February is Black History Month, and its a great time to enjoy a book by a Black author.
Whether it's a gripping mystery, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy, or thought-provoking literary fiction, there are plenty of talented authors writing what you love. We've profiled a few authors and a recent release by each one, and you can find lots more in our online catalogue. Or check out the Black History Month display in the Adult Services department, and be sure to pick up clues to our online Black History Month Scavenger Hunt. Return the completed form to the library by March 1 for a chance to win admission to Chicago's DuSable Museum.
Colson Whitehead
Raised in New York City, Harvard graduate Whitehead made his publishing debut in 1999. The Intuitionists brought him critical acclaim, but Whitehead's 2016 release The Underground Railroad made him a best-selling author. The novel reimagines the Underground Railroad as a literal railroad operating in secret throughout the Civil War-era South, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017.
When Cora and Ceasar, two slaves on a cotton plantation, decide to escape on the railroad, things don't go as planned. Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
Jasmine Guillory
When San Francisco attorney Guillory took part in 2015's National Novel Writing Month, she didn't realize she was about to embark on a new career as a romance novelist. The draft she wrote in November 2015 became her 2018 debut novel The Wedding Date, which was a Library Reads selection. The follow-up novel, The Proposal was a Reese's Book Club selection.
When Nikole Paterson goes to a Dodgers game with her actor boyfriend, the last thing she expects is a scoreboard proposal. Saying no isn't the hard part--they've only been dating for five months, and he can't even spell her name correctly. The hard part is having to face a stadium full of disappointed fans...
At the game with his sister, Carlos Ibarra comes to Nik's rescue and rushes her away from a camera crew. He's even there for her when the video goes viral and Nik's social media blows up--in a bad way. Nik knows that in the wilds of LA, a handsome doctor like Carlos can't be looking for anything serious, so she embarks on an epic rebound with him, filled with food, fun, and fantastic sex. But when their glorified hookups start breaking the rules, one of them has to be smart enough to put on the brakes.
AAPLD will host a virtual visit with Guillory on February 16, where she will share insights on the modern rom-com. The talk will be moderated by Black author Morgan Rogers, debut author of Honey Girl.
Attica Locke
Attica Locke's mysteries and thrillers have earned her best-seller status and a nomination for the Edgar Award, one of the genre's top awards. A writer and producer with the television series Empire, she is equally adept at portraying New York's powerful and wealthy, and the hardscrabble rural towns of East Texas. This area, which Locke visited often as a child, is the setting for Bluebird Bluebird, the first book in her Highway 59 series, featuring Texas Ranger Darren Matthews.
When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well.
When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from Chicago and a local white woman--have stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment. Darren must solve the crimes--and save himself in the process--before Lark's long-simmering racial fault lines erupt.
A rural noir suffused with the unique music, color, and nuance of East Texas, Bluebird, Bluebird is an exhilarating, timely novel about the collision of race and justice in America.
Jacqueline Woodson
Award-winning author Woodson writes for multiple audiences-- children, young adults and adult readers. From an early age, she appreciated the power of the written word. In an interview with Publisher's Weekly, she recalls her older sister teaching her to write her name when she was three. "I remember writing my whole name: Jacqueline Amanda Woodson. I just loved the power of that, of being able to put a letter on the page and that letter meaning something." In her coming of age novel, Another Brooklyn she weaves a story of friendship with the reality of growing up as a Black girl in the 1970s.
Running into a long-ago friend sets memories from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where fathers found hope in religion and madness was just a sunset away.