Bad Boy Brawly Brown: An Easy Rawlins Mystery
By Walter Mosley

Easy Rawlins's old friend John shows up at his door one morning, looking for the kind of help only Easy can provide. John's stepson, Brawly Brown, has left home and John has reason to think this well-meaning boy is caught up in a situation that's more dangerous than he knows. It doesn't take Easy long to find Brawly and to learn that John is right--but getting Brawly to see things that way is another matter..

The Bondwoman's Narrative
By Hannah Crafts, Henry Louis, Jr. Gates (Editor)

An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the 1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work recently uncovered by renowned scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it is a stirring, page-turning story of "passing" and the adventures of a young slave as she makes her way to freedom.

Yet a Stranger: Why Black Americans Still Don't Feel at Home
By Deborah Mathis

"There is a suspiciousness directed at black Americans that is unbecoming of a place called home...an awareness of being on shaky ground, of hostility bubbling just beneath the surface...that at any moment and with the least provocation, the little dance of tolerance may be abandoned, and there you'd have it: a full frontal assault of fear, anger, and deadly assumptions."

Can't Be Satisfied: The Life and Times of Muddy Waters
By Robert Gordon, Keith Richards

Muddy Waters was barefoot when he got word a white man was looking for him. It was Sunday, the last day of August, 1941. The cotton had bloomed heavily and was set, the crop as it would be until picked in about a month. Muddy, like the other blacks who farmed a piece of someone else's land in Mississippi, was enjoying his lay-by. Soon, he'd be working that cotton from sun to sun.

Sea Glass: A Novel
By Anita Shreve

The year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything they own to buy the house they both love. Along with millions of other Americans, he is blindsided by the stock market crash and finds himself penniless. The only work he can find is in a nearby mill, where a labor conflict is erupting into violence. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand, Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and a home while overwhelmed by passions of every kind..