AALBC.com's Best
Selling Books
| Fiction | Nonfiction |
| #1
ISBN: 074348620X The best-selling author of B-More Careful, Shannon Holmes, delivers Bad Girlz, another wild adventure into the streets. The setting this time is the Badlands, one of the toughest and poorest communities in Philadelphia. Bad Girlz takes you into the mysterious and often dangerous lives of young women who turn to the streets and strip clubs as a means of survival. These are girls who, along the way, suffer bad breaks and find themselves ripe for exploitation by men and women who pretend to be their saviors. Tender and Goldie were taken under wing by Kat, a veteran stripper, who enjoyed the life and the risks she had to take to stay in the mix of the sex trade. Both of these young and beautiful girls had ended up in dire straits and in need of Kat's help in different ways, but ultimately for the same reasons: They lacked the love and support that most of us expect to get at home and in our communities. Where they live, illegal money is often the only money to be made, and the difference between the law and the outlaw is tough to discern. |
#1
ISBN: 0913543675 This unique look at health care interprets scriptures of the Bible and adapts and applies the wisdom found there to modern ways of life. These scriptures teach that the prevention of diseases is not in the hands of doctors, but rather in what individuals eat and how they live. Health-minded Americans will learn how to avoid the disease-causing preservatives, growth hormones, and pesticides of the meat and dairy industries that pollute the once-fresh foods that the public consumes. Also included is an in-depth discussion of Satan's influence on the advertising industry and how it is linked to drug, cigarette, and alcohol addictions among the American people. |
| #2
by Tracy Brown
ISBN: 0970247281 Who said the streets don�t love nobody? Black is the novel that shatters the myth. Kaia didn�t choose the streets. The streets chose her. Tossed from a broken home, Kaia is forced to learn the hard way just how grimy street life can be. Shedding her innocents, Kaia, overnight it seems, goes from being an often overlooked, stepped upon and crushed little girl, to a woman. She endures all of the drama that is thrown her way, sometimes catching it and sometimes being knocked flat on her ass. To aid in softening the blow is Aaron. Even street fairy tales has a Prince. Experiencing seclusion and imprisonment wile locked down in street dreams and the illusion called love, is Aaron a Savior or Satin? With enemies in disguise, Kaia fights for survival and freedom, but to survive the streets could mean suffocating the freedom of her mind. Like a captured black butterfly, Kaia struggles to emerge and triumph, but victory ain�t always sweet, as a matter of fact, sometimes it’s bitter to the end. |
#2
ISBN: 0525947582 Randall Robinson is quitting America, and this book charts his journey from the most powerful nation on earth to the tiny tropical island where his wife was born. His search for a more peaceful and hospitable place grew out of the disappointment and increasing sense of abandonment he felt in the land of his own birth-an America that has sapped the creative energies of his race and has "transfigured humanity." |
| #3
ISBN:
0970247257 Sweet innocent Yarni, from a well-to do family, by chance, meets Richmond's notorious drug kingpin, Des. Immediately they develop an astronomical love, which separates her from her family and friends. But when Des, is sentenced to life in prison, she will learn, being a hustler's wife isn't as easy, with her sole provider behind bars. Travel with Yarni, as she survives when the script if flipped. At times she plays the game, and at other times...the game plays her. Her journey is filled with laughter, tears, failures, triumphs and perseverance. Nikki's debut novel is a smorgasbord of manipulation, street-life, greed, betrayal, envy, money, power and revenge. |
#3 Donald
Writes No More: A Biography of Donald GoinesClick to order via Amazon ISBN:
087067949X Donald Goines was all of these things. He started as a kid, the product of a middle-class family. After high school he joined the Navy, and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he was straight enough to keep at it. He used the language of the streets and wrote of the streets and its people. His success was immediate and exciting, But eventually the streets claimed him. He was murdered as he sat writing a new book. Here for the first time is the completed story. |
| #4
by Michael Gainer
ISBN: 0971488703 Justin just wanted to enjoy life. After all, being a player seemed to come naturally. Pimp'in women and breaking hearts was his specialty. If only his player hate'in wife Alexis would conform to the rules of the game, that would make life even better. Justin can't take all the credit for his fabulous lifestyle, there are a cast of characters contributing to his lifelong pursuit of conquering women. There is his boy Hammer who maintains VIP status in all of Miami's clubs, Sheila, the hotel maid with the "oh so fat a--," his loving yet high rolling Mom Sylvia and his estranged father Henry (affectionately referred to as "The Rooster"). Settle in with Dumb as Me and experience a day in the life of Justin Drake, THE MAN. Not to forget...the intoxicating, mysterious Eden. The one woman that manages to show Justin just what pimp'in is |
#4
ISBN: 0486408906 A tireless, impassioned champion of civil rights, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) forged a distinguished career as an author, editor, and leader in the civil rights movement. The architect of the Niagara Movement (forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), Du Bois employed his skills as an eloquent, immensely knowledgeable writer and public speaker to help shape the revolt of black intellectuals against the conciliatory policies of Booker T. Washington. This collection of fiery essays, sketches, and poems--first published nearly 80 years ago in the Atlantic, the Journal of Race Development and other periodicals--dates from the zenith of Du Bois' political influence in the United States. Reflecting the author's political, historical, and artistic ideas, Darkwater has long moved and inspired readers with its militant cry for social, political, and economic reforms for black Americans. Like Du Bois' highly influential The Souls of Black Folk, the present work is essential reading for students of African-American history and anyone interested in the history of the civil rights movement. |
| #5
ISBN: 0060541334 The first of its kind, this omnibus collection covers Nikki Giovanni's complete work of poetry from three decades, 1968-1998. The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni contains Giovanni's first seven volumes of poetry: Black Feeling Black Talk, Black Judgment, Re: Creation, My House, The Women and the Men, Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, and Those Who Ride the Night Winds. Arranged chronologically with a biographical timeline and introduction, a new afterword from the author, title and first-line indexes, and extensive notes to the poems, this collection is the testimony of a life's work - from one of America's most beloved daughters and powerful poets. |
#5
Publisher: Africa
World Press Woodson's 205-page monograph, The Mis-education of tbe Negro, reflects his profound concern for setting the record straight. His thesis, as outlined in his Preface, could well apply today: "The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker people." He was concerned with the way African American identity had been warped by racist approaches to history and education; he foresaw the ways that such a warped history would be internalized by black students who would never know of the achievements of their forebears, only of their humiliations and sufferings. In the book's eighteen chapters, Woodson presents a systematic critique of the education system and offers a plan for change that would create a system that informs black students about their own history and addresses their unique challenges. The current proliferation of African American studies programs, Afrocentric schools, and multicultural curricula all bear Woodson's stamp. Still, Mis-education remains a biting indictment of a public school system whose promise of education of the masses has still been left sadly unfulfilled. �description from Sacred Fire |
| #6
Format:
Hardcover, 288pp. Victor LaValle has already established himself as "one of the most eloquent voices of the approaching century" (Kirkus Reviews), a writer of darkly humorous tales full of haunting beauty, astonishing leaps of imagination, and language that "crackles and hums" (Chicago Tribune). The Ecstatic is LaValle's debut novel, a startling tale of love, horror, sex, insanity, faith, morbid obesity, and the modern American family. Something is wrong with Anthony�our 318-pound hero�and it's getting worse. A monster has caught his uncle and his mother; now it wants Anthony. Mental illness has been transmitted through his family's blood. The three women in his life�his mother, younger sister, and grandmother�find him naked and disoriented in his off-campus college apartment and take him home to Queens, each determined to fix him in her own peculiar way. But his presence soon turns their house into a semi suburban asylum. Sweet but wickedly sarcastic, smart and heartbreakingly vulnerable, Anthony narrates his family's surreal adventures through a world of grinning exploitation and fake cures, from storefront evangelists and neighborhood loan sharks to bogus beauty pageants and bootleg medical clinics. He corresponds with a dreadlocked Japanese militant, is haunted by a vicious pack of dogs, and tries to make his own horror movie, all in search of an answer to a question he doesn't dare ask. Written in the tradition of misfit picaresque from Journey to the End of the Night and Invisible Man to A Confederacy of Dunces and The World According to Garp, The Ecstatic is the revelatory story of a family trying to save themselves from a ravenous world and their own unraveling minds. |
#6
Format: Hardcover, 112pp. The scholar, theologian, and activist who has been acclaimed as one of the most eloquent voices in our ongoing racial debate now bridges the gulf between black and white America in a work of enormous resonance and moral authority. West takes on the questions of politics, economics, ethics, and spirituality and addresses the crisis in black leadership. Race Matters contains West's most powerful essays on the issues relevant to black Americans today: despair, black conservatism, black-Jewish relations, myths about black sexuality, the crisis in leadership in the black community, and the legacy of Malcolm X. And the insights that he brings to these complicated problems remain fresh, exciting, creative, and compassionate. Now more than ever, Race Matters is a book for all Americans, as it helps us to build a genuine multiracial democracy in the new millennium. |
| #7
ISBN: 0971843619 Sacrifice the One is the poignant coming-of-age tale of one young woman who struggles with the rejection of her father who blames her for his wife's death. She does all she can to gain his acceptance and love, but seeing it isn't coming, seeks love wherever she can find it from anyone who happens to be well, a man. Her craving for something so simple sends her down a dangerous path of self destruction that not even a praying grandmother can protect her from. Will she find the love she wants before it's too late? |
#7
ISBN: 0451526031 Herein lie buried many things, which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of fourteen powerfully written essays that are by turn testimony and autobiography, stands as a monumental achievement and quite possibly his most influential work. The book is both a vivid portrait of the conditions facing freshly emancipated black folk at the turn of the century and a still-relevant discussion of the dilemma of race in the United States. It was here that Du Bois introduced his influential concept of "double-consciousness": the struggle of black people trying to define themselves as both black and American. What makes these unflinching, luminous, and troublesome essays so powerful is that each builds upon the other to try to answer questions about race that have perplexed, enraged, and divided America for over a century. Written in part to counter Booker T. Washington's prevailing strategy of accommodation, The Souls of Black Folk created a fresh way of looking at and protesting the multifaceted oppression of black people. �description from Sacred Fire |
| #8
ISBN: 1569473455 "Rozelle Quinn is so fair-skinned that she can pass for white. Her ten children are mostly light, too. Everyone in the small Georgia town in which she lives knows that they have different fathers. She favors her light children, but it is Tangy Mae, the darkest of them all, who is the brightest and the only one desperate to get an education. Even in rural Pakersfield they have heard of the Supreme Court's recent ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, though they are in no hurry to comply with it." "Rozelle wants thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae to take over her jobs: days, doing house cleaning for whites; nights, servicing men, white and black, at the "Farmhouse." And Rozelle is not a woman whose commands can lightly be ignored. She is a creature of moods, possessive of all her children, desperate for their love, demanding of utter loyalty and obedience, harshly repressive of any signs of independence. They are the only thing in her life that she can control." The Darkest Child shows us a world misshapen by years of oppression in which family is powerful yet offers little kindness or comfort. It shows us a world in which attitudes of prejudice have been adopted by its victim, and the resulting struggle of those who are darker complected is a struggle not only against outsiders, but against the closest of kin. |
#8
Cynthia Jacobs Carter, Dorothy Height (Introduction) ISBN:
0792261658 This Unique, Profusely Illustrated, Inspiring tribute sweeps through world history to celebrate the courage, commitment, and accomplishments that link the daughters of Africa in a 3,500-year heritage, from ancient queens to the modern Black women who command respect and renown in every field of human endeavor. Now, in the first collection of its kind, Dr. Cynthia Jacobs Carter of Howard University gathers these stories in a book that is at once an unprecedented group portrait of Africana Woman and a stirring chronicle of Black women's impact and influence. In these pages, meet magnificent figures from ages past: Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh who built some of Egypt's greatest monuments; Makeda, the fabled Queen of Sheba, whose royal dynasty ruled Ethiopia until the 20th century; and Nanny, Queen of the Maroons, who led escaped slaves in forging a realm in Jamaica's wild mountains in the 1700s. Learn also about the courageous women who escaped from centuries of slavery, such as Coincoin, who amassed a 2,000-acre estate in 18th-century Louisiana, and Mary Prince, author of an autobiography that created a sensation in England in the 1830s. Trace the rise of abolitionism and the unforgettable figures who fought for Black freedom -- Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and others -- along with the groundbreaking leaders who struggled to turn emancipation into true equality, a battle that lasted over a century, from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and beyond. These women -- dedicated educators like Mary Church Terrell, business pioneers like Madam C. J. Walker, daring journalists like Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and determined activists like Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer -- devoted their lives to social justice. Finally, meet those who have made modern history, from politicians like Shirley Chisholm to media stars like Oprah Winfrey |
| #9
by Wahida Clark ISBN: 0972277110 Thugs and the Women Who Love Them is the first book from Wahida Clark, an inmate in a United States Federal prison. Clark brings us into a world of sex, crime and brutality, all the more real because she lived in it. Ms Clark has completed her second book, Every Thug Needs A Lady. |
#9
by Dr. Cornel West & Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
ISBN: 0679763783 In a ground-breaking collaboration, and taking the great W. E. B. Du Bois as their model, two of our foremost African-American intellectuals address the dreams, fears, aspirations, and responsibilities of the black community - especially the black elite - on the eve of the twenty-first century. In 1903, the influential historian, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP, W. E. B. Du Bois, published his now famous essay "The Talented Tenth." "The Negro race," it began, "like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men." For the young post-Civil Rights era group of leaders, of which Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West have become such a significant part, "The Talented Tenth" was held up as a model for the social, political, and ethical roles of the new "crossover" generation. Du Bois's belief in an educated class dedicated to reform became their inspiration and their credo. Now, nearly a century after Du Bois set forth the role of the educated black American, Gates and West explore this pivotal aspect of his intellectual legacy - and, in so doing, they not only re-examine Du Bois's ideas on leadership but also respond to the challenges of the present. The problems are clear and urgent. Since the day Martin Luther King, Jr., died, the black middle class has quadrupled. Yet, simultaneously, the size of the black underclass has disproportionately and tragically skyrocketed. |
| #10
by Wahida Clark
ISBN: 0974805114 |
#10
ISBN: 0960229477 Written in the 1940's and published in 1957. BLACK FACT: PROOF: |
Bad
Girlz: A Novel
Satan,
I'm Taking Back My Health!
Quitting America: The Departure of a Black Man from His Native Land
A
Dumb
as Me: Women Gave Him Comfort, Misusing Them Gave Him More
Darkwater:
Voices from within the Veil
The
Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
The
MIS-Education of the Negro
The
Ecstatic
Sacrifice
the One
The
Souls of Black Folks
The
Darkest Child: A Novel
Africana
Woman: Her Story Through Time
Thugs
and the Women Who Love Them
The Future of the
Race
Every
Thug Needs A Lady
100
Amazing Facts about the Negro with Complete Proof
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