Washoe County Library System

""Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether."-Marlon James Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative and an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience. Ella and Kev are brother and sister, both...

"Ephram Jenkins has never forgotten the beautiful girl with the long braids running through the piney woods of Liberty, their small East Texas town. Young Ruby, "the kind of pretty it hurt to look at," is already quite damaged, but Ephram is forcibly drawn to her. As soon as she becomes a young woman and has any power of her own, Ruby flees suffocating Liberty for the bright pull of 1950s New York City. Years later, when a funeral forces her to return...

"For fans of Colson Whitehead and Wild Women and the Blues, Viper's Dream is a gritty, daring look at the vibrant jazz scene of midcentury Harlem, and one man’s dreams of making it big and finding love in a world that wants to keep him down. Harlem, 1936. Clyde “The Viper” Morton boards a train from Alabama to Harlem to chase his dreams of being a jazz musician. When his talent fails him, he becomes caught up in the dangerous underbelly of...

When thirteen year-old, lesbian, African American, Charlie questions her belief in God she spends a week at an all-white Christian youth camp for some soul searching.

A hurricane is about to hit the town of Johnsonville. The people are going to have to pull together as a community if they want to save their town.

"A vanished child, a family in turmoil, and a fateful phone call that brings the torments of the past into the harrowing present. the New York Times bestselling author of Someone Is Watching weaves these spellbinding elements into a gripping novel of psychological suspense--a must-read for fans of Laura Lippman and Mary Higgins Clark. "I think my real name is Samantha. I think I'm your daughter." Caroline Shipley's heart nearly stops when she...

Wynter Bates, who was adopted as a child by a tech billionaire, tries to ignore her attraction to her bodyguard, Cullen Whelan, whom she is pretending to date, while investigating her true parentage after a scandal is exposed.

In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston the sole black student at the college was living in New York, --desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.-- During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American...

"In the wake of her parents' death, Aretha, a habitually single Black lawyer, has had only one obsession in life--success--until she falls for Aaron, a coffee entrepreneur. Moving into his Brooklyn brownstone to live along with his Hurricane Sandy-traumatized, illegal-gun-stockpiling, optimized-soy-protein-eating, bunker-building roommates, Aretha finds that her dreams of making partner are slipping away, replaced by an underground world, one of selling...

When Meelah Summers meets Bostyn, it is as if the broken pieces of her heart fit together perfectly with the broken pieces of his. Meelah felt empty growing up without her mother, being raised by a father who was never there. Meeting Bostyn couldn't have come at a better time. The only problem is Meelah's father is a well-known drug distributor, and Bostyn's adoptive father is the head of the Anne Arundel County Police Department-the same police department...