Black Page Turners

Fiction

My Love At Last (Sag Harbor Village) by:Donna Hill
The right one is always worth waiting for…

Dr. Olivia Gray’s passion for history is sparked by the mystery surrounding her own birth parents. A research project in Sag Harbor promises to be her most intriguing assignment yet—especially when she meets Connor Lawson. Shared interests and easy banter give way to searing, unforgettable nights. Yet until she uncovers her past, she can’t consider anything other than temporary bliss…

The sting of his ex-fiancée’s betrayal has left the intense, charismatic restoration specialist resistant to every matchmaking attempt—until Olivia moves to town. She’s gorgeous, talented and determined to avoid commitment. That makes their wild attraction just perfect…until it’s not nearly enough. One soul-baring revelation at a time, she’s restoring his belief in love, but can he convince her he’s offering the kind that lasts forever?
Release: 9/15/15
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This Tender Melody (The Gentlemen of Queen City Book 1) by:Kianna Alexander
Rivals—in perfect harmony…

The only thing standing between Eve Franklin and her dream is over six feet of pure, arrogant alpha male. Eve has spent years preparing to take the reins of her family’s software business. Now that her father is stepping down, he’s putting someone else in charge—a gorgeous tech magnate who’s not content with just taking Eve’s place in the boardroom. He plans to woo her into his bedroom, as well!

Software genius, talented musician and independently wealthy at thirty-six—Darius Winstead has always known how to get what he wants. And he wants Eve. But she is a challenge unlike any other. She’s sophisticated, smart and not the least bit intimidated by his success. So Darius starts to reveal all aspects of his life and invites Eve to see the man behind the millionaire. Will it be enough to make Eve listen to her heart and trust her former enemy?
Release: 9/15/15
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Practice What You Praise by:Candice Y. Johnson
Pregnant and unwed, Jojo was quickly dismissed from the church’s praise team, though the baby’s father (a choir musician) remained in his position thanks to his familial ties at church. Two years later, Jojo believes she’s paid the price for her choices and wants her spot back–after all, anyone who has ever seen her dance knows that she’s anointed to praise Him in the dance. But how long must one “sit down” before being reinstated? Isn’t a repentant heart and a humbled spirit enough? Pastor Trigg wants to lead the church in the right direction, but the congregation seems quite divided about how to move forward with letting Jojo–who is still in high school–dance in the sanctuary. Will allowing her to dance set a bad precedent? Can the members forgive and forget? While trying to sort through what’s best for the church, his personal life seems to be a total bust. Will he ever find true love? This debut work deals with a sensitive topic while maintaining a uniquely humorous point of view. Jojo will have you laughing out loud and make you while the story line begs the question: Who gives whom the right to praise?
Release: 9/15/15
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Enticing Winter (Bare Sophistication) by:Sherelle Green
A very intimate seduction

Chicago fashionista Winter Dupree is ready to take the exclusive lingerie boutique she started with her sisters to the next level. Plans are in place to unveil Bare Sophistication’s racy new line during the city’s high-profile winter Fashion Week. Then Winter discovers who she’ll be sharing the spotlight with for this glittering event—gorgeous, arrogant bachelor Taheim Reed, her once blind date from hell!

The masquerade gala is the ideal affair for the brilliant marketing tycoon to debut his men’s nightwear line. But Taheim’s off-the-charts attraction to his cohost—the free-spirited beauty he vowed never to date again—could open him up to heartbreak. His emotional walls have been sky-high since a devastating past betrayal taught him to be wary. Until one kiss from Winter reopens the floodgates of his passion… Now there’s no turning back, even as a seductive schemer jeopardizes their second chance at forever.
Release: 9/15/15
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A Dose of Passion by:Sharon C. Cooper
A prescription for sweet satisfaction…

Pediatrician Macy Carter has been so busy expanding her practice she’s had no time to build the family she craves. Her late, much-loved surrogate father apparently had some matchmaking in mind when he arranged for a sexy architect to take over his home and company. Too bad Derek is a single dad who’s been there, done that, and intends to remain unattached. Their priorities are totally out of sync. Their chemistry? Unbelievably potent.

Thanks to his former mentor, Derek Logan just inherited an architectural business, a house and the gorgeous client next door. He’s keeping away from forever relationships, but this doctor’s sensual touch is addictive. Helping Macy build her dream medical complex awakens Derek to how much more he now wants out of life. But has he hesitated too long to prove he’s ready for and deserving of her love?
Release: 9/15/15
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Bad Choices Can Be Deadly by:Monica Lynne Foster
Even beautiful, professional, successful women can have relationship drama. And that’s Chanelle Slate. First she catches her boyfriend of 12 years in a compromising position. In their bed. And she makes it clear to him and his new lover how she feels about his betrayal. Then, against heavenly advice, she seeks comfort in the arms of her married colleague… until he decides to work on his marriage and moves out of state with his wife.

By the time the love she’s wanted all of her adult life is finally in front of her, the mistakes, and sins, of her past come back to haunt her. And she quickly learns that it will be impossible for everyone to make it out alive.
Release:9/13/15
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Candace Reign by:Sharai Robbin
Candace thinks she has it all—a good job, a promising future, and a plan to get herself and her son out of the hood. But can she still make it happen when she gets involved with a young thug chasing street dreams?
Even with a good job, Candace is barely getting by, and raising her ten-year-old son is becoming more challenging by the day. Still, the quick-witted Candace has a plan. She’s focused on a big promotion with a healthy salary increase that will put her right where she needs to be.

Her strongest supporter is her buck-wild little sister Marci, who’s head over heels in love with a married man. Her other support comes from Prince, her son’s father, who is incarcerated but has her back no matter what. Still, not even the hustle she learned from him helps keep her straight on her paper chase.

Then she meets Chris—a pretty boy seven years her junior. Candace doesn’t know much about him, but his street-savvy swagger and seductive smile keep her heart racing. She should know better than to get involved with a man who’s tied to the streets, but Candace can’t bring herself to shake him off. And soon, Chris drags her down a road that threatens to end her career…and her life.
Release: 9/15/15
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A Free State: A Novel by:Tom Piazza
The author of City of Refuge returns with a startling and powerful novel of race, violence, and identity set on the eve of the Civil War.

The year is 1855. Blackface minstrelsy is the most popular form of entertainment in a nation about to be torn apart by the battle over slavery. Henry Sims, a fugitive slave and a brilliant musician, has escaped to Philadelphia, where he earns money living by his wits and performing on the street. He is befriended by James Douglass, leader of a popular minstrel troupe struggling to compete with dozens of similar ensembles, who imagines that Henry’s skill and magnetism might restore his troupe’s sagging fortunes. The problem is that black and white performers are not allowed to appear together onstage. Together, the two concoct a masquerade to protect Henry’s identity, and Henry creates a sensation in his first appearances with the troupe. Yet even as their plan begins to reverse the troupe’s decline, a brutal slave hunter named Tull Burton has been employed by Henry’s former master to track down the runaway and retrieve him, by any means necessary.

Bursting with narrative tension and unforgettable characters, shot through with unexpected turns and insight, A Free State is a thrilling reimagining of the American story by a novelist at the height of his powers.
Release:9/15/15
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Non-Fiction

Dear Mary: Lessons From the Mother of Jesus for the Modern Mom by:Sarah Jakes
Through the form of letters, Sarah Jakes examines the life of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to help women understand what a life of faith looks like.

Hopeful, Inspiring Message for Moms from Sarah Jakes

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a remarkable example of quiet, resilient faith and courage in the face of adversity. From the angel’s first announcement of her pregnancy to the death and resurrection of her son, Mary was witness to our Lord and Savior in a unique and special way.

And as a mother herself, she speaks to the modern-day mom in a way few have explored before.

Writing in the form of letters, Sarah Jakes examines the life of Mary–and through Mary, Jesus–to better understand what a life of faith looks like. Maybe you struggle to trust God’s will for your life. Perhaps you have fears and insecurities that keep you from realizing the joy God wants for you, or the thought of raising little ones overwhelms you. Through the example of Mary, discover the freedom that only true faith can bring.
Release:9/15/15
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The Jemima Code by:Toni Tipton-Martin
Women of African descent have contributed to America’s food culture for centuries, but their rich and varied involvement is still overshadowed by the demeaning stereotype of an illiterate “Aunt Jemima” who cooked mostly by natural instinct. To discover the true role of black women in the creation of American, and especially southern, cuisine, Toni Tipton-Martin has spent years amassing one of the world’s largest private collections of cookbooks published by African American authors, looking for evidence of their impact on American food, families, and communities and for ways we might use that knowledge to inspire community wellness of every kind.

The Jemima Code presents more than 150 black cookbooks that range from a rare 1827 house servant’s manual, the first book published by an African American in the trade, to modern classics by authors such as Edna Lewis and Vertamae Grosvenor. The books are arranged chronologically and illustrated with photos of their covers; many also display selected interior pages, including recipes. Tipton-Martin provides notes on the authors and their contributions and the significance of each book, while her chapter introductions summarize the cultural history reflected in the books that follow. These cookbooks offer firsthand evidence that African Americans cooked creative masterpieces from meager provisions, educated young chefs, operated food businesses, and nourished the African American community through the long struggle for human rights. The Jemima Code transforms America’s most maligned kitchen servant into an inspirational and powerful model of culinary wisdom and cultural authority.
Release:9/15/15
Click Version to Purchase: (Hardcover)

WoodLawn by:Todd Gerelds
This riveting true story of courage, strength, and football at the height of racial tension in Birmingham, Alabama, inspired the motion picture Woodlawn, and tells the story of Coach Tandy Gerelds, his running back Tony Nathan, and a high school football game that healed a city.

Woodlawn is soon to be a major motion picture starring Jon Voight, Nic Bishop, and C. Thomas Howell.

In the midst of violent, impassioned racial tensions in Birmingham, Alabama, new football coach, Tandy Gerelds, was struggling to create a winning football team at Woodlawn High School—one of the last schools in Birmingham to integrate. The team he was handed did not have the caliber of players he needed to win—until he saw Tony Nathan run.

But Tony was African American and Coach Gerelds knew that putting him in as running back would be like drawing a target on his own back and the back of his soon-to-be star player. But Coach Gerelds saw something in Tony, and he knew that his decision to let him play was about more than football. It was about doing what was right for the school…and the city.

And soon, the only place in the city where blacks and whites got along was on Coach Gerelds’s football team. With the help of a new school chaplain, Tony learned to look beyond himself and realized that there was more at stake than winning a game.

In 1974, Coach Gerelds’s interracial team made Alabama history drawing 42,000 fans into the stadium to watch them play. It was this game that triggered the unity and support of the Woodlawn High School Colonels and that finally allowed a city to heal and taught its citizens how to love.
Release: 9/15/15
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The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States by:Ira Berlin
Ira Berlin offers a framework for understanding slavery’s demise in the United States. Emancipation was not an occasion but a century-long process of brutal struggle by generations of African Americans who were not naive about the price of freedom. Just as slavery was initiated and maintained by violence, undoing slavery also required violence.

Perhaps no event in American history arouses more impassioned debate than the abolition of slavery. Answers to basic questions about who ended slavery, how, and why remain fiercely contested more than a century and a half after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. In The Long Emancipation, Ira Berlin draws upon decades of study to offer a framework for understanding slavery’s demise in the United States. Freedom was not achieved in a moment, and emancipation was not an occasion but a near-century-long process—a shifting but persistent struggle that involved thousands of men and women.

Berlin teases out the distinct characteristics of emancipation, weaving them into a larger narrative of the meaning of American freedom. The most important factor was the will to survive and the enduring resistance of enslaved black people themselves. In striving for emancipation, they were also the first to raise the crucial question of their future status. If they were no longer slaves, what would they be? African Americans provided the answer, drawing on ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence and precepts of evangelical Christianity. Freedom was their inalienable right in a post-slavery society, for nothing seemed more natural to people of color than the idea that all Americans should be equal.

African Americans were not naive about the price of their idealism. Just as slavery was an institution initiated and maintained by violence, undoing slavery also required violence. Freedom could be achieved only through generations of long and brutal struggle.
Release: 9/15/15
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US(a) by:Saul Williams
In his greatly anticipated new full-length book of poetry, the first since The Dead Emcee Scrolls in 2006, “the poet laureate of hip-hop” (CNN) Saul Williams presents his ideas, observations, realizations, dreams, and questions about the state of America, the American psyche, and what it means to be American.

After four years abroad, Williams returned to the United States and found his head twirling with thoughts on race, class, gender, finance, freedom, guns, cooking shows, dog shows, superheroes, not-so-super politicians—everything that makes up our country. US(a.) is a collection of poems that embodies the spirit of a culture that questions sentiments and realities, embracing a cross-section of pop culture, hip-hop, and the greater world politic of the moment. Williams explores what social media may only hint at—times and realities have changed; there is a connect and a disconnect. We are wirelessly connected to a past and path to which we are chained. Saul Williams stops and frisks the moment, makes it empty its pockets, and chronicles what’s inside. Here is an extraordinary book that will find its place in the hands and minds of a new generation.
Release: 9/15/15
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Once in a Great City by:David Maraniss
As David Maraniss captures it with power and affection, Detroit summed up America’s path to music and prosperity that was already past history.

It’s 1963 and Detroit is on top of the world. The city’s leaders are among the most visionary in America: Grandson of the first Ford; Henry Ford II; influential labor leader Walter Reuther; Motown’s founder Berry Gordy; the Reverend C.L. Franklin and his daughter, the amazing Aretha; Governor George Romney, Mormon and Civil Rights advocate; super car salesman Lee Iacocca; Mayor Jerome Cavanagh, a Kennedy acolyte; Police Commissioner George Edwards; Martin Luther King. It was the American auto makers’ best year; the revolution in music and politics was underway. Reuther’s UAW had helped lift the middle class.

The time was full of promise. The auto industry was selling more cars than ever before and inventing the Mustang. Motown was capturing the world with its amazing artists. The progressive labor movement was rooted in Detroit with the UAW. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech there two months before he made it famous in the Washington march.

Once in a Great City shows that the shadows of collapse were evident even then. Before the devastating riot. Before the decades of civic corruption and neglect, and white flight. Before people trotted out the grab bag of rust belt infirmities—from harsh weather to high labor costs—and competition from abroad to explain Detroit’s collapse, one could see the signs of a city’s ruin. Detroit at its peak was threatened by its own design. It was being abandoned by the new world. Yet so much of what Detroit gave America lasts.
Release: 9/15/15
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