African American fiction at it BEST!
Discover the best African American fiction books! Explore captivating stories, powerful narratives, and award-winning novels by top Black authors. Find your next favorite read today!
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Friends and Lovers
by Eric Jerome Dickey
Debra meets Leonard, a successful comedian but who isn't laughing when he has to confront that moment in every man's life: is he ready for the love of a good woman? Debra's best girlfriend, Shelby, a flight attendant, keeps getting her ticket punched by brothers who don't have a clue when it comes to women. Then she meets Leonard's best buddy Tyrel. The attraction is instant - and so are the consequences, as Shelby faces a choice that could turn her whole life around.
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Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
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The Sex Chronicles
by Zane
A bold and captivating collection of stories that probes women’s darkest passions and pushes the boundaries of erotic fiction. Anyone who thinks that men are by nature more sexual than women or that African American women are especially inhibited hasn’t read Zane. Here, she presents an erotic read in three parts: Wild, Wilder, and Off Da Damn Hook. With a unique ability to tell it like it is—and also to tell it like it could be in your wildest dreams—Zane crafts stories about everyone from the sensual housewife who wants her husband to experiment more to a secret underground sorority of women that organizes some rather unconventional social events. By turns tender and outrageous, The Sex Chronicles is a pleasure from beginning to end.
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Beloved
by Toni Morrison
Sethe. Proud and beautiful, she escaped from slavery but is haunted by its heritage - from the fires of the flesh to the heartbreaking challenges to the spirit.
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Sula
by Toni Morrison
Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom—a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma’s girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula’s anarchy leads to a betrayal that may be beyond forgiveness. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Masterful, richly textured, bittersweet, and vital, Sula is a modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they long for and crave as Black women. Most of all, they ask: When can we let go? What must we hold back? And just how much can be shared in a friendship?
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The Fire Next Time
by James Baldwin
A stirring, intimate reflection on the nature of race and American nationhood that has inspired generations of writers and thinkers, first published in 1963, the same year as the March on Washington “The finest essay I’ve ever read.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the National Book Award winner Between the World and Me With clarity, conviction, and passion, James Baldwin delivers a dire warning of the effects of racism that remains urgent nearly sixty years after its original publication. In the first of two essays, “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation,” Baldwin offers kind and unflinching counsel on what it means to be Black in the United States and explains the twisted logic of American racism. In “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region in My Mind,” Baldwin recounts his spiritual journey into the church after a religious crisis at the age of fourteen, and then back out of it again, as well as his meeting with Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam. Throughout, Baldwin urges us to confront the oppressive institutions of race, religion, and nationhood itself, and insists that shared resilience among both Black and white people is the only way forward. As much as it is a reckoning with America’s racist past, The Fire Next Time is also a clarion call to care, courage, and love, and a candle to light the way.
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Mama
by Terry McMillan
Mildred Peacock, mother of five, black, and fed up with poverty and the jealous rampages of her husband, kicks him out to raise her kids on her own.