Parry "Ebony Satin' Bown is is the national best-selling author of What Goes Around (One World), Fannin' the Flames (One World/Ballantine), The Shirt Off His Back (Villard Books), Sittin' in the Front Pew (Villard Books) and self-help book Sexy Doesn't Have a Dress Size...Lessons in Love (ShanKrys). She has also partnered with other talented writers in On the Line (Harlequin), Destiny's Daughters (Kensington), Love is Blind (Urban Books/Kensington) and Proverbs for the People (Kensington), anthologies. As a motivational speaker, this woman of size and color encourages all people to look inside themselves for their worth. She delivers her Sexy Doesn't Have a Dress Size seminar series to standing room only crowds around the world.

After much encouragement the sequel, What Goes Around (One World/Ballantine), to Parry's highly acclaimed first novel, was released in the Spring of 2006. Parry's debut novel, The Shirt Off His Back, was a national best seller for more than five months prior to its January 2001 re-release, which was a part of the launch of Strivers Row (a Random House imprint), and has caused quite the buzz. Ms. Brown's first non-fiction work, Sexy Doesn't Have a Dress Size...Lessons in Love is a candid look at how we need to learn to love ourselves where we are; right here, right now. Sittin' in the Front Pew, an Essence Magazine number one best seller and is in its 8th printing, has appeared on the prestigious list several times since its April 2002 release and four years later is still going strong.

With captivating appearances on ABC World News Now, INSIGHTS (Fox-Dallas, TX), Connection (PBS, Columbia, SC), and DjembeTV (Cable, Baltimore, MD) Building Bridges with Wendy Gladney (Cable Los Angeles), Words of Wisdom (Cable, Winston-Salem, NC) Ms. Brown is a favorite among talk show host. Parry has mesmerized audiences on nationally syndicated radio shows: The Tom Joyner Morning Show, Lee Bailey's Radio Scope, ABC Network Radio's The Touch, John Arnold Show, Tom Pope Show, and eyada.com just to name a few. She is a frequent guest on many highly rated local radio and news shows from coast to coast and in Canada.*

The Ebony Lady with the Satin Touch® is also the Regional Director of Operation for an international import enterprise, Executive Vice President of Victory Limo Service and internationally renowned motivational speaker.

Parry was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, raised in Baltimore, Maryland.  Parry lives with her husband in the greater Los Angeles area,where she has resided since the early 70's. She is the mother of three and grandmother of six.

Sittin' in the Front Pew
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Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (April 9, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375757058
ISBN-13: 978-0375757051
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches

Read an AALBC.com Book Review

From the author of the national bestseller The Shirt off His Back comes a novel about love, family, and honoring loved ones

Death brings about strange emotions, and people’s true colors start to show. Glynda Naylor discovers this when she gets the call that her father has died suddenly and she must fly from Los Angeles to Baltimore to bury him. Her beloved daddy, Edward Naylor, raised his four young daughters after their mother's death, and was the perfect father, brother, fiancé, and friend to those who loved him. As friends and family gather to pay tribute to this pillar of the community, Glynda and her sisters begin to search for answers about who the real Edward Naylor was. Their father was a good man, without question, but he also took a secret to his grave. What happens when his secret shows up for the funeral?

 

What Goes Around
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Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine (May 30, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345469453
ISBN-13: 978-0345469458
Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.9 inches

THE SISTER HAD IT ALL–UNTIL KARMA CAME TO TOWN.

A successful businesswoman, Catherine Hawkins has lived an enviable life of luxury, thanks to an ambition that has made her stop at nothing–including abandoning her own twin daughters when they were born eighteen years ago. After going AWOL, Catherine sent lavish gifts to Ariana and Alisa, while the children’s father, Terry Winston, and his wife, Jackie, reared the girls with all their love and care.

Now, as the twins are ready to graduate high school, Catherine is suddenly begging to visit and full of affection. A change of heart is hardly her motive, though: Catherine needs the girls–at least one of them–to save her life. For her kidneys are failing, and unless one of her daughters gives her an organ, Catherine may not be around long enough to find another compatible donor.

The news of Catherine’s illness affects her estranged family in different ways, as each member struggles with anger, resentment, and a sense of guilt over turning a blind eye. And when a decision is finally made, an unexpected secret is revealed–one that will rock the Winston family, heart and soul.

 

Fannin' the Flames
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Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine (April 12, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345469437
ISBN-13: 978-0345469434
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.9 inches

The fire and rescue squad from Los Angeles County’s Fire Department Station Twenty-seven’s “C-Shift” was a rock-solid team. The camaraderie among them was only made stronger by the fact that they were all minority. But when their unit becomes the prey of a perverse trickster, their loyalties to one another are deepened to the core.

Someone on the inside is trying to sabotage C-Shift, and Jerome White and his longtime mentor, Capt. Lloyd Frederickson, are certain it’s racially motivated. When the Fire Department chief balks at an internal investigation, Lloyd and Jerome have no choice but to take matters into their own hands.

Jerome and Lloyd’s personal problems further complicate their lives. After thirty years of marriage, Lloyd’s wife, Nellie, wants a divorce, even though their sex life is still deliciously hot. And while Jerome and Nicolle are deeply in love, Mychel Hernandez, a Hispanic bombshell at the station, has set her sights on Jerome. But his attentions soon turn to a horrific car accident involving Nicolle. As Jerome is thrown headfirst into this nightmare, he must face life as a single father, a critically ill spouse, Mychel turning up the heat with her advances, and an overwhelming sense of fear and apprehension about where the menace will next strike.

From the #1 bestselling author Parry “EbonySatin” Brown comes her anticipated hardcover debut—a fast-paced, multilayered story of extraordinary characters grappling with issues of race, family, love, and deceit. In Fannin’ the Flames, she brings readers to the forefront of the lives of our most revered men—and the women they love.

 

The Shirt off His Back
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Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine (January 31, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345491246
ISBN-13: 978-0345491244
Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches

After a brief relationship in college, Catherine and Terry found themselves the parents of twin baby girls; Catherine, a reluctant mother from the start, abandoned the children for a successful career overseas. With the help of family and friends, Terry has raised the twins by himself, and now, eleven years later, is about to expand his family again by marrying Jackie, herself a single parent. Suddenly, realizing she needs a better family image to advance her career, Catherine shows up and demands custody of the twins.

With a nasty battle developing, Terry teams up with his best friend, Roland, a powerful attorney, to fight for custody of his children. As Catherine pits the twins against each other, Terry struggles to keep his cool.

With an engaging blend of humor and drama, and characters who seem as if they live right down the block, Parry "EbonySatin" Brown has written an entertaining novel of friendship, romance, and one man's determination to keep his family together.

 

Love is Blind
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Hardcover
Publisher: Urban Books, LLC (2004)
ISBN-10: 0739440624
ISBN-13: 978-0739440629

 

Sexy Doesn't Have a Dress Size : Lessons in Love
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Paperback: 116 pages
Publisher: Shankrys Publishing; 2 edition (April 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 096665031X
ISBN-13: 978-0966650310
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches

More About Parry
As a woman of size and color, she has never let the prejudice of those around her impede her progress. When she was told at age fourteen that she would never make it in the all white offices of an insurance company, she was determined to prove them wrong. Madison Avenue shouted loud and clear that a woman who sports a size twenty-four couldn't be considered sexy. She retorted, You talkin' to me?! As a motivational speaker she encourages women of all sizes and colors to look inside themselves for their worth. Her Sexy Doesn't Have a Dress Size seminar series packs the house from coast to coast.

Like a fire truck's blaring siren on a 9-1-1 call, Madison Avenue screams sexy only comes in a size six. Today, over 50% of American women wear a size 14 or larger; yet, it often seems that the entire world is oriented around the size 2 model. Sexy Doesn't Have a Dress SizeLessons in Love has refuted this myth and empowers women of all sizes to look inside themselves, instead of on the dress tag, to find their self worth.

Parry EbonySatin' Brown, an author and African American woman of size, gives an account of her battles with size acceptance and eventually self acceptance and how she now travels the country giving her Sistahgurlfriends insight and hope. Parry opens her seminars with such one-liners as; "If my worth is measured by the digits that are displayed on the scale then I must be worth my weight in gold!"

 

Proverbs For The People: Contemporary African-American Stories
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Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Kensington (July 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0758202873

Forward by Jewell Parker Rhodes, Edited by Tracey Price Thompson and TaRessa Stoval with Pearl Cleage, Donna Hill, Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown, Omar Tyree and others

If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing." "Don't start none, won't be none." "If you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything." Whether it was in the church on a hard-shined wooden pew, or around the kitchen table after, listening to the wisdom of mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandparents, friends, and leaders, the messages of the proverbs resonate in the souls of most African-Americans'a sweet refrain heard through striving, reaching, loving, and living. In this powerful collection of stories based on African, African-American, and Biblical proverbs, some of today's most exciting new African-American writers tackle the unifying themes, delicious wit and undeniable wisdom of the proverbs, making them sing for a whole new generation.

In the moving "Love Can Move Mountains," author Elizabeth Atkins Bowman explores the meaning of the African-American saying, "Mountain, get out of my way!" in a story about the miraculous, mysterious power of a mother's stand-firm love. In Arethia Hornsby's "My Momma Said'," two friends go out on the town and get schooled in a life lesson that proves the truth behind the ages-old African-American proverb, "Never judge a book by its cover." Town gossip gets the best of a loyal wife and gives credence to C.F. Pope's saying, "Never declare war unless you mean to do battle," in Gwynne Forster's wry tale of comeuppance, "First Thing Monday Morning." And in the flirty short story, "Something Special," Venise Berry shows what the Cape Verde Islands maxim, "Every week has its Friday" really means as one woman's weekly ritual promises seven days' worth of sensual satisfaction.

In addition to such established writers as Pearl Cleage, Omar Tyree, Margaret Johnson-Hodge, Timmothy McCann, Brandon Massey, Kambon Obayani, Earl Sewell, Maxine Thompson, and others, here, too, are rising stars in the African-American literary world, including fourteen-year-old Kharel Price and fifteen-year-old Tierra French, proving that the wisdom of the past lives on in the next generation.

From the struggle to break the chains of the past, (Pat G'Orge-Walker's "The Consequence") to the fight to keep hope alive in the face of injustice, (Robert Fleming's "A Crisis of Faith"), from the joys of loving an older woman (Parry "Ebony Satin" Brown's "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do"), to an African man's discovery of his own America (Amanda Ngozi Adichie's "Women Here Drive Buses"), this triumphant, stirring anthology is a glorious reminder of the power of proverbs to heal, to provoke, to unify, and to inspire.

Related Links

Official WebSite
http://www.parryabrown.com/