African American Science Fiction
Explore top African American science fiction books with our curated list. Discover groundbreaking works by Black authors blending futuristic visions with cultural depth and innovation.
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The Living Blood
by Tananarive Due
Award-winning author Tananarive Due's spine-tingling tale of supernatural suspense "weaves a stronger net than ever" ("Kirkus Reviews") as a woman searches for inherited power that can save her hometown from the forces of evil.
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My Soul to Keep
by Tananarive Due
When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever. Harrowing, engrossing and skillfully rendered, My Soul to Keep traps Jessica between the desperation of immortals who want to rob her of her life and a husband who wants to rob her of her soul. With deft plotting and an unforgettable climax, this tour de force reminiscent of early Anne Rice will win Due a new legion of fans.
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The Good House
by Tananarive Due
Award-winning author Due's spine tingling tale of supernatural suspense "weaves a stronger net than ever" (Kirkus Reviews") as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from the forces of evil.
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Whispers in the Night
by Brandon Massey
The third volume in Brandon Massey's celebrated Dark Dreams collections, filled with tales of spine-tingling suspense and pulse-pounding terror ...
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The Between
by Tananarive Due
A brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural in which a middle–class African–American family's very existence is threatened by inner and outer demons, now in a brand–new mass market edition, from acclaimed author Tananarive Due. When Hilton was just a boy, his aged grandmother saved him from drowning by pulling him out of a treacherous ocean current, sacrificing her life for his. Now, thirty years later, Hilton begins to think his borrowed time is running out. His wife, the only elected African–American judge in Dade County, Florida, has begun receiving racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, and Hilton's sleep is plagued by nightmares more horrible than any he has ever experienced. As he battles both the psychotic stalking of his family and the unseen enemy that haunts his sleep, Hilton's sense of reality is slipping away. Shocking and utterly convincing, The Between is a novel about a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves but may have already lost, and it holds readers suspended between the real and the surreal until the final moment of chilling resolution.
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Joplin's Ghost
by Tananarive Due
When Phoenix Smalls was ten, she nearly died at her parents' jazz club when she was crushed by a turn-of-the-century piano. Now twenty-four, Phoenix is launching a career as an R & B singer. She's living out her dreams and seems destined for fame and fortune. But a chance visit to a historical site in St. Louis ignites a series of bizarre, erotic encounters with a spirit who may be the King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin. The sound of Scott Joplin is strange enough to the ears of the hip-hop generation. But the idea that these antique sounds are being channeled through Phoenix? Her life is suddenly hanging in the balance. How will she find her true voice and calling? Can the power of her own inner song give Phoenix the strength to fight to live out her own future? Or will she be forever trapped in Scott Joplin's doomed, tragic past? Stunningly original, Joplin's Ghost is a novel filled with art and intrigue -- and is sure to bring music to readers' ears.
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Voices from the Other Side
by Brandon Massey
16 nightmarish excursions into the other side from stellar black authors, including Eric Jerome Dickey, Linda Addison and Terence Taylor.
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Kindred
by Octavia Butler
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.") From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. “I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present. Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times). “Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.” —N. K. Jemisin This book has been published with two different covers. Customers will be shipped the cover available.
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Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler
In a futuristic society filled with chaos, young Lauren Olamina begins a journey that will test her will and ultimately start a new faith. Includes questions for discussion.
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Fledgling
by Octavia E. Butler
"A master storyteller, Butler casts an unflinching eye on racism, sexism, poverty, and ignorance and lets the reader see the terror and beauty of human nature." - The Washington Post This is the story of an apparently young, amnesiac girl whose alarmingly unhuman needs and abilities lead her to a startling conclusion: She is in fact a genetically modified, 53-year-old vampire. Forced to discover what she can about her stolen former life, she must at the same time learn who wanted-and still wants-to destroy her and those she cares for and how she can save herself.
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Seed to Harvest
by Octavia E. Butler
The Patternist novels details a secret history continuing from the Ancient Egyptian period to the far future that involves telepathic mind control and an extraterrestrial plague.
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Lilith's Brood
by Octavia E. Butler
The acclaimed trilogy that comprises LILITH'S BROOD is multiple Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best. Presented for the first time in one volume, with an introduction by Joan Slonczewski, Ph.D., LILITH'S BROOD is a profoundly evocative, sensual -- and disturbing -- epic of human transformation. Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected -- by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind. But Lilith and all humanity must now share the world with uncanny, unimaginably alien creatures: their own children. This is their story...
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Bloodchild and Other Stories
by Octavia E. Butler
A perfect introduction for new readers and a must-have for avid fans, this New York Times Notable Book includes "Bloodchild," winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula awards and "Speech Sounds," winner of the Hugo Award. Appearing in print for the first time, "Amnesty" is a story of a woman named Noah who works to negotiate the tense and co-dependent relationship between humans and a species of invaders. Also new to this collection is "The Book of Martha" which asks: What would you do if God granted you the ability—and responsibility—to save humanity from itself? Like all of Octavia Butler’s best writing, these works of the imagination are parables of the contemporary world. She proves constant in her vigil, an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong, and one of contemporary literature’s strongest voices.
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Parable of the Talents
by Octavia E. Butler
"Enthralling...compelling and truly original." - Denver Post Lauren Olamina's love is divided among her young daughter, her community, and the revelation that led Lauren to found a new faith that teaches "God Is Change". But in the wake of environmental and economic chaos, the U.S. government turns a blind eye to violent bigots who consider the mere existence of a black female leader a threat. And soon Lauren must either sacrifice her child and her followers -- or forsake the religion that can transform human destiny.
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Love at First Bite
by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Until Death Do Us Part" by Sherrilyn Kenyon Over five hundred years ago, Esperetta's soul was bound to her husband's by dark magic, and when Velkan became a Dark-Hunter, to her horror, she became immortal as well. Now, they must come together to fight an old enemy...and the passion that threatens to consume them once more. "Ride the Night Wind" by L.A. Banks Dark dreams haunt Jose Ciponte, dreams of a woman so beautiful he aches for her-and a deadly enemy who stalks them in the night. And now those dreams have become a reality... "The Gift" by Susan Squires All Major Davis Ware wants to do is propose to the beautiful Emma Fairchild. Instead, he is called back into battle, and a desperate fate. And Emma will venture into hell itself to save him. "The Forgotten One" by Ronda Thompson Lady Anne Baldwin longs to break free from her proper bonds. When she meets the mysterious Merrick, whose eyes glow like a wolf's, she may have found more than she bargained for.
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The Darkness
by L. A. Banks
After the battle at Masada, the Neteru team returns to San Diego believing 40,000 demons had been eradicated and that Lilith's spawn has been killed. But somehow the treacherous little creature got away. Now the Antichrist has been born and will soon rise to power.
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The Awakening
by L. A. Banks
A battle is brewing in the underworld, and at the center of it all is Damali Richards, spoken word artist and vampire huntress. But she is not just any huntress; she is the millennium Neteru, a woman so powerful that the vampire world is about to start a war-one that threatens to spread onto her streets-in order to possess her... Fallon Nuit, a rogue vampire who is one of the most powerful Damali has ever encountered, has allied himself with the deadly Amanthra demons in order to claim her. But the Vampire Council has plans for her as well. And now an unlikely variable has entered the equation: an ex-lover turned master vampire with an agenda of his own. Damali must risk trusting him once more if they are to survive.
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Bad Blood
by L. A. Banks
Sasha Trudeau knows all about working beneath the shadows, back-alley deals, and things that go bump in the night. She also knows that the world is unaware of the existence of the paranormal--and that the government would like to keep it that way. As a highly trained Special Ops soldier, Sasha and her team are an elite group of individuals who are survivors of werewolf attacks, now trained to be loyal to only to each other and their government. But when she returns from a solo mission, she finds that her team has mysteriously gone missing. Shocking government conspiracies, double-dealing vampires, and a host of stunning revelations about who--and what--she really is are only just the beginning...
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The Bitten
by L. A. Banks
In this fourth and most daring book in Banks's series, Damali Richards and Carlos Rivera now have the chance to explore their love. But they are quickly thrust into a web of vampire politics and intrigue when one of the four Master vampires steals one of the Keys that opens the sixth seal as foretold in Revelations.
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The Damned
by L. A. Banks
When Lilith, the consort of the Un-Named One, releases the Damned to wreak havoc on all humankind, Damali, Carlos, and the Guardians race against time to stop the horrific infection spawned by these creatures of hell by finding and beheading the evil Lilith.
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Creepin'
by L. A. Banks
Welcome to a world of werewolves, vampires, demons and mere mortals, where, in the name of revenge, five women are about to live out their wildest fantasies—even if it means crossing over to that other side… Five of today's most provocative authors invite you into a realm beyond the limits of your sensual imagination, where anything can happen—and does. In these stories of bloodlust and payback, of scorching desire and otherworldly fantasies come true, you'll encounter five women who thought they had it all, until a betrayal takes them on a feverish journey to the dark edge of vengeance. Fueled by lust and deception, these women are going to let their voracious appetites guide them as they take justice into their own hands.…
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The Wicked
by L. A. Banks
This latest in the 'Vampire Huntress Legend' series sees Damali & Carlos struggle to contain the rising power of Cain, now chairman of the Vampire Council. Cain seeks to raise the deadly Fallon Nuit, and Carlos will need all his strength & courage to prevent him.
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The Forsaken
by L. A. Banks
"Banks spins a head-bendingly complex tale of passion, mythology, war, and love that lasts till the grave--and beyond . . . devoted fans should relish this new chapter in a promising series."
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Skin Folk
by Nalo Hopkinson
A new collection of short stories from Hopkinson, including "Greedy Choke Puppy," which Africana.com called "a cleverly crafted West Indian story featuring the appearance of both the soucouyant (vampire) & lagahoo (werewolf)," "Ganger (Ball Lightning)," praised by the Washington Post Book World as written in "prose [that] is vivid & immediate," this collection reveals Hopkinson's breadth & accomplishments as a storyteller.
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The Wave
by Walter Mosley
A New York Times Bestselling AuthorWalter Mosley, the New York Times bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins novels and acclaimed author of Futureland and Blue Light, returns to science fiction with a novel both eerie and transcendent.
