FICTION Black Is... CEREUS BLOOMS AT NIGHT by Shani Mootoo. Cereus is a murder suspect in the Paradise Fiction Arms House, where her unlikely confidant is a vivacious male nurse. 1999 *CHEEKIE: A Child out of the Desire by Clarence Nero. For The 1999 edition of Black Is... Cheekie, who was conceived continues the Boston Public and born out of wedlock, the New Library’s tradition of publishing a Orleans housing project where she selected list of recent books lives, “The Desire,” does not live concerning Blacks as part of its up to its name. observance of Black History Month in February of each year. CHILDHOOD: by Andre Alexis. Middle-aged and living in Canada, *Recommended for Young Adults Thomas looks back on his child- hood and what he learned — about BEBE’S BY GOLLY WOW the games of power and romance by Yolanda Joe. Bebe finds love played between his mother and again when she meets Isaac, the man who may or may not have a firefighter who’s raising his 13- been his father. year-old headstrong daughter. A sequel to He Say She Say. A DO RIGHT MAN by Omar Tyree. Bobby Dallas is finally ready to make BLACK AJAX by George Macdonald a commitment and that should be Fraser. Based on the life of Tom easy... right? Molineaux, a slave who boxed his way to freedom in the early 1800s. DON’T ERASE ME: Stories by Carolyn Ferrell. Often invisible, BLESSINGS: by Sheneska Jackson. poor minority teens are determined A blessing to one is not necessarily to survive despite adversity. good fortune to another, as four friends find out when they are torn DREAMER: by Charles Johnson. apart by the fantasies and realities What if Martin Luther King, Jr. of motherhood. had a double? BLUE COLLAR BLUES by Rosalyn EASTER LILLY: A Novel of MeMillan. A Detroit auto plant is the South by Tom Wicker. Can the setting; murder and passion a young black woman on trial for drive the plot. the murder of a white jail guard receive a fair trial? BLUE LIGHT: Prelude to the Invasion of Light Trilogy THE EDGE OF HEAVEN by Marita by Walter Mosley. A futuristic novel Golden. A middle-class family copes by the author of the Easy Rawlins with the death of a child and the mystery series. imprisonment of the mother. BY THE LIGHT OF MY FATHER’S FARADAY’S POPCORN FACTORY SMILE by Alice Walker. The first by Sandra Lee Gould. Is Willow’s new novel in six years by the author new love truly an alien as her of The Color Purple. grandmother suspects? CAUCASIA by Danzy Senna. THE FARMING OF BONES by Separated since their parents’ Edwidge Danticat. Amabelle and divorce, fair-skinned Birdie Sebastien, Haitians living in the searches for her dark-skinned Dominican Republic, are planning sister in 1970s Boston. their future; then Trujillo begins the slaughter. Based on a true incident. FEVER SEASON by Barbara LADY MOSES by Lucinda Roy. Hambly. It is New Orleans, and A biracial British woman travels freedmen are disappearing after a first to America and then to Africa in white couple is poisoned. The search of happiness and security. sequel to A Free Man of Color. THE LAST OF THE AFRICAN FLICKERING SHADOWS KINGS by Maryse Conde. From by Kwadwo Agymah Kamau. African royalty to the Caribbean Even with one of their own as to present-day United States. prime minister, the people of a A family saga. Caribbean island find that self determination does not bring LENOIR: A Novel by Ken Greenhall. freedom from political and The subject of Rubens’s 17"-century religious corruption. painting, “Four Heads of a Negro,” is brought to life. FREEDOMLAND by Richard Price. *A LIFE FOR A LIFE by Ernest A black detective is skeptical of a Hill. Fifteen-year-old D’Ray Reid woman who claims that her son was kidnapped during a carjacking. robs a convenience store when a drug dealer threatens to kill his GOOD FENCES by Erika Ellis. younger brother if he doesn’t come Being black and living in a white up with $100. world carries a high price as the LOVE IS A RACKET by John Spader family discovers. Ridley. Everything’s a racket for Jeffty Kittridge, a thirty-seven-year- THE HEALING by Gayl Jones. old ex-wannabe scriptwriter living Harlan Jane Eagleton, a faith healer, on the skids in Hollywood. travels from town to town working her miracles, knowing she also has MEN OF BREWSTER PLACE to heal herself. by Gloria Naylor. A revisit to the fictional inner city neighborhood I CAN’T WAIT ON GOD where there is “an endless supply of by Albert French. She murders I could, I shoulda, but I didn’t.” her pimp, steals his Buick, and Told this time from the perspective with her boyfriend heads for of its sons and husbands. New York City. THE MONKEY SUIT and Other IRON SHADOWS Short Fiction on African Amer- by Steven Barnes. Is the New Age icans and Justice by David Dante cult, which private investigator Troutt. Ten classic fictionalized legal Cat Spaulding and her partner cases involving African-Americans. Jax are investigating, really controlled by aliens? *MR. DREAM MERCHANT by Erroll J. Bailey. The spiritual THE ITCH: by Benilde Little. entity, Jr. Dream Merchant, guides It’s what they get when wealthy a teenager through difficult times. 30-somethings get everything they say they wanted. NOTHING BUT THE RENT by Sharon Mitchell. An unexpected KIRINYAGA: A Fable of Utopia crisis convinces four women that by Michael Resnick. Koriba is they have been looking for love in all determined to build a “Utopian” the wrong places. colony, not on earth but on the terraformed planetoid. ONE MUST WAIT by Penny Mickelbury. A disillusioned criminal defense lawyer decides to investigate her husband’s murder. THE PAGODA by Patricia Powell. SOLIBO MAGNIFICENT A Chinese man who fled to Jamaica by Patrick Chamoiseau. in the 1890s writes to his estranged A legendary storyteller in daughter to explain his life as it Martinique is discovered dead of nears its end. unknown causes. Did one of his friends murder him, or was he PARADISE by Toni Morrison. choked by his own words? When the outside world intrudes, the community of Ruby, once a STIGMATA by Phyllis Alesia Perry. paradise, is forced into a tragic Through out-of-body experiences, confrontation. Lizzie relives her great-grand- mother’s experiences as a slave. *PLENTY GOOD ROOM by Teresa McClain-Watson. THE STORE OF A MILLION Traumatized by witnessing his ITEMS: Stories by Michelle Cliff, brother’s murder, 13-year-old the Jamaican author. Bay Dawson is sent from Harlem to Florida. TAMING IT DOWN by Kim McLarin. Hope is a woman with PRIDE by Lorene Cary. Can a life- every reason to be mad. Her editor long friendship between four women thinks she got her job merely survive after the revelation of a long- because she’s black, her white kept secret? lover dumps her for a blonde, and her African-American boyfriend RING AROUND THE MOON considers her a traitor to the race. by Mary Burnett Smith. Looking back to the year she was ten, a TEMPEST RISING by Diane woman recalls the effects of her McKinney-Whetstone. The escape family’s move to a new town and her of three sisters from their night- father’s infidelity. marish foster home forces their caregivers to move beyond the THE RIVER WHERE BLOOD IS abuse that had characterized BORN by Sandra Jackson-Opoku. their relationships. One family’s journey over three centuries from ancient Africa to TWO CITIES by John Edgar contemporary America. Wideman. A woman who has lost her husband to AIDS and her two SECRETS by Nuruddin Farah. sons to the streets must find a way During the Civil War in Somalia, to heal herself. Kalaman’s childhood sweetheart returns, asking him to father her UP JUMPED THE DEVIL child, which opens the floodgates to by Blair S. Walker. Neo-Nazis long-kept family skeletons. threaten to bomb the NAACP’s national headquarters. SINGING IN THE COMEBACK CHOIR by Bebe Moore Campbell. VOODOO CHILD by Michael Should Maxine give up her career Reaves. “Murder and dark magic as a Los Angeles TV producer for prowl the New Orleans streets.” her grandmother and the crumbling Philadelphia neighborhood where THE WAKE OF THE WIND she grew up? by J. California Cooper. The cataclysmic effects of post SINGLE MOM by Omar Tyree. Reconstruction Era lynchings and Denise Stewart finds herself injustice to a family of freedmen. involved with both of her sons’ fathers, as well as in a relationship with a new man. WALKING THROUGH MIRRORS EASIER TO KILL by Brian Keith Jackson. Returning to NO HIDING PLACE Louisiana for his father’s funeral, a by Valerie Wilson Wesley. successful New York photographer Two new entries in the Tamara searches for the reason for his Hayle mystery series. abandonment as an infant. EYE OF THE CRICKET: A Lew WHAT LOOKS LIKE CRAZY Griffin Novel by James Sallis. The ON AN ORDINARY DAY by Pearl fourth book in the Lew Griffin Cleage. Ava finds that HIV is not a series finds the detective searching death sentence but a new beginning, for his missing son. thanks to her sister, her new man, and a group of troubled teenagers. KILLING THE LAWYERS: A Joe Sixsmith Mystery by Reginald Hill. WHISTLE: A Novel His meeting with a lawyer ends in a by Janice Daugharty. A black man shouting match; when the lawyer is discovers a white woman’s body murdered, Joe becomes a suspect. and is blackmailed by his mother. SEE NO EVIL: A Marti MacAlister WHITE BOYS: Short Stories Mystery by Eleanor Taylor Bland. by Reginald McKnight. Racism is Detective Marti MacAlister investi- part of daily life in these stories that gates the death of a female drug explore the complexities of crossing addict, while a stalker plans the racial divide. to kill her, her family, and her housemates. ZACHARY’S WINGS by Rose- marie Robotham. What begins as a SHADES OF JUSTICE by Linda passionate affair for Zachary and McKeever Bullard. An aspiring judge Korie becomes increasingly troubled is being blackmailed by her best when secrets are revealed. friend’s husband with whom she had an affair. BLACK... IS THE SILENT CRADLE MYSTERIES by Margaret Cuthbert. An obste- trician fears that many patients THE BEST DEFENSE being referred to her have fetuses by Ellis Cose. A lawyer takes a case that have been deliberately harmed. defending a white client accused of killing his Latino office colleague. WHAT A WOMAN’S GOTTA DO: A Novel of Suspense by Evelyn BLANCHE CLEANS UP by Barbara Coleman. After her fiancé fails to Neely. The third book in Neely’s show up at their wedding and her series features Roxbury’s Blanche car is found covered with blood, White discovering a cover-up in the Patricia is suspected of murder. murder of a black youth. WHEN LAST SEEN ALIVE: CAT-EYED TROUBLE by Robert An Aaron Gunner Mystery Skinner. Wesley Farrell passes for by Gar Anthony Haywood. What white and owns a nightclub in New happened to Elroy Covington Orleans during the Depression. who never returned from the Million Man March? A DARKER SHADE OF CRIMSON: An Ivy League Mystery by Pamela Thomas-Graham. A Harvard professor turns sleuth when she stumbles upon a dead body during a blackout. Ne Ca Sail CD Sle CO Sail This selected list was compiled by: Kendall Brothers, General Library, Young, Adult Services oonyean Carlton, General Library, Adult Reader and Information Services Marylou Coveney, Dudley Branch Library Janice Knight, Mattapan Branch Library Amy Manson, Connolly Branch Library Sarah Markell, Charlestown Branch Library Jacquelyn, Hogan, Chairperson, Grove Hall Branch Library eS I SR IS SR Boston Public Library 1999