Peter Francis James
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Junior Brown is a musical prodigy losing touch with reality and everyone around him-except for one important friend Junior Brown is different than the other kids in his eighth-grade class. For one, he weighs three hundred pounds. He's also a talented musician with a serious future as a professional pianist-if he survives middle school. With an overbearing mom, disappointed teachers, and fellow students who tease him mercilessly, Junior starts to...
2) Past Due
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Author of the acclaimed novels Fatal Flaw, Bitter Truth, and Hostile Witness, bestselling writer William Lashner crafts dark, witty, engrossing tales of suspense involving one of the most intriguing characters of modern popular fiction: Victor Carl.
A defense attorney who lives his life in shades of gray, Victor Carl fights all the right fights for all the wrong reasons. With a failing legal practice, a dead-end love life, a pile of unpaid traffic...
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Reverse spin, triple pump, reverse dribble, stutter step with twist to the left, stutter into jumper, blind pass. These are me. The moves make the man. The moves make me. Jerome foxworthy -- the Jayfox to his friends -- likes to think he can handle anything. He handled growing up without a father. He handled being the first black kid in school. And he sure can handle a basketball. Then Jerome meets bix Rivers -- mysterious and moody, but a great athlete....
4) Thrill!
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Lara Ivory is a movie star -- an incandescent beauty with cat-like green eyes, full luscious lips, and honey blond hair. Lara has been at the top of her profession for eight years and everybody loves her. But at thirty-two she cannot find a man who can handle being with such an exquisite object of desire. Her ex-husband, Richard Barry, an extremely successful veteran film director, is currently married to Nikki, a feisty brunette clothes designer...
5) Scorpions
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The Scorpions are a gun-toting Harlem gang, and Jamal Hicks is about to become tragically involved with them in this authentic tale of the sacrifice of innocence and the struggle to steer clear of violence. This Newbery Honor Book will challenge young men to consider their own decisions as they come of age in a complex and often frustrating society. Pushed by a bully to fight and nagged by his principal, Jamal is having a difficult time staying in...
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The Long Rain is atypical of the usual thriller. Peter Gadol sneaks up on his readers with an easy conversational style, lures them into a comfortable bucolic setting, and then knocks them off balance with one fell swoop. After three years of struggling to restore his father's vineyard, lawyer Jason Dark has managed to get his life on track and to win back his estranged wife and son. Then, in one irrevocable moment on a dark, storm-swept mountain...
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When Black Boy exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, it caused a sensation. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy." Opposing forces felt compelled to comment: addressing Congress, Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi argued that the purpose of this book "was...
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Introducing Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con struggling to find his place in the world after 27 years in jail. Living in an abandoned apartment building in South-Central L.A., Socrates is one step away from the streets. He bags groceries at the supermarket, recycles bottles and cans for pennies, and feels himself slipping toward invisibility - until he meets 11-year-old Darryl, who is perilously close to a life of violence and bloodshed. Socrates' determination...
9) Good Peoples
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Novelist Marcus Major creates this sexy, sharp-witted story of love and the dating game in the style of Eric Jerome Dickey. Set in African-American and Latino communities, Good Peoples looks beyond a man's bravado to his longing for that special someone. Tired of the dating scene in suburban Philadelphia, 29-year-old Myles Moore is waiting for the right woman. He fills his days with basketball, teaching grade school, and "good peoples," but his buddies...
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Devil in the Grove is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court when he became embroiled in an explosive and deadly case that threatened to change the course of the civil rights movement and cost him his life. In 1949, Florida's orange industry...
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When Filthy White Guy buys about a hundred burritos and blows up the microwave of the convenience store where Paris Scott has been working for 30 long nights, Paris decides his life couldn't be more of a mess. But when he gives Filthy White Guy a ride home to a Bel Air mansion, things really start to explode.
From the dark desperation of Los Angeles to the false neon hope of Las Vegas, acclaimed author John Ridley steers a viciously careening ride...
12) The African
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The African is Harold Courlander's critically-acclaimed novel of the slave trade as seen through the eyes of Hwesuhunu. An insightful journey through the volatile frontiers of American slavery, this unforgettable story is the riveting primary source for Alex Haley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Roots. Hwesuhunu's life is portrayed in heartbreaking detail. Starting with his capture by French slave traders and the horrors of the Middle Passage, The...
13) Junebug
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In the dingy Auburn Street project where Junebug lives, ten is the age when young boys start joining gangs and helping drug dealers. Junebug has watched his friend, Darnell, drift away in a sleek, dark-windowed car. He has seen his Aunt Jolita, surrounded by a cloud of jewelry and perfume, strut off with silent gang leaders. Junebug's mother works hard to keep him and his little sister safe. So do the librarian and the tutor who set up a reading room...
15) Dirty Work
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Dirty Work is the story of two men, strangers-one white, the other black. Both were born and raised in Mississippi. Both fought in Vietnam. Both were gravely wounded. Now, twenty-two years later, the two men lie in adjacent beds in a VA hospital.Over the course of a day and a night, Walter James and Braiden Chaney talk of memories, of passions, of fate.
With great vision, humor, and courage, Brown writes mostly about love in a story about the waste...
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Children and adults alike will cheer for this funny, uplifting story of a troublemaker who joins the school newspaper and discovers the power of words-and uses that power to make a positive difference in his community. Darnell Rock is an especially meaningful hero for African American boys who confront many of the same pressures that Darnell faces.
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Phillip Martin was a powerful man in the small urban community of St. Adrienne. The minister, a handsome darkbrown-skinned man, just over six feet tall, cut an imposing figure in the pulpit and in his position as leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the parish. When the long-barred doors on his former life begin to strain, his guilty past bursts forth, sending Martin into an emotional whirlwind that threatens to destroy his family, his parish and...
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In fourteen sublime stories, the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World shows that his grasp of the human condition is firmer than ever. Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, Jones has filled this new collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the city's power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagar's Children turns...
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Generations of American history students have grown up believing that enslaved people accepted their lot and became attached to their enslavers, that rebellion was rare, and that liberation from slavery happened thanks to the enslavers.
Celebrated historian and children's book author, William Loren Katz offers a thoroughly researched look at the lives of enslaved people in the United States in Breaking the Chains. From their African abductions...
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When fate brings college student Jazmine and gangsta rapper X-Man together, they have nothing in common but a dream to make it in the music business. Suddenly Black Tie Records discovers them both, and they discover each other. Can their passionate love survive a world scarred with street violence and cut-throat ambition? Sheneska Jackson captures the gritty language and ambiance of the 'hood.