J. California Cooper writes with a transparent clarity and such exuberant energy that her characters leap off the page, bursting with stories they've got to tell--stories of simple people, stories of families and fate, of love and marriage, of death and the triumph of the human spirit.
"An eerie epic. I loved this novel." -- Stephen King The award-winning master of horror, acclaimed author, screenwriter, and scholar Tananarive Due’s classic African Immortals series starts with an electrifying piece of dark fantasy, My Soul to Keep. When Jessica marries David, he is everything she wants in a family man: brilliant, attentive, ever youthful. Yet she still feels something about him is just out of reach. Soon, as people close to Jessica begin to meet violent, mysterious deaths, David makes an unimaginable confession: More than 400 years ago, he and other members of an Ethiopian sect traded their humanity so they would never die, a secret he must protect at any cost. Now, his immortal brethren have decided David must return and leave his family in Miami. Instead, David vows to invoke a forbidden ritual to keep Jessica and his daughter with him forever. Harrowing, engrossing and skillfully rendered, My Soul to Keep traps Jessica between the desperation of immortals who want to rob her of her life and a husband who wants to rob her of her soul. With deft plotting and an unforgettable climax, this tour de force that Stephen King called 'An eerie epic' is sure to win Due a legion of new fans.
With every commitment comes sacrifice … College junior Jill Babineux knows where her priorities lie. Between a full course load, her blood pledge to feed a certain vampire, and all the community service hours she’s got to log with her sisters in Alpha Beta Omega Sorority, the last thing on her mind is finding love, especially with an immortal. Which works out just fine for Miyoko “Tokyo” Hayashi who’s been so busy enjoying her wild days and even kinkier nights, she’s never had a reason to speak to the tiny know-it-all. But after a random run-in and a few carefully plotted encounters, Miyoko learns that there’s more to the sorority’s least favorite member. Miyoko never thought she’d actually start to like the girl, let alone love her, but when true evil comes for Jill, Miyoko finds herself willing to do anything to protect her. Anything.
Good and evil have always existed, and the battle between heaven and hell has been waged since before humankind’s earliest memories. Agents on both sides of this unending war move across the world, searching for and claiming souls to fill their ranks. They scour battlefields and dark alleys, appearing in hospitals and at the bedsides of the dying. They sometimes dwell among the oblivious masses going about their lives, not knowing that anyone could be an agent of heaven—or of hell. Hellerman is one of these agents, a shadow who descends upon the dying to procure their souls for his master. Throughout millennia, he has traveled across the continents, appearing at one moment in a far-removed village in Africa and later in the vast cities of Europe and North America. He has never questioned his duty before. But he has never had anyone show him what it is like to have someone care about him and for him. And with that friendship comes another battle—this time, inside himself—whose outcome will alter his destiny completely.
When Terrence Johnson, a high-powered attorney, and Carol Grant, a proud and spirited woman, meet, it is love at first sight, but when she is falsely accused of a crime, Terrence will stop at nothing to clear her name before their dreams of love and happiness are forever destroyed. Original.
New York Times–Bestselling Author: A banshee and her boyfriend must stop the supply of a drug from the Netherworld before their friends are fatally hooked . . . Kaylee has one addiction: her very hot, very popular boyfriend, Nash. A banshee like Kaylee, Nash understands her like no one else. Nothing can come between them. Until something does. Demon breath. No, not the toothpaste-challenged kind. The Netherworld kind. The kind that really can kill you. Somehow the super-addictive substance has made its way to the human world. But how? Kaylee and Nash have to cut off the source and protect their friends—one of whom is already hooked. And so is someone else . . . Praise for the series “Fast-paced . . . with dollops of humor.” —Booklist “Plenty of paranormal thrills.” —Kirkus Reviews
Irene van Lippe-Biesterfeld interviews 12 respected visionary thinkers about their deep connection with the earth and their views on the relationship between humanity and nature. Each contributor adds insights into the urgent change in consciousness that we must adopt in order to heal and restore our holistic relationship with the earth.
From Ishmael Reed and Toni Morrison to Colson Whitehead and Terry McMillan, Darryl Dickson-Carr offers a definitive guide to contemporary African American literature. This volume-the only reference work devoted exclusively to African American fiction of the last thirty-five years-presents a wealth of factual and interpretive information about the major authors, texts, movements, and ideas that have shaped contemporary African American fiction. In more than 160 concise entries, arranged alphabetically, Dickson-Carr discusses the careers, works, and critical receptions of Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Jamaica Kincaid, Charles Johnson, John Edgar Wideman, Leon Forrest, as well as other prominent and lesser-known authors. Each entry presents ways of reading the author's works, identifies key themes and influences, assesses the writer's overarching significance, and includes sources for further research. Dickson-Carr addresses the influence of a variety of literary movements, critical theories, and publishers of African American work. Topics discussed include the Black Arts Movement, African American postmodernism, feminism, and the influence of hip-hop, the blues, and jazz on African American novelists. In tracing these developments, Dickson-Carr examines the multitude of ways authors have portrayed the diverse experiences of African Americans. The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction situates African American fiction in the social, political, and cultural contexts of post-Civil Rights era America: the drug epidemics of the 1980s and 1990s and the concomitant "war on drugs," the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for gay rights, feminism, the rise of HIV/AIDS, and racism's continuing effects on African American communities. Dickson-Carr also discusses the debates and controversies regarding the role of literature in African American life. The volume concludes with an extensive annotated bibliography of African American fiction and criticism.