“My wife was a phenomenal woman who did it her way,” said her husband Ellis Gordon, Jr. “She loved her family and her career as a writer. We enjoyed life together as a team and we will miss her immensely and will love her forever.”  Read More

This memoir -- part tell-all, part cautionary tale -- shows how Karrinne came to be the confidante of so many, why she kept their secrets, and how she found herself in Hollywood after a life marked by physical abuse, rape, and drugs -- all before she was twenty-six. By sharing her emotionally charged story, she hopes to shed light on an otherwise romanticized industry.

ISBN: 0767921364
Pub. Date: October 03, 2006
Format: Paperback, 352pp
Publisher: Broadway Books

Three Sides to Every Story is a love triangle that unfolds in the voices of Johnny, Tonya, and James. Johnny and Tonya are high school sweethearts whose dream of a life together is shattered when Tonya is assaulted. Johnny, in revenge, beats her attacker and is imprisoned.

At first, Tonya stands by Johnny, but eventually finds comfort in a rapper's arms. Meanwhile, in prison, Johnny meets the openly gay James. What begins as a friendship soon evolves into an intimate relationship, a sexually passionate romance that is cut short when James is released on parole. A year later, Johnny leaves prison haunted by his feelings for both James and Tonya.

Their lives are turned into emotional roller coasters as each one tries to come to terms with what they really want. Inviting comparison to E. Lynn Harris and J. L. King, Clarence Nero creates an utterly compelling narrative while illuminating the social and sexual challenges young urban black people face today.

This book is about love. What it is and what it isn't. It is about you—and about everybody who has ever reached out to touch the heart of another. Among many other lessons of the heart, Leo Buscaglia reminds us: Love is open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.

Zane wanted stories "that took risks, that explored unique situations, that were creative beyond compare." She wanted to show that men and women can equally express themselves through the medium of erotic fiction. She wanted stories that would turn her on. This collection of selected sexy short stories will turn you on, too.

From a clandestine relationship with Nas's biggest rival, Jay-Z, that stirred up the biggest feud in hip-hop history, to seeing her reputation in tatters and a once loving relationship with Nas fall apart, Carmen depicts her trying journey to become the strong woman and mother she is today. After years of turmoil that included drugs, sex, greed, and violence -- and abandoning what she had always prized above all, her freedom -- Carmen took a stand, focusing on herself. After years of pursuit by the media, Carmen sets the record straight in It's No Secret -- and has no regrets.

From nervous breakdowns to drug addiction, Love Is Never Painless explores the deeper side of love; the side rarely explored in romance novels. Zane, Johnson, and Rivers have penned a powerful collection of novellas that will not only have readers talking but also examining their own relationships with a new perspective.

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

From Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built.
Provocative and controversial, Rhoden's Forty Million Dollar Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings and at the first Kentucky Derby to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. Rhoden makes the cogent argument that black athletes' "evolution" has merely been a journey from literal plantations-where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings-to today's figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. Weaving in his own experiences growing up on Chicago's South Side, playing college football for an all-black university, and his decades as a sportswriter, Rhoden contends that black athletes' exercise of true power is as limited today as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. The primary difference is, today's shackles are often of their own making.

Every advance made by black athletes, Rhoden explains, has been met with a knee-jerk backlash-one example being Major League Baseball's integration of the sport, which stripped the black-controlled Negro League of its talent and left it to founder. He details the "conveyor belt" that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they're cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason.

Sweeping and meticulously detailed, Forty Million Dollar Slaves is an eye-opening exploration of a metaphor we only thought we knew.

ISBN: 0399239723
Pub. Date: September 2003
Format: Hardcover, 32pp
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Age Range: 4 to 6

Annotation
A little girl learns coping skills with the help of her grandmother, neighbors and school friends, when her mother's mental illness disrupts her daily routine.

From the Publisher
Some mornings, Annie's mother's smiles are as bright as sunshine as she makes pancakes for breakfast and helps Annie get ready for school.
But other days, her mother doesn't smile at all and gets very angry. Those days Annie has to be a big girl and make her own breakfast, and even put herself to bed at night. But Annie's grandma helps her remember what to do when her mommy isn't well, and her silly friends are there to cheer her up. And no matter what, Annie knows that even when Mommy is angry on the outside, on the inside she never stops loving her.

Advice for parents, educators, community, and church members is provided in this guide for ensuring that African American boys grow up to be strong, committed, and responsible African American men. This book answers such questions as Why are there more black boys in remedial and special education classes than girls? Why are more girls on the honor roll? When do African American boys see a positive black male role model? Is the future of black boys in the hands of their mothers and white female teachers? and When does a boy become a man? The significance of rite of passage activities, including mentoring, male bonding, and spirituality, are all described.

Repercussions are felt for decades in a dozen lives after a racist beating turns to cold-blooded murder in a small Mississippi town in the 1950s. Bebe Moore Campbell's affecting memoir, Sweet Summer: Growing Up With and Without My Dad, was hailed by The Philadelphia Inquirer as "a remarkable achievement." "Ripe with family stories, lush with images, suffused with emotions," said the Kansas City Star. "It is probably one of the more overdue books about and for the black community," wrote Nikki Giovanni in The Washington Post. Now Campbell turns her abundant talents to fiction in an evocative first novel, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. Chicago-born Armstrong Todd is fifteen, black, and unused to the segregated ways of the Deep South when his mother sends him to spend the summer with relatives in her native rural Mississippi. For speaking a few innocuous words in French to a white woman, Armstrong pays the ultimate price when her husband, brother-in-law, and father-in-law decide to teach him a lesson. The lives of everyone involved in the incident - black and white - are changed forever, and the reverberations extend well into the next generation. Resonant with the sorrows of poverty and racial prejudice as well as the triumphs of love and social justice, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine marks the debut of a powerful, clear voice in contemporary fiction.

Bebe Moore Campbell’s moving story is for anyone who has ever faced insurmountable obstacles and prayed for a happy ending, only to discover she’d have to reach deep within herself to fight for it.

Hear the words of the Bible brought to life like never before. Inspired By… The Bible Experience: New Testament Audio CD is a fully-dramatized reading of the complete Bible performed by an unprecedented ensemble of distinguished African-American actors, musicians, and personalities. The cast is scheduled to include such recognizable voices as: • Denzel Washington • Blair Underwood • Angela Bassett • Juanita Bynum • Shirley Caesar • Kirk Franklin and more.* The dramatization is further enriched by an original musical score composed by Grammy award–winning producers. And the recording is truly contemporary, using the accessible and trusted Today’s New International Version (TNIV) of the Bible. The features of Inspired By… The Bible Experience: New Testament Audio provide a rich listening experience, helping you hear the words of Scripture as if for the first time. Inspired By… The Bible Experience: New Testament Audio is available in both traditional and MP3 CD formats. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the International Bible Society.

“With bodacious wit, in just a few panels, each day Aaron serves up—and sends up—life in America through the eyes of two African-American kids who are full of attitude, intelligence, and rebellion. Each time I read the strip, I laugh—and I wonder how long The Boondocks can get away with the things it says. And how on earth can the most truthful thing in the newspaper be the comics?”
—From the foreword by Michael Moore

“Young men today have been bombarded with images of wealth and success that tell them that buying the hottest car or the most bling-blingin’ jewelry is what they should be motivated by. There is an overwhelming sales pitch targeted at these young men that subliminally suggests that material goods are what makes them real men. I want young men to have knowledge of the things that bring them true empowerment: education, a strong sense of purpose, compassion, confidence, and humility, to name a few.

It is no accident that I graduated from Brown University magna cum laude and received graduate degrees with honors from Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government. My family taught me that doing my best, educating myself, and being in service to others were not optional and that having values and being truthful were not negotiable.

I am living proof that these principles work. Through the letters in this book, I wish to pass on to other young men my grandfathers’ legacies of education, hard work, determination, and success.”
—Excerpted from the Introduction

Soon all eyes shift as everyone finds themselves desperately chasing Destiny, a troubled and deceptive girl dancing on the edge of womanhood. When the rubber meets the road, everyone's fighting dirty for what they want...and they're all willing to destroy their enemy or go down in flames to get it.

“My intention in writing this book from the outset has been to illustrate what happens… when one of the world’s largest companies rules the courtroom with impunity while a judge in black robes sits on the bench giving his or her stamp of approval to what the justice system calls fair and equal treatment. And what happens when jurors who hear the cases are oftentimes oblivious to their own complicity in assuring that Corporate America always wins. At the turn of this 21st century, one company, Qwest Communications International Inc., formerly U. S. West Communications Inc., was able to use its powerful influence to extract the results it desired from our nation’s federal court system, all in the name of justice. ”
–Excerpted from the Preface