Bestselling African American Books, January 2010

1. Wench: A Novel by Dolen Perkins-valdez
   (Amistad, 01/01/10, Hardcover)
   

   An ambitious and startling debut novel that follows the lives of four women at a resort popular among slaveholders who bring their enslaved mistresses. Tawawa House in many respects is like any other American resort before the Civil War. Situated in Ohio, this idyllic retreat is particularly nice in the summer when the Southern humidity is too much to bear. The main building, with its luxurious finishes, is loftier than the white cottages that flank it, but then again, the smaller structures are better positioned to catch any breeze that may come off the pond. And they provide more privacy, which best suits the needs of the Southern white men who vacation there every summer with their black, enslaved mistresses. It’s their open secret. Lizzie, Reenie, and Sweet are regulars at Tawawa House. They have become friends over the years as they reunite and share developments in their own lives and on their respective plantations. They don’t bother too much with questions of freedom, though the resort is situated in free territory — but when truth-telling Mawu comes to the resort and starts talking of running away, things change. To run is to leave behind everything these women value most — friends and families still down South — and for some it also means escaping from the emotional and psychological bonds that bind them to their masters. When a fire on the resort sets off a string of tragedies, the women of Tawawa House soon learn that triumph and dehumanization are inseparable and that love exists even in the most inhuman, brutal of circumstances — all while they are bearing witness to the end of an era. An engaging, page-turning, and wholly original novel, Wench explores, with an unflinching eye, the moral complexities of slavery.

    

2. Wrapped in Pleasure: Delaney’s Desert Sheikh\Seduced by a Stranger (Arabesque) by Brenda Jackson
   (Kimani Press, 01/01/10, Mass Market Paperback)
   

   Two Westmoreland novels — one classic and one new — from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Brenda Jackson Delaney’s Desert SheikhA mix-up in Delaney Westmoreland’s vacation plans forces her to share a cabin with a tall, dark and oh-so-handsome sheikh who is bent on her seduction. Jamal Ari Yasir intends to school Delaney in sensuality for his own pleasure. But instead of loving and leaving her, he becomes enraptured by an irresistible and unforgettable passion for his sexy-as-sin roommate. Can the arrogant sheikh convince his secret lover that they are fated for more than just a summer fling? Seduced by a StrangerJohari Yasir has no interest in returning to her homeland to marry a man she’s never met — at least, not without sowing some wild oats first. And when a handsome charmer offers to whisk her away in his private plane, she impulsively accepts. Rasheed Valdemon is shocked that his bride-to-be would fly off with someone she barely knows — even though he’s the one doing the asking. More surprising is his hunger for this lovely, rebellious woman. Yet what will happen when she realizes she’s been seduced by the man who’s destined to be her husband?

    

3. Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson
   (Atheneum, 01/05/10, Paperback)
   

   If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl?As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight…for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel that shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.

    

4. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow
   (Algonquin Books, 01/11/10, Hardcover)
   

   This debut novel tells the story of Rachel, the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I. who becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy.  With her strict African American grandmother as her new guardian, Rachel moves to a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring mixed attention her way. Growing up in the 1980s, she learns to swallow her overwhelming grief and confronts her identity as a biracial young woman in a world that wants to see her as either black or white. In the tradition of Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, here is a portrait of a young girl — and society’s ideas of race, class, and beauty. It is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for best fiction manuscript addressing issues of social justice.

    

5. A Second Helping: A Blessings Novel by Beverly Jenkins
   (Avon A, 01/01/10, Paperback)
   

   With the millions she received after divorcing her faithless tycoon husband, Bernadine Brown saved the historic town of Henry Adams, Kansas, from financial ruin and found loving homes for five needy children. Now there are other “projects” crying out for rescue. If ever a town institution needed rescuing, it’s the beloved Dog and Cow diner. Once it was Henry Adams’s social center — or gossip central! — now it’s in danger of becoming duct-tape central. But there are other distractions pulling Bernadine from the task at hand: a plethora of romantic entanglements, including her own with a disturbingly attractive Malachi July; a bitter young boy newly arrived in town with his widowed father; and a fugitive on the run with a six-hundred-pound pet pig that’s wanted for murder (the pig, that is). And when Bernadine’s philandering, troublemaking ex-husband rolls into town looking for a second chance, life in Henry Adams gets very interesting indeed.

    

6. Snapped: A Novel by Tracy Brown
   (St. Martin’s Griffin, 01/05/10, Paperback)
   

   As the pampered wife of Frankie Bingham, Camille wants for nothing. After all Frankie and their life together are her whole world. So Camille tries not to be bothered by his closeness with his coworker and dear friend Gillian. But it soon becomes clear that Camille’s suspicions are correct. When his indiscretions become a public matter for the world Camille is pushed to a dangerous breaking point that spells disaster for them all.Camille’s sister Misa is newly divorced and clueless about men. She smothers men with phone calls, emails and pops up unannounced at their homes. She hacks into their voicemail and email and causes drama. So when she sets her sights on Baron, he has no idea what hit him. Will her quest to win his heart cost her everything?Dominique Storms appears to have it all – a great career, a beautiful NYC condo and a gifted teenaged daughter. Her only problem is that the man she loves is incarcerated. While trying to juggle the demands of motherhood, work, and friendships, she manages to make her man Jamel a priority in her life. But is he doing the same? And is she too distracted to notice what is going on with her daughter?Latoya Blake seems to be the one who has life all figured out, that is, until some skeletons are discovered in her closet. When her well-put-together facade crumbles, will she crumble as well?

    

7. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
   (Signet Classics, 01/05/10, Paperback)
   

   Historically acknowledged as one of America’s most powerful orators, Washington challenged racial prejudice when such behavior from a black man was unheard of. Here is the dramatic, autobiographical account of how he stood fast against the social and ideological bias prevalent in his day.

    

8. The Blue Orchard: A Novel by Jackson Taylor
   (Touchstone, 01/12/10, Paperback)
   

   On the eve of the Great Depression, Verna Krone, the child of Irish immigrants, must leave the eighth grade and begin working as a maid to help support her family. Her employer takes inappropriate liberties, and as Verna matures, it seems as if each man she meets is worse than the last. Through sheer force of will and a few chance encounters, she manages to teach herself to read and becomes a nurse. But Verna’s new life falls to pieces when she is arrested for assisting a black doctor with “illegal surgeries.” As the media firestorm rages, Verna reflects on her life while awaiting trial. Based on the life of the author’s own grandmother and written after almost three hundred interviews with those involved in the real-life scandal, The Blue Orchard is as elegant and moving as it is exact and convincing. It is a dazzling portrayal of the changes America underwent in the first fifty years of the twentieth century. Readers will be swept into a time period that in many ways mirrors our own. Verna Krone’s story is ultimately a story of the indomitable nature of the human spirit — and a reminder that determination and self-education can defy the deforming pressures that keep women and other disenfranchised groups down.

    

9. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
   (New Press, The, 01/05/10, Hardcover)
   

   Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. –FROM THE NEW JIM CROW As the United States celebrates the nation’s “triumph over race” with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Although Jim Crow laws have been wiped off the books, an astounding percentage of the African American community remains trapped in a subordinate status–much like their grandparents before them. In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community–and all of us–to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.

    

10. The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan M. Metzl
    (Beacon Press, 01/01/10, Hardcover)
    

    Revolution was in the air in the 1960s. Civil rights protests demanded attention on the airwaves and in the streets. Anger gave way to revolt, and revolt provided the elusive promise of actual change. But a very different civil rights history evolved at the Ionia State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Ionia, Michigan. Here, far from the national glare of sit-ins, boycotts, or riots, African American men suddenly appeared in the asylum’s previously white, locked wards. Some of these men came to the attention of the state after participating in civil rights demonstrations, while others were sent by the military, the penal system, or the police. Though many of the men hailed from Detroit, ambulances and paddy wagons brought men from other urban centers as well. Once at Ionia, psychiatrists classified these men under a single diagnosis: schizophrenia. In The Protest Psychosis, psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl tells the shocking story of how schizophrenia became the diagnostic term overwhelmingly applied to African American men at the Ionia State Hospital, and how events at Ionia mirrored national conversations that increasingly linked blackness, madness, and civil rights. Expertly sifting through a vast array of cultural documents — from scientific literature, to music lyrics, to riveting, tragic hospital charts — Metzl shows how associations between schizophrenia and blackness emerged during the 1960s and 1970s in ways that directly reflected national political events. As he demonstrates, far from resulting from the racist intentions of individual doctors or the symptoms of specific patients, racialized schizophrenia grew from a much wider set of cultural shifts that defined the thoughts, actions, and even the politics of black men as being inherently insane. Ultimately, The Protest Psychosis provides a cautionary tale of how anxieties about race continue to impact doctor-patient interactions, even during our current, seemingly post-race era of genetics, pharmacokinetics, and brain scans.

     

11. Eighth-Grade Superzero by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
    (Arthur A. Levine Books, 01/01/10, Hardcover)
    

    Ever since a deeply unfortunate incident earlier this year, Reggie’s been known as “Pukey” McKnight at his high-intensity Brooklyn middle school. He wants to turn his image around, but he has other things on his mind as well: his father, who’s out of a job; his best friends, Ruthie and Joe C.; his former best friend Donovan, who’s now become a jerk; and of course, the beautiful Mialonie. The elections for school president are coming up, but with his notorious nickname and “nothing” social status, Reggie wouldn’t stand a chance, if he even had the courage to run. Then Reggie gets involved with a local homeless shelter, the Olive Branch. Haunted by two of the clients there–George, a once-proud man now living on the streets, and Charlie, a six-year-old kid who becomes his official “Little Buddy”–he begins to think about making a difference, both in the world and at school. Pukey for President? It can happen . . . if he starts believing.

     

12. Bedroom Bully by Trista Russell
    (Pocket, 01/26/10, Paperback)
    

    In award-winning author Trista Russell’s latest erotic adventure, two lovers bound by an impossible crime confront a dangerous seduction that sends them over the edge….As Audra Lopez watches news reports about the infamous “Turnpike Cop Killer” at her favorite after-work spot, the last thing she expects is to find the wanted man waiting at her house like an old, familiar lover. Shaken with fright when he nudges a gun to her body and demands protection, Audra has no clue how deeply the murderer’s rough, tender touches will penetrate the hardened layers of her heart. Dean Casey can’t believe he’s on the run after shooting two cops. But he never dreamed that his young daughter would be molested, either, a crushing reality that pushed the hardworking father to the brink of insanity. With the entire city of Miami on the hunt for him, Dean must figure out a way to save his daughter before vanishing from her life forever. To complicate matters, his hostage is a sexy, thick beauty whose attraction to him is impossible to ignore. Overcome with the thrill of their forbidden lust and imprisoned in the walls of her home, Audra and Dean lose themselves in an addictive, erotic haze — until sudden tragedies and shocking twists force them to escape Miami. As the fugitives set sail on the tranquil Caribbean Sea, their treacherous journey will, once and for all, test the limitless bounds of their passion.

     

13. Finding Martha’s Place: My Journey Through Sin, Salvation, and Lots of Soul Food by Martha Hawkins
    (Touchstone, 01/12/10, Hardcover)
    

    Welcome to Martha’s Place . . .Martha Hawkins was the tenth of twelve children born in Montgomery, Alabama. There was no money, but her childhood was full of love. Martha’s mother could transform a few vegetables from the backyard into a feast and never turned away a hungry mouth.Memories of the warmth of her family’s supper table would remain with Martha. Even as a poor single mother without a high school diploma, Martha dreamed of one day opening a restaurant that would make people feel at home. She’d serve food that would nourish body and soul. But time went by and that dream slipped further and further away as Martha battled the onset of what would later become a severe mental illness.But the thing about hitting bottom is that there’s nowhere to go but up. Martha decided to step into God’s promise for her life. Her boundless faith and joy led her to people who would change her world and lend a helping hand when she most needed and least expected one.Martha’s Place is now a nationally known destination for anyone visiting the Deep South and a culinary fixture of life in Montgomery. Martha only hires folks who are down on their luck, just as she once was. High-profile politicians, professional athletes, artists, musicians, and actors visit regularly. Martha has proven many times that keeping the faith makes the difference between failure and success. This is the story of how Martha finally found her place. . . .

     

14. Diary of a Stalker (Urban Renaissance) by Electa Rome Parks
    (Urban Trade Paper, 01/01/10, Paperback)
    

    Never judge a book by its cover. . . Xavier Preston is tall, dark, and handsome, and the problem is that he knows it. He’s a bestselling author who is accustomed to adoring female fans, both young and old, flirting with him, throwing themselves shamelessly at him, and trying to get between more than the covers of his novels. He has always been more than willing to accommodate their needs and desires; however, his womanizing days have finally ended. He’s engaged to a beautiful woman, Kendall, and he’s decided to walk the straight and narrow. Or has he? From outside appearances, the very stunning Pilar has it all: a great career, a beautiful home, and a trust fund that keeps her financially secure; however, looks can be deceiving. All that glitters isn’t necessarily gold. Pilar is searching for her perfect soulmate, and she thinks she has found him in Xavier. She believes in going after what she wants with a vengeance . . . and she wants Xavier. That is not negotiable. She will have him, even if it kills him. When Xavier meets his fanatical fan, Pilar, he gets much more than he bargained for. What starts out as an erotic one-night stand quickly spirals out of control into a dangerous game of obsession and pain with both parties playing to win. Think you know what goes on behind the literary scene? Think again.

     

15. Up To No Good by Carl Weber
    (Dafina, 01/01/10, Paperback)
    

    There’s always a man around the corner, and church trustee James Black should know–he’s usually that very man. The “New York Times”-bestselling author of “Something on the Side” introduces a deliciously dysfunctional family in this new page-turning novel filled with intrigue, sex, and surprises. Annotation: The Black family has a few issues to work out. The father, James, is finally ready to put his player days behind him and settle down, but his lover is the same age as his daughter, Jamie, who has problems of her own, as she tries to discover the mystery woman who has been stalking her man. Meanwhile, James’s son Darnel catches his fiance in bed with his best friend, Omar, and he finds himself in jail after exacting a brutal vengeance. This is only the beginning of the soap opera, as the family fights to stick together through a series of unbelievable twists and turns, both in the streets and between the sheets.

     

16. The Best of Everything: A Novel by Kimberla Lawson Roby
    (Avon A, 01/01/10, Paperback)
    

    Alicia Black Sullivan swore to never repeat the mistakes of her father, the Reverend Curtis Black: she would never tell lies, she would never break any promises. And most important of all, when she got married, it would be for good. Alicia really does love her husband, Phillip, the assistant pastor of her father’s church. She just happens to love money — and the things it can buy — as well. Alicia was born to the good life, she’s entitled to the best, and she’ll do anything to get it. Even if it means piling up thousands of dollars in debt. Even if it means denying to everyone — even herself — that her love of shopping has gotten way out of control. Even if, deep down, she knows a whopper of an emotional bill is coming due. And all the regrets in the world won’t change the fact that she may be more like her infamous father than she could have imagined — or feared.

     

17. The Candy Shop by Kiki Swinson
    (Dafina, 01/01/10, Paperback)
    

    Having no regards for people, their property and even her own life, Faith Simmons has done everything from selling off her life’s fortune, to selling her body, and stealing, all because of her sweet addiction for The Candy Shop.

     

18. Promises of Forever (Indigo) by Celya Bowers
    (Genesis Press, 01/01/10, Paperback)
    

     

19. I’m a Piece of Work! Sisters Shaped by God by Cynthia L. Hale
    (Judson Pr, 01/15/10, Paperback)
    

    Rev. Dr. Cynthia L. Hale has written out of her own experience of struggle in order to help other women realize and celebrate our uniqueness, acknowledge without shame our issues and challenges, and receive healing and forgiveness. I m a Piece of Work! Sisters Shaped by God features poetry, reflections, and Scripture, taking women on a journey from brokenness to wholeness. It is a book designed to help women affirm themselves and to claim God s best.

     

20. After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson
    (Speak, 01/07/10, Paperback)
    

    The day D Foster enters Neeka and her best friend’s lives, the world opens up for them. Suddenly they’re keenly aware of things beyond their block in Queens, things that are happening in the world — like the shooting of Tupac Shakur — and in search of their Big Purpose in life. When — all too soon — D’s mom swoops in to reclaim her, and Tupac dies, they are left with a sense of how quickly things can change and how even all-too-brief connections can touch deeply.