Shayna Small
Author
Language
English
Description
It's 2008, and the rise of Barack Obama ushers in a new kind of hope. In Chicago, Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy-League educated black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He's eager to start a family, but Ruth is uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to, and abandoned, when she was a teenager. She had promised her family she'd never look back, but Ruth knows that to move forward, she must make peace with the past. Returning...
Author
Language
English
Description
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier,...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Told from alternating perspectives, an evocative and riveting novel about the lifelong bond between two women, one Black and one white, whose friendship is indelibly altered by a tragic event--a powerful and poignant exploration of race in America today and its devastating impact on ordinary lives. Jen and Riley have been best friends since kindergarten. As adults, they remain as close as sisters, though their lives have taken different directions....
6) Saint X
Author
Language
English
Description
"Hailed as a "marvel of a book" and "brilliant and unflinching," Alexis Schaitkin's stunning debut, Saint X, is a haunting portrait of grief, obsession, and the bond between two sisters never truly given the chance to know one another. Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison's body is found in...
Author
Series
Heromaker duology volume 1
Language
English
Description
"Aristene are an order of mythical female warriors. Though heroes might be immortalized in legends, it's the Aristene who guide their paths to victory. They are the Heromakers. Raised by the order after being orphaned, Reed grew up surrounded by her future sisters-in-arms and the incredible stories of their quests. She's been counting the days until her initiation, and now one final test stands in her way: shepherding her first hero to glory on the...
8) Otaku
Author
Publisher
TOR, A Tom Doherty Associates Book
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Description
"Ditchtown. A city of skyscrapers, built atop the drowned bones of old Miami. A prison of steel, filled with unbelievers. A dumping ground for strays, runaways, and malcontents. Within these towering monoliths, Ashley Akachi is a young woman trying her best to cope with a brother who's slipping away, a mother who's already gone, and angry young men who want her put in her place. Ditchtown, however, is not the only world Ash inhabits. Within Infinite...
Author
Publisher
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"For fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Brit Bennett, a striking coming-of-age debut about friendship, community, and resilience, set in the housing projects of Chicago during one life-changing summer"--
Summer, 1999. Felicia "Fe Fe" Stevens lives with her mother and older teenaged brother in building 4950 of Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. The high-rise is next in line to be torn down by the Chicago Housing Authority, and the neighborhood is beginning...
10) The gilded ones
Author
Series
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.5 - AR Pts: 16
Language
English
Formats
Description
Inspired by the culture of West Africa, a feminist fantasy debut traces the experiences of an intuitive girl who is invited to leave her discriminatory village to join the emperor's army of near-immortal women warriors.
The blood ceremony will determine whether Deka will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs. But on...
Author
Series
All the stars and teeth volume 1
Pub. Date
2020.
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.9 - AR Pts: 17
Language
English
Formats
Description
"As princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer--the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it's never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove her mastery of the monarchy's dangerous soul magic. When her demonstration goes awry, Amora is forced to flee. She strikes a deal with Bastian, a mysterious pirate: he'll...
12) Money hacks: 275+ ways to decrease spending, increase savings, and make your money work for you!
Author
Series
Publisher
Adams Media
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Are you looking for ways to decrease your spending...and start increasing your savings? Need some simple advice for maximizing your investments? Want to start planning for your retirement but don't know where to start? It's now easier than ever to achieve all your financial goals! Many people are afraid to talk about money, which means that you might be missing some of the best money-saving skills out there! In Money Hacks you will learn the basics...
Author
Publisher
Holiday House
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
Aspiring baker seventeen-year-old Fatima navigates the challenges of parental and communal expectations in her strict Muslim community while staying true to her dreams.
Seventeen-year-old Fatima Tate, aspiring baker (100% against her conservative parents' wishes), leads a pretty normal life in long drives with BFF Zaynab, weekly services at the mosque, big family parties, soup kitchen volunteering (the best way to perfect her flaky dough recipe!),...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Brandi Maxwell is living the dream as an intern at prestigious New York fashion house Simon Van Doren. Except "living the dream" looks more like scrubbing puke from couture dresses worn by hard-partying models and putting up with microaggressions from her white colleagues. Still, she can't help but fangirl over Simon's it-girl daughter, Taylor. Until one night, at a glamorous Van Doren party, when Brandi overhears something she shouldn't have, and...
Author
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Formats
Description
From the award-winning author of All Her Little Secrets comes yet another gripping, suspenseful novel where, after the murder of a white man in Jim Crow Mississippi, two Black sisters run away to different parts of the country...but can they escape the secrets they left behind? It's the summer of 1964 and three innocent men are brutally murdered for trying to help Black Mississippians secure the right to vote. Against this backdrop, twenty-one year...
Author
Publisher
Balzar + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
Pub. Date
2023.
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 5.1 - AR Pts: 14
Language
English
Description
"Delilah always keeps her messy, gooey insides hidden behind a wall of shrugs and yeah, whatevers. She goes with the flow--which is how she ends up singing in her friends' punk band as a favor, even though she'd prefer to hide at the merch table. Reggie is a D&D Dungeon Master and self-declared Blerd. He spends his free time leading quests and writing essays critiquing the game under a pseudonym, keeping it all under wraps from his disapproving family....
Author
Publisher
Hachette Audio
Pub. Date
2019
Language
English
Description
Young Black Americans have been trying to realize the promise of the American Dream for centuries and coping with the reality of its limitations for just as long. Now, a new generation is pursuing success, happiness, and freedom — on their own terms.
In It Was All a Dream, Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions...
In It Was All a Dream, Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions...
Author
Publisher
Macmillan Audio
Pub. Date
2020
Language
English
Description
"Through this pitch-perfect rom-com, Kristina Forest explores the legacy of family and what it means to be young and full of artistic passion. I was utterly charmed from start to finish." —Maurene Goo, author of Somewhere Only We Know
Now That I've Found You is a YA novel about searching for answers, love, and your eccentric grandma in all the wrong places.
Following in the footsteps of her überfamous grandma,
Author
Pub. Date
2020.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she's hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens. Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything - not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams. Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side - and history has appeared on her...