Washoe County Library System

In the years before the Civil War, Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, struggles through the miles-long march, seeks comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother, opening herself to a world beyond this world. "Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey...

The inspiration for the TV series I Am the Night.The Black Dahlia Murder is near-legend in the annals of true crime. But behind the shocking case of a young actress's gruesome slaying lies the story of another woman.Was Fauna Hodel the child of incest, and the catalyst for a sensational trial that left her well-to-do family scarred by scandal, even as the accused sexual predator walked free? Taken as an infant from her teenage mother, Fauna was placed...

“FAMILY TREE is warm, rich, textured, and impossible to put down.”
–Nora Roberts
Dana Clarke has always longed for the stability of home and family–her own childhood was not an easy one. Now she has married a man she adores and is about to give birth to their first child. But though her daughter is born beautiful and healthy, no one can help noticing the African American traits in her appearance. Dana’s husband,...

When a brush with death severely alters gutsy, outgoing Ryan, a seventeen-year-old skydiver, she must fight the girl she has become or lose herself forever.

In the winter of 1953, Boy Novak arrives by chance in a small town in Massachusetts, looking, she believes, for beauty. She marries a local widower and becomes stepmother to his winsome daughter, Snow Whitman. Elements of the familiar tale of aesthetic obsession begin to play themselves out when the birth of Boy's daughter, Bird, who is dark-skinned, exposes the Whitmans as light-skinned African Americans passing for white. Now Boy, Snow, and Bird...

A collection of writings in which multiracial teenagers share their experiences related to race.

"It's August in Paris, but 17-year-old Khayyam-American, Desi, Muslim, the only child of Chicago-based academics with a summer apartment on the Ile de la Cite-is at a crossroads. Uncertain of her relationship with Zaid, the boy back home, she can't hold on to the past. Stung by her dream college's rejection of the essay she wrote to apply early, she doesn't see a clear future. Khayyam is alone in her belief that the mysterious "raven-tressed lady"...

Neil Kingsblood, an average middle-American banker, finds that he has African-American blood, a discovery which takes him to two Americas, one black and one white.

"When the body of an anonymous young Hispanic woman dressed as Queen Marie Antoinette is dredged from the Detroit River, the Detroit Police Department wants the case closed out fast. Wayne County Coroner Dr. Bobby Falconi gives the woman's photo to his old pal August Snow, insisting August show it around his native Mexicantown to see if anyone recognizes her. August's good friend Elena, a prominent advocate for undocumented immigrants, recognizes...

"The award-winning journalist and co-host of CBS Saturday Morning tells the candid, and deeply personal story of her mother’s abandonment and how the search for answers forced her to reckon with her own identity and the secrets that shaped her family for five decades. Though Michelle Miller was an award-winning broadcast journalist for CBS News, few people in her life knew the painful secret she carried: her mother had abandoned her at birth. Los...