#1 Heart of the Artist, The by Rory Noland  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble   Format: Paperback, 208pp. ISBN: 0310224713 Publisher: Zondervan Publishing House Pub. Date: May  1999 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 Directly from AALBC.com Paperback, 178 pages ISBN 0-9712019-2-7  Read an AALBC.com Review 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 or Barnes and Noble   Format: Hardcover, 324pp. ISBN: 0525946411 Publisher: Dutton/Plume Pub. Date: February  2002 Read an AALBC.com Review 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.

#4 Brown Sugar : A Collection of Erotic Black Fiction by Carol Taylor (Editor)  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble   Format: Paperback, 272pp. ISBN: 0452282241 Publisher: Dutton/Plume Pub. Date: December  2000 #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. Brown Sugar brings together some of the most acclaimed voices in today's black literary world-Sapphire, Natasha Tarpley, Reginald Harris, and Pamela Sneed, among them. These titillating stories cover the full spectrum of black experience and identity as they reveal sexuality and sensuality in all their varied and exotic forms. From the subtle to the graphic, Brown Sugar embraces the ardor and passion of black love and lust, and will appeal to both men and women. Featuring both well-established authors and promising new writers, this one-of-a-kind collection represents the past, present, and future of black literature at its pleasurable and outrageous best. It is a must-have for every lover, as well as every lover of first-rate fiction. 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.

#5 Zachary's Wings by Rosemarie Robotham  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble   Format: Paperback, 288pp. ISBN: 0684857367 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Trade Pub. Date: October  1999 "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

#6 William Sheppard : Congo's African-American Livingstone by William E. Phipps Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble Format: Paperback, 247pp. ISBN: 0664502032 Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: February  2002 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.   -excepted from NY Times article: A Black Adventurer in the Heart of Darkness, January 8, 2002, Books Section, by Dintia Smith read the rest of the article

#7 Never Satisfied : How & Why Men Cheat by Michael Baisden  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble   Format: Paperback, 3rd ed., 254pp. ISBN: 0964367580 Publisher: Legacy Publishing Pub. Date: January  1995 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!

#8 Our Kind of People : Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence Otis Graham  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble   Format: Paperback, 448pp. ISBN: 0060984384 Publisher: HarperTrade Pub. Date: February  2000 Edition Desc: 1 HARPER Read an AALBC.com Review 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.

#9 The African Presence in Early Asia by Ivan Van Sertima (Editor)  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble   Format: Paperback, 168pp. ISBN: 0887386377 Publisher: Transaction Publishers Pub. Date: March  1997 Edition Desc: 10TH ANNOTATED 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.  - Runoko Rashidi

#10 The Future Has a Past : Stories by J. California Cooper  Click to order via Amazon or Barnes and Noble Format: Hardcover, 288pp. ISBN: 038549680X Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated Pub. Date: November  2000 Edition Desc: 1 ED Read an AALBC.com Review 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.