CRRL Picks: African American FictionLike this list

27 items

• Act Your Age, Eve Brown

  Hibbert, Talia,

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  Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong--so she's given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves),…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• An American Marriage

  a Novel

  Jones, Tayari

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  Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Between

  a Novel

  Due, Tananarive, 1966-

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  A man risks his soul and his sanity to save his family from malevolent forces in this brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural. When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Leopard, Red Wolf

  James, Marlon, 1970-

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  Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter. Determined to track down a mysterious boy who went missing three years earlier, he finds himself part of an unusual group--including a shape-shifting man-animal called Leopard--who come…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Black Buck

  Askaripour, Mateo

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  Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother's home-cooked meals. A chance encounter with Rhett Daniels,…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Blood Grove

  Mosley, Walter

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  The 15th novel in the author's Easy Rawlins mystery series, this one takes place in California in 1969.

• The Bluest Eye

  Morrison, Toni

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  One of Nobel-Prize-winner Morrison's great novels that addresses race, beauty, and conformity.

• The Business of Lovers

  Dickey, Eric Jerome

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  Unlike their younger brother Andre, whose star as a comedian is rising, neither Dwayne nor Brick Duquesne is having luck with his career - and they're unluckier still in love.

• Conjure Women

  a Novel

  Atakora, Afia

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  Like her mother, Rue is an all-knowing midwife, healer, and conjurer of curses on the plantation of Marse Charles. Moving back and forth in time between the years before and after the Civil War, this novel tells the story of Rue, the families she…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Darkest Child

  Phillips, Delores, 1950-

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  Pakersfield, Georgia, 1958: Thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn is the sixth of ten fatherless siblings. She is the darkest-skinned among them and therefore the ugliest in her mother Rozelle’s estimation, but she’s also the brightest.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Heaven, My Home

  Locke, Attica

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  Texas Ranger Darren Matthews embarks on a search for a missing nine-year-old, battling centuries-old suspicions and prejudices.

• Honey Girl

  Rogers, Morgan

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  Grace Porter, an overachiever and recent PhD graduate, goes on a girls trip to Vegas to celebrate her degree but gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she can't even remember.

• In West Mills

  a Novel

  Winslow, De'Shawn Charles

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  Let the people of West Mills say what they will; the neighbors' gossip won't keep Azalea "Knot" Centre from what she loves best: cheap moonshine, 19th-century literature, and the company of men. Alone in her one-room shack, ostracized by her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• It's Not All Downhill From Here

  a Novel

  McMillan, Terry

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  A very funny story by the author of "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" and "Waiting to Exhale."

• The Man Who Lived Underground

  a Novel

  Wright, Richard, 1908-1960

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  The author of "Native Son" wrote this short novel in 1941. Its publication 80 years later includes a companion essay, "Memories of My Grandmother," in which he explains how he came to write it.

• Moon and the Mars

  Corthron, Kia

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  A novel about a young biracial orphan growing up in New York City around the time of the Civil War.

• The Mothers

  a Novel

  Bennett, Brit

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  Nadia Turner, mourning her own mother's recent suicide, takes up with the local pastor's son. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance and the subsequent cover-up will have an impact that goes far…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Nickel Boys

  a Novel

  Whitehead, Colson, 1969-

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  For Elwood Curtis, growing up in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s means one innocent mistake can destroy his future. When he's sent to the horrendous Nickel Academy with sadistic staff and rules, he tries to hold onto hope and tries to survive.

• The Other Black Girl

  a Novel

  Harris, Zakiya Dalila

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  This highly praised novel is a witty, brilliant satire/thriller.

• Parable of the Sower

  Butler, Octavia E.

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  In 2025 California, an 18-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate inhabitants.