Bestselling and award-winning author, Sharon G. Flake, delivers a mystery set in the 1950s that eerily blends history, race, culture, and family. Octobia May is girl filled with questions. Her heart condition makes her special - and, some folks would argue, gives this ten-year-old powers that make her a "wise soul." Thank goodness for Auntie, who convinces Octobia's parents to let her live in her boarding house that is filled with old folks. That's...

"Greg Abimbola is a language teacher at the prestigious Calderhill Academy in Pittsburgh. Only that's not his real name . . . or the only secret he's hiding. When the murder of a wealthy parent on school premises shines an unwanted spotlight on Calderhill Academy, Greg is determined to avoid attention. That is until the closest person to a true friend Greg has is arrested for the murder. To prove her innocence, Greg will reluctantly emerge from the...

Fourteen-year-old Alix is faced with a huge moral dilemma when she helps pull an illegal Iraqi immigrant from the incoming tide on the coastal English island where she lives. Hayling Island off the coast of England seems insulated from problems such as war, terrorism and refugees. But when Alix and her friend Samir go to the beach and pull a drowning man out of the incoming tide, her world changes. Mohammed, an illegal immigrant and student, has...

A darkly funny and heartfelt debut novel about what it means to grow up young and black on the south side of Chicago when it feels like your choices are slim to none. Claude McKay Love is an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights-era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change. When...

"A stellar novel rendered into a darkly comic, unforgettable narrative by Booker International Prize winning translator Jessica Cohen. An Israeli professor travels to a fictitious West African nation to trace a slave-trading ancestor, only to be imprisoned under a new law barring successive generations from profiting off the proceeds of slavery. But before departing from Tel Aviv, the protagonist falls in love with Lucile, a mysterious African migrant...

"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother -- only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...

"The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a gay man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you'll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment. Baxter's name isn't George. But it's 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter...

"When a young girl is asked where she's from--where she's really from--she's no longer as she was. She decides to turn to her dear abuelo for some help with this ever-persistent question. But he doesn't quite give her the answer she expects."--Page [2] of cover. When other children and their parents keep asking a young girl where she is from, she puts the same question to her grandfather who describes the land and people from which her family originated....

While writing letters to Innocence X, a justice-seeking project, asking them to help her father, an innocent black man on death row, teenaged Tracy takes on another case when her brother is accused of killing his white girlfriend. Every week Tracy Beaumont writes letters to Innocence X asking the organization to help her father, an innocent Black man on death row. After seven years, Tracy is running out of time: her dad has only 267 days left. Then...

In the Jim Crow South, white supremacy reigns and tensions are high. But Evalene Deschamps has other things to worry about. She has two little sisters to look after, an overworked single mother, and a longtime crush who is finally making a move. On top of all that, Evvie's magic abilities are growing stronger by the day. Her family calls it jubilation--a gift passed down from generations of black women since the time of slavery. And as Evvie's talents...