AALBC.com's Best Selling Books
March 2002
To learn more about any of these books click the
title, to learn more about the author click author's name.
#1 Heart of the Artist, The by Rory Noland Click to order via Amazon Format: Paperback, 208pp. This book explores issues of character
facing Christian artists who want to use their gifts more effectively in
church ministry. |
#2 Long Train to the Redeeming Sin by Kola Boof Buy
an Autographed Copy Kola's powerful and shocking collection of short stories, "LONG
TRAIN TO THE REDEEMING SIN" is developing a growing fan base and
Kola Boof's strong feminist viewpoint is finally getting a look-see.
Issues such as colorism, female genital mutilation, authentic love and
the "sexual longing" of Black Women are what make Kola's work
so daring. Her famous poetry can be downright chilling |
#3 Love Don't Live Here Anymore by Denene Millner, Nick Chiles Click to order via Amazon Format: Hardcover, 324pp. Randy Murphy and Mikki Chance-Murphy are a contemporary couple whose marital bond is tested by the demands of their emerging professional lives. He is an ad executive who has temporarily relocated to Paris to pursue a prestigious account. She is a fashion designer living in Brooklyn, trying to move her struggling bridal boutique into the black. Unfolding in alternating chapters from each of their points of view, Love Don't Live Here Anymore tells the story of what happens to a marriage when infidelity and distance-both physical and emotional-enter the equation. As Mikki finds herself powerfully drawn to her husband's best friend, it will take some major shaking up-not to mention faith, understanding, and lots of love-to put the pieces of their marriage back together. If it's not too late.
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#4 Brown Sugar : A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction by Carol Taylor (Editor) Click to order via Amazon Format: Paperback, 272pp. #5 Best Selling Book for 2001 on AALBC.com Silk sheets...jazz playing softly in the background.
The many moods of Eros are explored in this rich and diverse array of
black erotica, written especially for this Plume collection. Author Bio: Carol Taylor is a former book editor now working as a freelance editor and writer. She co-edited and contributed to Sacred Fire: The QBR 100 Essential Black Books.
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#5 Format: Paperback, 288pp. "Two individuals from different worlds connect until their secrets roar through their relationship like a tidal wave, threatening to overwhelm everything in its path. Zachary's Wings is a love story of might and power. It is full of surprises, eloquently erotic, and refreshingly deep." -- Author of The Color of Water �James McBride "A beautiful first novel, Rosemarie Robotham's Zachary's Wings will stir you most inner passions and joys." -- Author of Breath, eyes, memory �Edwidge Danticat
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#6 Format: Paperback, 247pp. In the annals of swashbuckling 19th-century explorers, the little- known figure of William Sheppard, one of the first black American missionaries to Africa, was surely among the most extraordinary. Sheppard, who was born in Virginia immediately after the Civil War, was sent to Africa in 1890 by the Southern Presbyterian Church. His adventures there were the mirror image of Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," in which the white man descends into an Africa of chaos and anarchy. Clad in pith helmet and white linen, Sheppard discovered a city with a sophisticated governing system and exquisite art in the middle of the rain forest. And later he built his own African-American utopian community in the jungle. He was also one of the first to alert the world to the abuses of King
Leopold II of Belgium, who through the Compagnie du Kasai had enslaved
the population and plundered the Congo's rubber and ivory. Villages were
decorated with corpses and human skin, and the Belgians and the native
militias they employed became known for cutting off the hands of those
who opposed them.
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#7 Format: Paperback, 3rd ed., 254pp. The book is a collection of interviews of men who have cheated. It examines how men are raised from childhood to be unfaithful and how parents play a large part in creating cheaters. It also takes a hard look at the role of the other woman as well as the tolerant wives and girlfriends. Never before has a book dealt with infidelity on such a realistic level. This is a book every woman and man should read!
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#8 Our Kind of People : Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham Click to order via Amazon Format: Paperback, 448pp. Our Kind of People is the first book written about the insular world of the black upper class by a member of this hard-to-penetrate group. A conservative network of families dating back to the first black millionaires of the 1880s, the black elite has developed in own rules for membership and for maintaining a place in a world that is unaware of its vast contributions. Through six years of interviews with more than three hundred prominent families and individuals, journalist and commentator Lawrence Otis Graham weaves together the revealing stories and fascinating experiences of upper-class blacks who grew up with privilege and power. With photographs and stories, the author takes us to the mansions they built in the 1880s, as well as to black-tie debutante cotillions and dinners hosted by the "best" families and social groups.
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#9 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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#10 The Future Has a Past : Stories by J. California Cooper Click to order via Amazon Format: Hardcover, 288pp. Maisha, the narrator of "A Shooting Star," chronicles the much-gossiped-about affairs of her friend Lorene and laments her inability to differentiate between sex and love. In "The Eagle Flies," Vinnie, a single mother, devotes herself to her selfish children, letting opportunities for her own happiness slip by until it is almost too late. In "A Filet of Soul," Louella, raised to believe she is ugly and undesirable, falls for a fast-talking con man and loses her small inheritance and her dignity; but his betrayal turns out to mark the beginning of a love affair - and a life - Louella had never imagined she would find. In the final story of this collection, "The Lost and the Found," Lorene waits and waits for the philanderer she loves to marry her, almost letting the love of a good man pass her by.
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