Peter Francis James
1) Native son
Author
Language
English
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Description
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...
2) Run
Author
Language
English
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Description
Struggling with single parenthood and a scandal that cost him his political career, Bernard Doyle fights his disappointment with his adopted sons' career choices before a violent event forces the members of his family to reconsider their priorities.
Author
Series
Language
English
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Description
"Things Fall Apart tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a 'strong man' of an Ibo village in Nigeria. The first of these stories traces Okonkwo's fall from grace with the tribal world in which he lives, and in its classical purity of line and economical beauty it provides us with a powerful fable about the immemorial conflict between the individual and society. The second story, which is as modern as the...
4) Old Yeller
Author
Series
Language
English
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Description
When a novel like Huckleberry Finn, or The Yearling, comes along it defies customary adjectives because of the intensity of the respouse it evokes in the reader. Such a book, we submit, is Old Yeller; to read this eloquently simple story of a boy and his dog in the Texas hill country is an unforgettable and deeply moving experience. Set in the rough wilderness of early frontier Texas, "Old Yeller" is a timeless coming-of-age tale. Travis is left to...
5) Djibouti
Author
Language
English
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Description
In a modern-day pirate story, ambitious documentary filmmaker Dara Barr and her right-hand man, Xavier LeBo, a 72-year-old African American seafarer, get more than they bargained for on the Horn of Africa.
6) Monster
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Banned Books - Teens
Freedom to Read: Books Unite Us
GPLD Best Mystery/Thrillers for Teens
More Lists...
Freedom to Read: Books Unite Us
GPLD Best Mystery/Thrillers for Teens
More Lists...
Description
While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken.
8) On beauty
Author
Language
English
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Description
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction, another bestselling masterwork from the celebrated author of Swing Time and White Teeth
"In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews
Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed...
"In this sharp, engaging satire, beauty's only skin-deep, but funny cuts to the bone." —Kirkus Reviews
Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle, this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed...
Author
Language
English
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Description
Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson's taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child. 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...
10) Road dogs
Author
Language
English
Description
"Road Dogs is terrific, and Elmore Leonard is in a class of one."
—Dennis Lehane, author of Shutter Island and Mystic River
"You know from the first sentence that you're in the hands of the original Daddy Cool....This one'll kill you."
—Stephen King
Elmore Leonard is eternal. In Road Dogs, the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award winner and "America's greatest crime master" (Newsweek) brings back...
Author
Language
English
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Description
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
12) Black Boy
Author
Language
English
Description
A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author's grandson.
When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there...
13) Invisible man
Author
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
In the course of his wanderings from a Southern Negro college to New York's Harlem, an American black man becomes involved in a series of adventures. Introduction explains circumstances under which the book was written. Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing record of a black man's journey through contemporary America. Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity--powerfully imagined and written with a savage,...
14) Scorpions
Author
Language
English
Description
After reluctantly taking on the leadership of the Harlem gang, the Scorpions, Jamal finds that his enemies treat him with respect when he acquires a gun--until a tragedy occurs.
Author
Language
English
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Description
Two leading spiritual masters share their wisdom about living with joy even in the face of adversity, sharing personal stories and teachings about the science of profound happiness and the daily practices that anchor their emotional and spiritual lives. --Publisher
Author
Series
Language
English
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Description
Various diaries, letters, and other manuscripts chronicle the experiences of Octavian, a young African American, from birth to age sixteen, as he is brought up as part of a science experiment in the years leading up to and during the Revolutionary War. It sounds like a fairy tale. He is a boy dressed in silks and white wigs and given the finest of classical educations. Raised by a group of rational philosophers known only by numbers, the boy and his...
17) Eclipse: a novel
Author
Language
English
Description
The spellbinding story of an American lawyer who takes on a nearly impossible case--the defense of an African freedom fighter against his corrupt government's charge of murdering three PetroGlobal workers.
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
After escaping a death sentence in the summer of 1775, Octavian and his tutor find shelter but no safe harbor in British-occupied Boston and, persuaded by Lord Dunmore's proclamation offering freedom to slaves who join his counterrevolutionary Royal Ethiopian Regiment, Octavian and his friends soon find themselves engaged in naval raids on the Virginia coastline as the Revolutionary War breaks out in full force.
Author
Series
Socrates Fortlow novels volume 1
Language
English
Description
Socrates Fortlow, a tough, brooding ex-convict, explores philosophical questions of morality in a world beset with crime, poverty, and racism.