Dion Graham

In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on...

Acclaimed novelist Cotton Smith is a Western legend. Here, he continues the masterfully drawn saga of a prosperous white man closely guarding the truth of his tragic past as an Oglala Sioux.

The Wild Thing, based very loosely on the storybook by Maurice Sendak and the screenplay cowritten with Spike Jonze - is about the confusions of a boy, Max, making his way in a world he can't control. His father is gone, his mother is spending time with a younger boyfriend, his sister is becoming a teenager and no longer has an interest in him. At the same time, Max finds himself capable of startling acts of wildness: he wears a wolf suit, bites his...

New York Times and Essence best-selling author Alexs D. Pate is also a professor of African American studies at the University of Minnesota. Set in the turbulent 1960s, West of Rehoboth is the story of 12-year-old Edward Massey's summertime coming of age in the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Edward and his family have escaped the heat and violence of inner-city Philadelphia every summer for the last 5 years. Staying at his Aunt Edna's house...

The novel is called WINGED CREATURES, and tells the story of the aftermath of a random fast food restaurant shooting, as the stunned survivors attempt to deal with their shock in very different ways. The prose is raw and intimate, leaving a visceral impression.

Caryl Phillips has received international acclaim for his works, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and membership in the Royal Society of Literature. Dancing in the Dark brilliantly re-creates the life of Bert Williams, the first black entertainer to achieve stardom in America. In 1896, when Bert decides to perform his stage routine in blackface, he is accused of reviling his race even as he becomes a star in...

The best-selling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers announced himself as a literary force with this striking debut. It is the tale of two friends on a globe-trekking quest-at turns hilarious, frustrating, and heartbreaking-to give away money while grieving a painful loss.

This latest plunge in to the psyche of the lone American male by author Lysa Williams brings us three men struggling in the war against dysfunction: a high-school student who rides the NYC subway each night in search of that perfect moment of beauty; a narcoleptic painter, the erotic Vermeer, who falls asleep on contact; and a psychic male prostitute who spends his off hours creating miniature models of the seven wonders of the world. Williams guides...

Homeland is the remarkable memoir of George Obama, the youngest son of the Obama clan and President Obama's Kenyan half-brother. The father that the brothers shared was as elusive a figure for George as he had been for Barack Obama; he died when George was six months old and George was raised by his mother and stepfather. But after his mother and stepfather separated, he drifted into gangs and petty crime. Arrested for robbery, restless, willful,...

Train is an 18-year-old black caddy at an exclusive L.A. country club. He is a golf prodigy, but the year is 1953 and there is no such thing as a black golf prodigy. Nevertheless, Train draws the interest of Miller Packard, a gambler whose smiling, distracted air earned him the nickname "the Mile Away Man." Packard's easy manner hides a proclivity for violence, and he remains an enigma to Train even months later when they are winning high stakes matches...