Black Page Turners

L.A. Husbands and Wives: The Hot Boyz Finale by:Marissa Monteilh
The Wilson brother’s empire returns, in L.A. Husbands & Wives, the final story in the scandalous Hot Boyz trilogy, thirteen years after the first release. Fine and famous, Mason Wilson is retired from pro-golf, and is now living Downtown while serving as Mayor of Los Angeles, in the same political arena as councilman Ryan Germany, who Mason’s wife, Mercedes, cheated with. Yet Mason has a couple of his own problems to tend to. While Torino Wilson, a nightclub owner and music producer, and his wife Sequoia still live in Ladera Heights, also known as The Black Beverly Hills, a new challenge manages to test Torino’s love and devotion, and it also threatens Sequoia’s sanity. And Claude Wilson, who owns a chain of thriving real estate offices, is legally separated from Venus, and living in Laguna Hills while enjoying his bachelorhood, yet Venus has a celebrity lover, and Claude is determined to do all he can to get her back. Can these three couples, and their children, manage to beat the odds of fame, success, scandal, and marriage, without the Wilson empire crumbling? Who will survive the drama, and who will die?
Release: 8/1/17
Click to purchase: (Kindle) or (Paperback)

Bell Bottom High: Book 4: Senior Sins by:B.J. Williams
In the final explosive episode of Bell Bottom High, Reecy Jones is a seventeen-year-old senior preparing to graduate at the top of her class in 1977. That is until one of the new teachers in Clifton, Arkansas, accuses her of committing an academic sin. Now she’s in danger of being expelled and having to repeat part of her senior year in summer school.

With time running out, can Reecy prove the false charges against her in time to graduate as the class valedictorian or not?
Release: 8/4/17
Click to purchase: (Kindle)

The Cooking Gene by:Michael W. Twitty
A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry—both black and white—through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.

Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who “owns” it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.

From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors’ survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.

As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep—the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.
Release: 8/1/17
Click to purchase: (Kindle) or (Hardcover)

Ubuntutu by:Marsha MacDowell
Ubuntutu: Life Legacies of Love and Action features quilts that pay tribute to the indelible contributions that Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the first black Archbishop of Cape Town, and his wife Leah, have made in addressing human rights, advancing social justice issues, and advocating for peace in South Africa and around the world. Archbishop Tutu is one of the most well-known champions of antiapartheid in South Africa and is a vigorous campaigner for many human rights causes. Leah, a founder of the South African Domestic Workers Association, has worked alongside her husband to advocate for peace and social justice. These art pieces also honor the Tutus’ faith and the enduring love they have for each other. The word ubuntutu, coined by one of the quilt artists, combines the name Tutu with the Nguni word ubuntu, which can be translated as “human kindness.” In the spirit of ubuntu, the quilts featured in this catalog remind us we are all interconnected.

This book, which accompanies an exhibition by the same name, is a collaborative project of the Michigan State University Museum, the Women of Color Quilters Network, and the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.
Release: 8/1/17
Click to purchase: (Paperback)

This Is by:Aaron Gilbreath
With an ear for the overlooked, Aaron Gilbreath chronicles the forgotten corners of the mid-century jazz scene. Shadowing the greats from Sonny Clark to John Coltrane, Gilbreath traces the tragedy of saxophonist Hank Mobley, unearths the story of self-exiled pianist Jutta Hipp, and pauses on the meaning of heroin for trumpeter Lee Morgan. He also revisits a few standards, like The Connection, an influential film with its own take on drugs and sobriety; the ten-year evolution of Miles Davis’ “So What”; and the impact of record labels’ vault archives. This Is: Essays on Jazz celebrates the joy, genius and struggle of jazz, in essays both intimate and deeply researched.
Release: 8/1/17
Click to purchase: (Paperback) or (Kindle)

Steal Away Home by:Matt Carter, Aaron Ivey
Thomas Johnson and Charles Spurgeon lived worlds apart.

Johnson, an American slave, born into captivity and longing for freedom— Spurgeon, an Englishman born into relative ease and comfort, but, longing too for a freedom of his own. Their respective journeys led to an unlikely meeting and an even more unlikely friendship, forged by fate and mutual love for the mission of Christ.

Steal Away Home is a new kind of book based on historical research, which tells a previously untold story set in the 1800s of the relationship between an African-American missionary and one of the greatest preachers to ever live.
Release: 8/1/17
Click to purchase: (Hardcover) or (Kindle)

Gold Blooded by:Ty Marshall
They say the pretty ones have more fun…

Golden Garcia learned at an early age that beauty is a weapon that is either working for you or against you. Stone-hearted and ambitious, she is willing to do whatever it takes to escape her unprivileged beginnings. She masters the art of seduction and manipulation to gain the things she desires most.

But when Golden meets Champ, a seasoned hustler, a lifetime wiser, she realizes the thing she desires most in life is to be loved. He spoils her with the lifestyle she’s always dreamed of and her loyalty to him knows no bounds. She becomes addicted to the rush of being a hustler’s wife and finds herself caught up in a world of drug dealing and fast money. Before long, Golden realizes the lifestyle she so desperately sought after comes with a steep price tag. One that Champ feels she is forever indebted to him. There is no way out once she’s entangled in his vicious web of lies and deceit. Golden ultimately discovers there is only one rule in the game she’s playing, self-preservation. When her plot to break away goes awry, she will be left with a decision that will forever change her life.

Gold Blooded is a fast paced, cautionary tale of sex, money & betrayal in a world where loyalty is limited and love don’t love nobody.
Release: 8/1/17
Click to purchase: (Kindle) or (Paperback)

Munch 2 by:Allison Hobbs
Although Munch has settled down with his stepmother, Sarge and his first love, Rosita, the honeymoon phase for this unlikely trio is over, and Munch is back on the prowl.

Constantly out in the streets, feeding his addiction and satisfying his taste buds, he meets a lot of women in the course of a day, and he has come to appreciate feminine beauty in all of its forms: young, mature, willowy, curvaceous, redhead, brunette, petite, buxom, slender, and voluptuous. According to Munch, there are no unattractive women.

He spends a portion of everyday hanging in the strip club where his best friend manages a dancer named Egypt. Although the dressing room at the strip club is off limits to the male clientele, Munch, with his special talent, is always welcome inside.

Popular with the ladies, Munch has a variety of friends with benefits, and he has no intention of ever settling down. But after a chance encounter with a wounded soul, a woman who very much reminds him of himself, he reexamines his lifestyle and wonders if it’s finally time to embrace monogamy.

But life is never simple, and the moment Munch is ready to commit, he’s forced to make a choice that will forever change his perspective of intimate relationships and the meaning of love.
Release: 7/31/17
Click to purchase: (Kindle)