In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity -- powerfully imagined and written with a savage,...

An “impeccable” novel about race relations and responsibility set in the civil-rights-era South, by the author of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (The Atlantic Monthly).
In a small Georgia town, pharmacist J. S. Malone, diagnosed with leukemia, is given a mere year to live—and a lifetime’s worth of regret over years and opportunities wasted. Meanwhile, Judge Clane, still reeling from the suicide of his...

"From Percival Everett -- a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards -- comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide...

A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel--a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet...

Two lonely characters, one black and one white, meet on the street and become friends.

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys' descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated,...

A cricket journalist quits his job to relocate to Guyana, where he immerses himself in its decaying wooden houses, sugarcane plantations, and diamond-hunter-scavenged rain forest before going on an adventure with the feisty Jan.

This is a new reading of Alan Paton's impassioned novel about a black man's country under white man's law. Set in the troubled and changing South Africa of the 1940s, Cry, the Beloved Country is the deeply moving story of Stephen Kumalo, a Zulu pastor, and his son, Absalom. Written with keen compassion and understanding, the novel powerfully evokes the experience of a land and a people torn by racial injustice. Paton said of his book: “It is a song...

In 1925, Josephine is the proud owner of a thriving farm. As a child, she channeled otherworldly power to free herself from slavery. Now, her new neighbor, a white woman named Charlotte, seeks her company, and an uneasy friendship grows between them. But Charlotte has also sought solace in the Ku Klux Klan, a relationship that jeopardizes Josephine's family. Nearly one hundred years later, Josephine's descendant, Ava, is a single mother who has just...