The Zane Effect 58% of the top 10 fiction titles sold

Fiction to Non fiction ratio 78% to 22%

Top Selling Book (most number of copies sold this period): Confessions of a Video Vixen

These stories capture the dangerous realities of domestic abuse, while also pointing toward the steps that need to be taken to break the cycle that perpetuates it. It is sure to serve as a rallying cry for all those who desire victory over their own victimization, and a guide for understanding the complex undercurrents that make such patterns possible.

Read and interesting conversation from our discussion boards: WHO THE *bleep* IS SUPERHEAD!?!?

Here's the next big collection of Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks, the most subversively funny, controversial, and politically engaged strip to be found in America's comics pages. Featuring Huey Freeman, a radical preteen conspiracy theorist, and his little brother Riley, a desperately cute thug-in-training, The Boondocks skewers targets from George W. Bush and Ralph Nader to Queen Latifah and Bill Cosby. With more than 500 previously uncollected strips�including strips banned from newspapers around the country�Public Enemy #2 is a must-have collection of the sharpest satire being crafted today.

Throughout the book, Kola speaks in a voice so utterly naked, truthful and unpretentious that it's impossible not to fall in love with her.
�Kurt Rampling (editor)

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.

A Million Little Pieces
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James Frey

ISBN: 0385507755
Format: Hardcover, 400pp
Pub. Date: April 2003
Publisher: Doubleday Publishing

James Frey's memoir of drug addition and recovery was a bestseller even before Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club in 2005, but the subsequent revelations about discrepancies between the story and the author’s real life touched off a national debate about the line between fact and fiction.

Filled with graphic scenes of epic substance abuse and the torments of withdrawal, A Million Little Pieces was widely heralded upon its publication as a harrowing, self-lacerating, and courageously confessional autobiography. It received many admiring critical reviews, carried cover endorsements from noted literati...

In January 2006, the author acknowledged the truth of charges that many details in the book were embellished or fabricated. In a note to readers that was prepared for subsequent printings, he apologized to those who felt they had been misled and explained why he wrote the book the way he did. Reactions to these revelations included soul-searching by publishers about their responsibilities for ensuring accuracy, ruminations by critics on the line between fact and fiction in modern culture, and spirited defenses of the author by readers who maintained that the book's inspirational message was of primary importance. One thing seems certain: A Million Little Pieces is a book that promises to have a long-lasting impact. - excerpted B&N Review

Zane's erotic short stories have captivated the minds of both sexes and all races. The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth did exactly what its title implies -- exploded 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 cultures.

There's Rayne's erratic mother, who constantly boasts about being a "good whore"; Yardley's playboy buddies, always trolling for sex; and, worst of all, past lovers who make a habit of popping up and ruining things as only old flames (or previous mistakes) can. Weaving the carnal and the comical in true Zane fashion, Rayne and Yardley's struggle to find love in a world gone mad is a timeless talk about everything that can go wrong in the dating game -- and a few things that can go right.

Africa's Gift to America is another classic which should be added to the library of every serious student of African American history. He lays out in clear and fascinating detail the role of the African American from the founding of the nation in the 17th century through the Revolutionary War period to the Civil War and early Post-Civil War era. His use of first hand documents such as newspapers, magazines, political cartoons, journals, and his extensive citation to then-contemporary historical works is masterfully woven to create a rich historical tapestry. His mentioning of obscure historical facts such as the Corwin Amendment, the rejected original form of the 13th Amendment that would have preserved rather than abolished slavery, as well as the role of slave Jo Anderson in creating the McCormick reaper, are but a small sampling of the treasures within this invaluable volume.
 

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.

Black Books Galore! Guide to Great African American Children's Books about Girls
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by Donna Rand, Toni Trent Parker

ISBN: 0471375268
Format: Paperback, 224pp
Pub. Date: December 2000
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Barnes & Noble Sales Rank: 589,484

"Offers a wonderful overview of literature with black children in its focus."
�Jim Trelease, author The Read-Aloud Handbook on Black Books Galore!

These are exciting times for African American children’s literature. Never before have there been so many titles available. Now two of the mothers who founded Black Books Galore!�the nation’s leading organizer of festivals of African American children’s books�and the authors of the highly acclaimed Black Books Galore! Guide to Great African American Children’s Books share their expert advice on how to find and choose the best African American books in two new fully annotated guides�one featuring boys, one featuring girls�open the door to a wonderful world of reading for children. Discover hundreds of young black heroes, heroines, and positive role models of every age in every category, including board books, story and picture books, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, history, biography, fables, and more.

Invaluable for parents, teachers, and librarians, these easy-to-use, illustrated reference guides feature:

�Quick, lively descriptions of over 600 books

�Helpful guidelines for parents of girls and parents of boys

�Easy-to-find listings organized by age level and indexed by title, topic, author, and illustrator

�Reflections from famous public figures about their favorite childhood books

�Listings of award winners and Reading Rainbow Books

Chunichi is a native of south Virginia who grew up with her mother and step father. She has lived most of the things she writes about and still considers herself a good girl looking for a bad boy. Chunichi is a spoken word poet.

Yet despite the cries of outrage that have mounted since the levees broke, we have failed to confront the disaster’s true lesson: to be poor, or black, in today’s ownership society, is to be left behind. Displaying the intellectual rigor, political passion, and personal empathy that have won him acclaim and fans all across the color line, Michael Eric Dyson offers a searing assessment of the meaning of Hurricane Katrina.

�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

Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys: Volume III
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Jawanza Kunjufu

ISBN: 0913543209
Format: Paperback, 79pp
Pub. Date: June 1990

Publisher: African American Images
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.

Since its debut in April 1999, The Boondocks has found a home in more than 250 newspapers, making its launch the strongest since Calvin And Hobbes and For Better Or For Worse. The rich, multilayered comic strip offers a frank yet often funny look at race in America. It starts with a simple premise: Two young boys, Riley and Huey, move from inner-city Chicago to live with their grandfather. The tension increases, however, because the two boys are African-Americans now compelled to adapt to a white suburban world. They must take all they've learned in the 'hood and apply it to life in the 'burbs. Aaron McGruder has created a strip unlike any other. Superbly illustrated, The Boondocks has stirred controversy, attracted widespread media coverage, and won readers who've applauded McGruder's unapologetic and humorous approach to race. This second collection includes some of the year's most compelling story lines. The Boondocks is a groundbreaking strip of enormous proportions. It's certain to only increase in popularity.

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.

Carmen's made enough money and she wants out. But can she get out alive? And can she get out in time? Can Carmen, her infant son, and Delano live happily ever after? Vickie M. Stringer adroitly weaves fact and fiction and has written the most honest, provocative and compelling novel of the "Bad-Girl" genre.

Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt 
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by Jack Olsen

With the epic scope of A Civil Action, Last Man Standing is an unforgettable chronicle of the twenty-seven-year struggle to break a conspiratorial abuse of power and free one of America's most famous political prisoners.

In 1968, twenty-year-old Elmer Gerard "Geronimo" Pratt returned from Vietnam with a chest full of medals and a Purple Heart into the most heated racial climate in American history. Taking advantage of the G.I. Bill, Pratt enrolled at UCLA, where the Black Panther Party was busy recruiting. Propelled by a diverse group of African Americans, the Panther agenda was a volatile mix of black rage, black pride, altruism, idealism, and violence. Under the charismatic leadership of Eldridge Cleaver, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Bunchy Carter, Pratt rose to the rank of Deputy Minister of Defense and became leader of the Los Angeles Chapter. The Panthers did not go unnoticed by J. Edgar Hoover. In the era of enemies' lists, his FBI drew up its own list of Panthers to be "neutralized" and began a systematic counterintelligence program to undermine black solidarity. Geronimo Pratt headed Hoover's list. When an FBI informer within the Panther party agreed to testify that Pratt murdered a young woman at a Santa Monica tennis court, his days as a free citizen came to an end.

If not for the unlikely alliance of a brash African American defense attorney (Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr.), a radical Irish Jewish law student (Stuart Hanlon), a Protestant minister (Rev. James McCloskey), and the indefatigable Pratt-his spirit unbroken by eight years in solitary confinement-a horrifying miscarriage of justice would never have been rectified. As riveting biography, courtroom drama, and just plain narrative nonfiction, Last Man Standing is certain to take its place among the finest works of American judicial history.