Washoe County Library System

"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...

In this honest and stunning novel, soon to be a major motion picture directed by Barry Jenkins, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwins story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned....

Argues that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race

A memoir that examines rural poverty and the lingering strains of racism in the south by the prize-winning author of "Salvage the Bones."

A novel exploring the early years of Easy Rawlins and Mouse Alexander, protagonists in a current black PI series. The setting is Texas, the time the 1930s, and the two embark on a car ride which will engulf them in the bayou world of voodoo, sex and murder.s

"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost everything about Wallace, an introverted African-American transplant from Alabama, is at odds with the lakeside Midwestern university town where he is working toward a biochem degree. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends -- some dating each other,...

A young black man struggles to find his place in the world while growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami.

Profiles thirty-five prominent men in African American history, including James Armistead Lafayette, Thurgood Marshall, Alvin Ailey, and Leland Melvin.

"Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city’s sewer system. This is the devastating premise of this scorching novel, a masterpiece that Richard Wright was unable to publish in his lifetime. Written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), at the...

Stuart Woodss Edgar Award-winning debut novela classic American mystery saga about three generations of lawmen tangled in a web of passion, secrets, destiny, and murder in their small Southern town... In the winter of 1920, the first body is found in Delano, Georgiethe naked, brutalized corpse of a young boy. It is a crime too horrific to be ignored, the first of many that will span four decadesembroiling three police chiefs in a remarkable manhunt...