tracy is about to leave home for college, her mother is diagnosed with cancer, a condition she accepts as part of God’s plan. Ordinary Light is the story of a young woman struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America.

In lucid, clear prose, Smith interrogates her childhood in suburban California, her first collision with independence at Harvard, and her Alabama-born parents’ recollections of their own youth in the Civil Rights era. These dizzying juxtapositions—of her family’s past, her own comfortable present, and the promise of her future—will in due course compel Tracy to act on her passions for love and “ecstatic possibility,” and her desire to become a writer.

Shot through with exquisite lyricism, wry humor, and an acute awareness of the beauty of everyday life, Ordinary Light is a gorgeous kaleidoscope of self and family, one that skillfully combines a child’s and teenager’s perceptions with adult retrospection. Here is a universal story of being and becoming, a classic portrait of the ways we find and lose ourselves amid the places we call home.
Release: 3/31/15
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Eye Candy (Rumor Central) by:ReShonda Tate Billingsley
Dishing on celebrity love games made Maya Morgan a media queen. But choosing her prince means working her wildest, most personal scoop yet…

She’s gone from gossip reporter to half of the entertainment industry’s newest power couple. And hot singer J. Love’s mad string of hits definitely makes him a good look for Maya—and her career. But she’s feeling something more for laid-back, mellow “civilian” Alvin. A lot more. Now J. Love is using every dirty-spin trick in the glitterati book to humiliate Alvin—and sink Maya’s brand if he can’t hold onto her—and their celebrity-couple perks. With her empire on the line and her rep at stake, Maya will draw on every reliable source and every crazy scheme she’s ever played to save what she’s earned—and prove she can have love and fame.
Release: 3/31/15
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Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry by:Maya Angelou
Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer’s remarkable life.

Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be found within the pages of this sure-to-be-treasured volume—from her reflections on African American life and hardship in the compilation Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (“Though there’s one thing that I cry for / I believe enough to die for / That is every man’s responsibility to man”) to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in the poem “Still I Rise” (“Out of the huts of history’s shame / I rise / Up from a past that’s rooted in pain / I rise”) to her “On the Pulse of Morning” tribute at President William Jefferson Clinton’s inauguration (“Lift up your eyes upon / The day breaking for you. / Give birth again / To the dream.”).

Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry also features her final long-form poems, including “A Brave and Startling Truth,” “Amazing Peace,” “His Day Is Done,” and the honest and endearing Mother:

“I feared if I let you go
You would leave me eternally.
You smiled at my fears, saying
I could not stay in your lap forever”

This collection also includes the never-before-published poem “Amazement Awaits,” commissioned for the 2008 Olympic Games:

“We are here at the portal of the world we had wished for
At the lintel of the world we most need.
We are here roaring and singing.
We prove that we can not only make peace, we can bring it with us.”

Timeless and prescient, this definitive compendium will warm the hearts of Maya Angelou’s most ardent admirers as it introduces new readers to the legendary poet, activist, and teacher—a phenomenal woman for the ages.
Release: 3/31/15
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King Divas by:De’Nesha Diamond
The most ruthless ride-or-die women of Memphis saved their empire by nearly destroying the streets. But as unexpected new rivals rise and brutal secrets shatter lives, betrayal means winner rules all…

Putting out chaos with gasoline is one play that even the women of the Dirty South can’t control. One merciless kill vaults good-girl-gone-bad Ta’Shara into gangland’s power elite—but an enemy she doesn’t see is targeting everything she can’t afford to lose. For former Vice Lord chief Lucifer, taking back her power means all-out war on her lethal lover, no matter what the cost. Gorgeous Cleo at last has her sister’s killer in her sights—if she can survive one deadly game too many. And as Queen G LeShelle’s lies finally choke-hold her life, trusting someone more vicious than her husband Python may be the last mistake she’ll ever make. Now these king divas will leave nothing standing—because if they can’t reign, no one will…
Release: 3/31/15
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No Home Training: Say U Promise 3 by:Michael Moore
The Essence® bestselling author Ms. Michel Moore’s explosive page-turning Say U Promise series returns with things going from bad to worse for the tragically troubled sisters.

Identical twins Kenya and London return in the highly addictive Essence bestselling Say U Promise series, and now things have gone from bad to worse for the tragically troubled sisters. They are caught in the middle of a deadly drug war that was started by one of them, and the streets run red as lives are drastically changed forever. With an illegitimate baby on the way and a price on her head, one twin fights to avoid the dangers of the game she despises, while facing the vindictive wrath of her sister for what is deemed to be the ultimate betrayal. This time around, no one is safe when it comes to revenge-not even an innocent child.
Release: 3/31/15
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Hostile Eyewitness by:Tyora Moody
Tyora Moody deftly mixes intrigue and romance against an urban background in this spiritual and suspenseful fight for redemption.

Depressed because of complications of a head injury, Serena Manchester seeks solitude in the hometown she left almost twenty-five years before. Unknown to Serena, her hometown’s landscape has changed and unseemly elements have seeped into the quaint Southern seaport town.

One night Serena witnesses a gang-related crime. She thinks she recognizes one of the young men, but chooses not to identify him. What if her brain injury has altered her perceptions? Her estranged family has already reminded her why she left town in the first place. Drawing attention to herself and perhaps endangering her well-being is the last thing Serena needs.

When tragedy strikes close to home, however, Serena can no longer keep her head in the sand. Serena feels responsible, and her reporter skills kick in. Much to the dismay of the local police, she decides to start her own investigation.
Release: 3/31/15
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La Familia 2 by:Paradise Gomez
This sequel to Paradise Gomez’s gritty debut novel, La Familia, our heroines are fighting each other and for their lives.

Sammy and Mouse were once best friends with an up and coming career as the rap duo Vixen Chaos. When both of them got pregnant by the same man, however, things fell apart. Now Rico, their babies’ father, is in jail, and both women are new mothers with great responsibilities and plenty of problems.

After she is kicked out of a family shelter for fighting, Mouse has no choice but to prostitute herself to survive. When she meets Tango, a hardcore thug with a soft spot for Mouse, she hopes that this is her way out of the mess she’s in.

Sammy still has dreams of returning to the music industry, but for the time being, she’s making money as a dancer. She’s also acting as Rico’s eyes and ears on the street. He has threatened to implicate her in a murder, and she feels powerless to escape his control. When Search, an old friend with connections in the music industry, makes it clear he wants nothing to do with her, Sammy feels all her hope slipping away. Will she be stuck in this dark life forever?

When she meets Power, a new man who’s better and stronger than Rico ever was, things start to look up for Sammy. It only gets better when she and Mouse bump into each other and heal their broken friendship. Both women have come to see the damage that Rico has done to them, and now they want revenge. The only one with the power and reach to pull off a hit on Rico is Power. When Sammy tells him about the plan, he’s willing to help out on one condition: Sammy will have to deliver his enemy-who just happens to be Mouse’s man Tango. Will Sammy be willing to betray her friend once again if it means she can finally be set free from Rico?
Release: 3/31/15
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Sharing the Sheets by:Natalie Weber
Regina has been craving attention from Mark, her common law husband of eight years. As far as she’s concerned, he’s a square, and she finds herself making excuses to stay out of the house and out of his sight. With no kids and feeling stuck with a man who has no intentions of marrying her in the eyes of God, she makes a decision that will only bring drama and confusion into her once predictable life.

Regina’s sudden cold shoulder toward Mark makes him wonder if his first and only love has changed her mind about spending the rest of their lives together. Although he’s never felt the need to comply with society’s standards and get a marriage certificate to prove he’s committed, Mark disregards his beliefs and pops the question. Will he regret his decision? More importantly, since Regina has already found new pleasures to keep her content, is Mark’s proposal too late?
Release: 3/31/15
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Unforgiving by:Patricia Haley
Sins from the past have left a lingering stench in the Mitchell family. Amidst a tumultuous rollercoaster ride through financial ruin, professional humiliation, personal failure, and marital discord, Joel, the youngest son who was once considered the most eligible bachelor, has finally come to terms with his shortcomings and self-centered decisions. Spurred by his estranged wife’s troubled pregnancy, he decides to honor their marriage. Joel reaches out to the most unlikely person, his stepmother and long-time nemesis, Madeline Mitchell, pleading with her to let him back into the family business.

Don, the eldest living son, has other plans and vehemently discounts Madeline’s recommendation, not ready to trust his half-brother Joel. Don has paid his dues, suffered years of rejection, and played second fiddle to his father’s second family long enough.

Feeling robbed of her rightful place in the company, Tamara, the only remaining heir to the Mitchell fortune, gets wind of what she considers to be her mother’s and brother’s betrayal. She is outraged that they’re considering someone other than her for the CEO role. Refusing to lose out again to the whims of her family, Tamara writes off Madeline and Don as traitors, concocting her own way to get the upper hand.

Harmony seems impossible for the Mitchell clan, with each step toward truce and reconciliation resulting in two backward steps shrouded in conflict. Unforgiving shoves years of conflict and bitterness to the edge, when everyone is forced to set aside their issues and come together in order to save DMI, the Mitchell legacy, and the life of a disturbed family member. They must learn painfully that forgiveness is the only path to restoration, and those who choose another route are bound to face unavoidable consequences.
Release: 3/31/15
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Corruption Officer by:Gary L. Heyward
In this shocking memoir from a former corrections officer, Gary Heyward shares an eye-opening, gritty, and devastating account of his descent into criminal life, smuggling contraband inside the infamous Rikers Island jails.
Gary Heyward’s life changed forever when he received a letter from the New York City Department of Corrections announcing he was accepted into the academy for new recruits. For the Harlem-born ex-Marine, being an officer of the law was the ticket he’d been waiting for to move up from a low-wage security job and out of the Polo Ground Projects in New York City—and take his mother with him.

Heyward was warned of the temptations he’d encounter as a new officer, but when faced with financial hardship, he suddenly found himself unable to resist the income generated from selling contraband to inmates. In his distinctive voice, Heyward takes you on a journey inside the walls of Rikers Island, showing how he teamed up with various inmates and other officers to develop a system that allowed him to profit from selling drugs inside the jail.

Corruption Officer is a jarring exposé of a man having lived on both sides of the law, a rare insider’s look at a corrupt city jail, and a testament to the lengths we’ll go when our backs are against the wall.
Release: 3/31/15
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Pigalle Palace by:Niyah Moore
In this supernatural tale of lust, loyalty, and betrayal, erotic escapades ensue as a mystery unfolds around a vampire family destined to be the next royal occupants of Pigalle Palace in Paris’s Red Light District.
When Essence asked her college roommate to take her to Pigalle Palace, she knew what she was getting herself into…or thought she knew what she was getting herself into. But when the two friends go looking for naughty trouble, they get everything they asked for—and much, much more.

Apart from being a notorious hotspot, home of the famous cabaret Moulin Rouge, and an epicenter of sizzling sex shops, erotic peep shows, and dazzling strip clubs, Pigalle Palace is a forgotten vampire kingdom, waiting for “the one” to reclaim the abandoned throne. Siblings Rain, Legend, Onyx, and Azura run an erotic nightclub there called Vaisseau, their own personal playground, where they can indulge in every type of fun imaginable. But their world starts to change when a girl named Essence comes into the picture, and Rain is more than taken with her. In fact, he’s proclaimed to be the next king of Pigalle Palace—only he’s not ready to wear his crown until he has a Queen by his side.

Will Essence find her way out of Pigalle Palace unharmed? Or will she be drawn into a royal vampire clan and claimed as one of their own forever?
Release: 3/31/15
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The Fortunes of Francis Barber by:Michael Bundock
This compelling book chronicles a young boy’s journey from the horrors of Jamaican slavery to the heart of London’s literary world, and reveals the unlikely friendship that changed his life. Francis Barber, born in Jamaica, was brought to London by his owner in 1750 and became a servant in the household of the renowned Dr. Samuel Johnson. Although Barber left London for a time and served in the British navy during the Seven Years’ War, he later returned to Johnson’s employ. A fascinating reversal took place in the relationship between the two men as Johnson’s health declined and the older man came to rely more and more upon his now educated and devoted companion. When Johnson died he left the bulk of his estate to Barber, a generous (and at the time scandalous) legacy, and a testament to the depth of their friendship.

There were thousands of black Britons in the eighteenth century, but few accounts of their lives exist. In uncovering Francis Barber’s story, this book not only provides insights into his life and Samuel Johnson’s but also opens a window onto London when slaves had yet to win their freedom.
Release: 3/31/15
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Little Rhino #2: The Best Bat by:Ryan Howard
A new chapter book series from Major League Baseball’s 2006 National League MVP, Ryan Howard!
Little Rhino is so excited for his team, The Mustangs, to play their first baseball game. They’ve been having some good practices. The team is starting to come together. Grandpa James even bought Little Rhino a new bat to use.

In the last practice, Little Rhino’s bat goes missing. He’s convinced that Dylan, the bully on his team, is the one who took it. But Little Rhino learns quickly that he can’t blame someone without any proof. Will Little Rhino find out who took his bat before the first game?

From Major League Baseball superstar Ryan Howard and his wife, Krystle Howard, a former elementary school teacher, this exciting new series is a fun read for sports and book fans alike!
Release: 3/31/15
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The Class of 65 by:Jim Auchmutey
In the midst of racial strife, one young man showed courage and empathy. It took forty years for the others to join him….

Being a student at Americus High School was the worst experience of Greg Wittkamper’s life. Greg came from a nearby Christian commune, Koinonia, whose members devoutly and publicly supported racial equality. When he refused to insult and attack his school’s first black students in 1964, Greg was mistreated as badly as they were: harassed and bullied and beaten. In the summer after his senior year, as racial strife in Americus—and the nation—reached its peak, Greg left Georgia.

Forty-one years later, a dozen former classmates wrote letters to Greg, asking his forgiveness and inviting him to return for a class reunion. Their words opened a vein of painful memory and unresolved emotion, and set him on a journey that would prove healing and saddening.

The Class of ’65 is more than a heartbreaking story from the segregated South. It is also about four of Greg’s classmates—David Morgan, Joseph Logan, Deanie Dudley, and Celia Harvey—who came to reconsider the attitudes they grew up with. How did they change? Why, half a lifetime later, did reaching out to the most despised boy in school matter to them? This noble book reminds us that while ordinary people may acquiesce to oppression, we all have the capacity to alter our outlook and redeem ourselves.
Release: 3/31/15
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I Freed Myself by:David Williams
For a century and a half, Abraham Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation has been the dominant narrative of African American freedom in the Civil War era. However, David Williams suggests that this portrayal marginalizes the role that African American slaves played in freeing themselves. At the Civil War’s outset, Lincoln made clear his intent was to save the Union rather than free slaves – despite his personal distaste for slavery, he claimed no authority to interfere with the institution. By the second year of the war, though, when the Union army was in desperate need of black support, former slaves who escaped to Union lines struck a bargain: they would fight for the Union only if they were granted their freedom. Williams importantly demonstrates that freedom was not simply the absence of slavery but rather a dynamic process enacted by self-emancipated African American refugees, which compelled Lincoln to modify his war aims and place black freedom at the center of his wartime policies.
Release: 3/31/15
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Secret Liaisons (Women in Hollywood) by:Shelia Goss
She’s his fantasy leading lady…if he can convince her love can be their reality.

Women in Hollywood, Book 2

When aspiring screenwriter Mona Johnson landed a job as assistant to one of Hollywood’s most sought-after movie producers, she planned to use the experience to build her career. She never expected her match made in online-dating heaven to be her boss.

Romance with Terrance Beckham is out of the question. She knows his history. He’s not the commitment type.

His quest to find real love in real time coming up empty, Terrance goes incognito in the virtual world to take his famous name and large bank account out of the equation. Then he discovers the online chat room handle of Ms. Perfect is attached to the woman who brings him coffee.

Disclosing his identity will have to be handled delicately if they’re to face their mutual attraction without preconceived notions. But before they can build a bridge to happiness, they’ll have to overcome obstacles—some labeled “ex”, and others labeled “mom”—that could drive a permanent wedge between them.
Release: 3/31/15
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What Fanon Said by:Lewis R. Gordon
Antiblack racism avows reason is white while emotion, and thus supposedly unreason, is black. Challenging academic adherence to this notion, Lewis R. Gordon offers a portrait of Martinican-turned-Algerian revolutionary psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon as an exemplar of “living thought” against forms of reason marked by colonialism and racism. Working from his own translations of the original French texts, Gordon critically engages everything in Fanon from dialectics, ethics, existentialism, and humanism to philosophical anthropology, phenomenology, and political theory as well as psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

Gordon takes into account scholars from across the Global South to address controversies around Fanon’s writings on gender and sexuality as well as political violence and the social underclass. In doing so, he confronts the replication of a colonial and racist geography of reason, allowing theorists from the Global South to emerge as interlocutors alongside northern ones in a move that exemplifies what, Gordon argues, Fanon represented in his plea to establish newer and healthier human relationships beyond colonial paradigms.
Release: 4/1/15
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Mine Tonight by:Lisa Marie Perry
The night that changed everything…

After being dumped by her fiancé and losing her shot at TV stardom, Bindi Paxton just wants to get out of town. But there’s no escaping the past—not even on the beautiful Seychelles Islands. And when her attraction to former Las Vegas Slayers heir Santino Franco culminates in a night of sizzling passion, she has to fight her feelings for a man who could hurt her deeper than any other has before.

Santino came to the islands to find the man responsible for the injury that ended his pro-football career. Ending up in bed with Bindi is a mistake they both regret. Except he now needs her help to find his fugitive father. And—heaven help him—he’s starting to fall for the stunning Sin City reporter. He can’t change their history…but he’d give anything for one more night, and maybe forever, in her arms.
Release: 4/1/15
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Silent Praise (Able to Love Book 3) by:Michelle Lindo-Rice
A Banker. A Cop. One Complicated Case. Nothing just happens. When Officer Chase Dawson pulls over Melanie Benson, he did not expect to feel an instant connection with this beautiful deaf woman. Chase asks Melanie out on a date but she turns him down flat. Lucky for Chase, their paths cross again when he is assigned the case of a missing deaf child. Chase knows this is God’s doing. But, he wonders is this a fleeting attraction or real love? Melanie Benson cannot believe how strongly she feels for a man she has just met. Because of past hurt, Melanie is leery to open her heart. For personal reasons, she especially would never date a cop. But when Melanie has to work with Chase on his case, they share a kiss that sets her heart ablaze. Will Melanie overcome her past pain and choose love? Set in the small town of Port Charlotte, FL, Silent Praise answers the question, Is there such a thing as love at first sight? And, if there is, what happens after that?
Release: 4/2/15
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