AALBC.com's Best Selling Books
January & February 2002
To learn more about any of these books click the
title, to learn more about the author click author's name.
#1 Addicted Click to order via Amazon by Zane Format: Paperback, 336pp. Addicted is the story of Zoe, an African-American female arts dealer. It traces her life from the time she first meets her husband, Jason, in the fifth grade, falls in love with him over a game of Twister in the eighth grade, loses her virginity to him in high school and eventually marries him. Everything seems perfect in Zoe’s life to her friends and family as she secretly deals with serious problems in her marriage. After failing to get Jason to open up to her sexually, Zoe becomes involved in not one, not two but three extramarital affairs. By the time she seeks the aid of a prominent female African-American therapist, the walls of her picture perfect life have already started to crumble. The book shifts into high gear as Zoe finds out that everyone from her lovers to her husband to her own mother are hiding secrets of their own. Her best friend, Brina, is physically abused by her alcoholic boyfriend, Dempsey. Zoe discovers under hypnosis that her fascination with sex stems from two incidents in her early childhood she had buried deeply into the crevices of her mind. She is stalked and attacked. The book comes to a head on a cold, dark mountain following a trail of murders and the true murderer is anyone’s guess. Addicted does for women what Fatal Attraction did for men. It will make a woman think twice before risking it all.
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#2
Sugar
Click to order via Amazon Format: Paperback, 240pp. In a debut novel that blends the rich, earthy atmosphere of the deep South and a voice imbued with spiritual grace, Bernice L. McFadden tells the story of two women: a modest, churchgoing wife and mother, and the young prostitute she befriends.. "When Sugar arrives in 1950s Bigelow - waltzing down the main square of the sweltering tiny Arkansas town as if she has every right to be there - no one tosses out the welcome mat or invites her in for a Coke. The Bigelow women hate her from the minute they lay eyes on her - on the bouncing blond wig and red-painted lips that tell them she has never known a hard day's work. All they know is they want her gone, out of their town, and away from their men.. "But Sugar has traveled too far and survived too much to back down now. She parks herself in the house at #10 Grove Street, even though she feels there is something about Bigelow that is calling up the past she prayed she'd left behind.. "Deep in her soul, Pearl Taylor knows what it is that Sugar feels, because it happened to her. It was the day her world shut down, the day the devil himself murdered her young daughter, Jude. It wasn't that Pearl stopped believing in God, exactly; she just couldn't trust him the way she used to. Then Sugar moves in next door, and Pearl's life irrevocably changes. Over sweet potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming the lives of two women - and an entire community.
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#3
Johnny Buffalo
Click to order via Amazon by Dan Smith Format:
Paperback, 183pp. After being shot and left for dead, Johnny Buffalo, a soldier in the United States Army, watches in horror as a lynch mob viciously murders his best friend and mentor. Bitter and disillusioned by the army's justice system. Johnny takes the law into his own hands and vows to bring the Texans who killed Iris friend to justice.
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#4
The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth Click to order via Amazon by Zane Format: Paperback, 2nd ed., 304pp. After more than two years of entertaining tens of thousands of loyal readers on the Internet with her vivid imagination, a large collection of Zane's erotica is finally available in a published format. Zane has captivated the minds of both sexes and all races. She has completely shattered the myth that men are more sexual in nature than women and that African-American women in particular are inhibited compared to their female counterparts of other races. The erotica collection is divided into three sections: Wild, Wilder and Off Da Damn Hook. Her characters run the gamut from the sensual housewife that wants her husband to experiment more to the secret underground sorority of women that let it all hang out literally.
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#5 by Langston Hughes, Akiba Sullivan Harper (Editor), Donna sullivan Harper, Arnold Rampersad (Introduction) Format: Paperback, 218pp. Jesse B. Simple, Simple to his fans, made weekly appearances beginning in 1943 in Langston Hughes's column in the Chicago Defender. This collection contains 62 of Hughes's magnificent Simple stories, many never before published in book form. "A lively collection . . . funny-but-wise."--Robert O'Meally, New York Newsday.
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#6 Format: Paperback, 144pp. Sasha is caught in the middle of the exciting, sexually charged underbelly of professional basketball, the sadness of suicide and constant self-destructive behavior. Follow along as the threads of love, happiness and self-worth are woven together to create the fabric of Threesome
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#7 by Cheryl Willis Hudson, Bernette G. Ford (Contributor), George Cephas Ford (Illustrator) Format: Paperback, 1st ed., 24pp. "This first volume in the Feeling Good series is designed to heighten the self-esteem of African American children by providing positive images in {rhyming} text and illustration." (Booklist) "Kindergarten to grade one." (SLJ)
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#8
The African Presence in Early Asia Click to order via Amazon by Ivan Van Sertima (Editor) Format: Paperback, 168pp. The story of the African presence in early Asia is as fascinating as
it is obscure. It covers a period of more than 500,000 years beginning
with the first Homo erectus migrations out of Africa. Both Peking and
Java Man were only regional varieties of these early Africoid hominids.
The story continues with the first modern human populations (Homo
sapiens sapiens), Diminutive Blacks, who traveled and so-journed from
one corner of Asia to the other, beginning perhaps 90,000 years ago. The
Diminutive Blacks were followed by others of slightly larger bodily
proportions and further distinguished by straight to wavy hair textures.
Variously called Austrics, Austro-Asiatics, Mons, Mundas, Kolarians, and
Veddas, these people were probably at their zenith 25,000 years ago, and
are still prevalent in large numbers throughout Asia. Blacks were also
the first in the development of Asia's early civilizations. The hard
factual evidence has borne this out in case after case. Although the
story of the black presence in early Asia is obscure, its documentation
is by no means new, and the works of Drusilla D. Houston, Joel A.
Rogers, and most recently, John G. Jackson, can be singled out for
broadening our awareness of the subject and providing a solid foundation
from which we can move forward.
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#9 Format: Paperback, 352pp. - A complete, step-by-step guide to every aspect of the publishing
process, from the germination of a winning idea to the nuts and bolts of
book production
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#10
Destruction of Black Civilization : Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C to 2000 A.D. Click to order via Amazon Format: Paperback, 3rd ed., 384pp. From Sacred
Fire
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The Return of Simple
Threesome: Where Seduction, Power and Basketball Collide 
Bright Eyes, Brown Skin (A Feeling Good Book) 
The African American Writers Handbook : How to Get in Print and Stay in Print
