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AALBC.com's Best Selling Books for November and December 2006

Fiction Nonfiction
#1

Brothers and Sisters
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Bebe Moore Campbell

Mass Market Paperback: 544 pages
Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group (September 1, 1995)
ISBN: 0425149404

An eagerly awaited new novel by the author of Your Blues Ain't Like Mine. Campbell's new novel is set in the white-hot center of racially troubled Los Angeles, where African American Esther Jackson has a promising career at a downtown bank. When a new black male vice president's behavior draws a sexual harassment suit, Esther is forced to examine her own loyalties.

Note:

On Monday, November 27, 2006 at 12:15 a. m. PST, our beloved internationally acclaimed best selling author, writer, and mental health advocate, Elizabeth Bebe Moore Campbell Gordon died peacefully at her home in Los Angeles due to complications related to brain cancer.

’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

#1

Confessions of a Video Vixen
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Karrine Steffans

ISBN: 0060842423
Format: Hardcover, 205pp
Pub. Date: June 2005
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Read an AALBC.com Book Review

Glass vases filled with marbles crashed all around us as he began tossing linens from the bed. As the marbles scattered, we laughed in unison ... I remember the exact moment that I first laid on my back for him ... My legs were wrapped around his waist and just before his body was to merge with mine, I noticed his upper right chest. On it was a tattoo with the words "Pain is Love."

Confessions of a Video Vixen is the widely anticipated memoir of Karrine Steffans, the once sought-after sexy siren who appeared in the music videos of multiplatinum hip-hop artists such as Jay-Z, R. Kelly, and LL Cool J. A top-paid video dancer, Karrine transitioned to film when acclaimed director F. Gary Gray picked her to costar in his film A Man Apart, starring Vin Diesel. But the movie and music video sets, swanky Miami and New York restaurants, and trysts with the celebrities featured in the pages of People and In Touch magazines only skims the surface of Karrine's life.

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.

#2

Three Sides to Every Story: A Novel
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Clarence Nero

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.

#2

Love: What Life Is All About
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Leo F. Buscaglia

ISBN: 0449911624
Pub. Date: September 1996
Format: Paperback, 148pp
Publisher: Random House, Incorporated

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.

#3

Chocolate Flava: The Eroticanoir.com Anthology
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Zane (Editor)

ISBN: 0743482387
Format: Paperback, 352pp
Pub. Date: January 2004
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group

As a best-selling author and successful publisher of Strebor Books, Zane's name is synonymous with popular fiction -- especially erotica. Her website, Eroticanoir.com, gets over a million hits a year from around the world, and her fans look forward to every one of her publishing ventures with eager anticipation.

Chocolate Flava is the first in a series of collections of great erotic fiction edited by Zane, the reigning queen of erotica. Based on the Featured Erotica section of her website, Chocolate Flava gathers twenty-five sizzling tales from some of the most talented -- and dedicated -- writers of erotica working today.

This is a his-and-her collection. There are stories specifically written with female readers in mind, and others written expressly for men. Among the contributors are names already familiar to readers of erotica, such as Reginald Harris, Robert Edison Sandiford, Jonathan Luckett and, of course, Zane -- as well as emerging voices, such as Geneva Barnes and Robert Scott Adams. What they all have in common is that they are great at what they do, and have been handpicked by Zane -- an editor who knows a hot story when she sees it.

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.

#3

It's No Secret: From Nas to Jay-Z, from Seduction to Scandal--a Hip-Hop Helen of Troy Tells All
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by Carmen Bryan, Vanessa Satten

ISBN: 1416532668
Pub. Date: November 2006
Format: Hardcover, 259pp
Publisher: Pocket Books

Carmen Bryan is no stranger to the rap world. Not only did she work at Def Jam and Capitol Records but she shares a daughter with hip-hop superstar Nas -- a relationship made extremely public through Nas's celebrity status, rap lyrics, and the ever-present media. Now, in It's No Secret, a strong, resilient Carmen bares all, telling her side of the story and leaving no detail unturned -- with the true candor and raw emotion of someone who has been there, done that, and survived.

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.

#4

Love Is Never Painless: Three Novellas
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Zane, Eileen M. Johnson & V. Anthony Rivers

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Atria; 3 Books in 1 edition (November 14, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN: 0743498623

Truer words have never been spoken. This heart-wrenching collection of novellas brings that statement to life in three unique ways, penned by three of the generation's most prolific authors.

In Eileen M. Johnson's "How the Other Half Lives," Jamellah and Fernecia have been friends since forever. Having escaped the poverty of their youth together, they both had made their mark in society. However, men problems threaten to make them literally fall apart. Fernecia is married to a man who was raised to think he is better than everyone -- even his own wife. Jamellah has always used men to get ahead but eventually everything catches up to her. The two friends must ultimately count on each other in a world of havoc and distrust.

In V. Anthony Rivers' "Love Is 2 Blame," Malcolm is devastated after a two-year relationship with Shaylisa ends. He finds it difficult to function because he cannot comprehend why she would want to end such a perfect situation. He was everything she had asked for; he treated her with respect and showered her with love. Yet love was not enough. Trying to move on to someone new will not be as easy as it used to be, but will the lovely Zahara show Malcolm what true love is all about?

In Zane's "Staring Evil in the Face," Robier has everything a man could ever wish for: a stable and rewarding career, two beautiful children, an elegant home, and the woman of his dreams. Having loved Tiphanie since college, he is determined to keep his marital vows until . . . Tiphanie is involved in a horrible car accident that changes the entire course of their lives.

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.

#4

Never Satisfied : How & Why Men Cheat
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Michael Baisden 

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

#5

Public Enemy #2: An All-New Boondocks Collection
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Aaron McGruder

ISBN: 1400082587
Format: Paperback, 176pp
Pub. Date: April 2005
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

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.



 

#5 

Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
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Amazon

William C. Rhoden

ISBN: 0609601202
Format: Hardcover, 304pp
Pub. Date: July 2006
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Read an AALBC.com Book Review

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.

#6 

Sometimes My Mommy Gets Angry
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Bebe Moore Campbell, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)

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.

#6 

Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys
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Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu

ISBN: 0913543004
Format: Paperback, 77pp
Pub. Date: March 1987
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.

#7

Your Blues Ain't Like Mine
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Bebe Moore Campbell

Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books (August 10, 1993)
ISBN: 0345383958

Set in the recent American past, this is a timeless tale of racism, murder, and redemption. A black Chicago-born teen goes Deep South for the summer and is murdered for saying the wrong thing to a white woman. Repercussions are felt by everyone involved, both black and white, for generations.

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.

#7

Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?
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Michael Eric Dyson

ISBN: 0465017193
Format: Hardcover, 208pp
Pub. Date: May 2, 2005
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books

Read AALBC.com Book Reviews by Kam Williams and Paige Turner

The acclaimed "hip-hop intellectual" exposes the raw nerve of class and generational warfare in black America with this provocative defense of impoverished African Americans
Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was the fact that his audience laughed and applauded.

Best-selling writer, preacher, and scholar Michael Eric Dyson uses the Cosby brouhaha as a window on a growing cultural divide within the African-American community. According to Dyson, the "Afristocracy" -lawyers, physicians, intellectuals, bankers, civil rights leaders, entertainers, and other professionals-looks with disdain upon the black poor who make up the "Ghettocracy" -single mothers on welfare, the married, single, and working poor, the incarcerated, and a battalion of impoverished children. Dyson explains why the black middle class has joined mainstream America to blame the poor for their troubles, rather than tackling the systemic injustices that shape their lives. He exposes the flawed logic of Cosby's diatribe and offers a principled defense of the wrongly maligned black citizens at the bottom of the social totem pole. Displaying the critical prowess that has made him the nation's preeminent spokesman for the hip-hop generation, Dyson challenges us all-black and white-to confront the social problems that the civil rights movement failed to solve.

#8

72 Hour Hold
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Bebe Moore Campbell

Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Knopf (June 28, 2005)
ISBN: 1400040744

In this novel of family and redemption, a mother struggles to save her eighteen-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness by forcing her to deal with her bipolar disorder. New York Times best-selling author Bebe Moore Campbell draws on her own powerful emotions and African-American roots, showcasing her best writing yet.

Trina suffers from bipolar disorder, making her paranoid, wild, and violent. Watching her child turn into a bizarre stranger, Keri searches for assistance through normal channels. She quickly learns that a seventy-two hour hold is the only help you can get when an adult child starts to spiral out of control. After three days, Trina can sign herself out of any program.

Fed up with the bureaucracy of the mental health community and determined to save her daughter by any means necessary, Keri signs on for an illegal intervention. The Program is a group of radicals who eschew the psychiatric system and model themselves after the Underground Railroad. When Keri puts her daughter’s fate in their hands, she begins a journey that has her calling on the spirit of Harriet Tubman for courage. In the upheaval that follows, she is forced to confront a past that refuses to stay buried, even as she battles to secure a future for her child.

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.

#8

Inspired By The Bible Experience: New Testament
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Zondervan Publishing Under, T. D. Jakes

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.

#9

A Right to Be Hostile: The Boondocks Treasury
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Aaron McGruder

ISBN: 1400048575
Format: Paperback, 256pp
Pub. Date: September 23, 2003
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

Here’s the first big book of The Boondocks, more than four years and 800 strips of one of the most influential, controversial, and scathingly funny comics ever to run in a daily newspaper.

�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

#9

Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny
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Hill Harper

ISBN: 1592402003
Format: Hardcover, 192pp
Pub. Date: April 2006
Publisher: Penguin Group

Read an AALBC.com Book Review

�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

#10

Chasing Destiny
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Eric Jerome Dickey

ISBN: 052594950X
Format: Hardcover, 432pp
Pub. Date: April 2006
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)

Eight-time New York Times best-selling author Eric Jerome Dickey's new novel is filled with intrigue, speed, and sex appeal. And an unforgettable female narrator rides her sexy yellow motorcycle right through it all.

Billie (aka "Ducati") is known as much for her extraordinary beauty as for the sexy yellow motorcycle she rides through the mean streets of Los Angeles. Tough, talented, and self-assured, Billie's used to doing things her way-but that was before love threw an oil slick in the road and spun her life into chaos.

Billie's first problem is simple: she's pregnant.
Her second problem is that her lover, Keith, is still married.

Keith has some "things" to deal with, and the people in his life are dark and duplicitous enough to take matters into their own hands, determined to keep Billie from having her baby. Billie suddenly finds herself confronted, attacked, run off highways, threatened and shadowed. Keith still has ties to his manipulative wife, Carmen, and he adores his fifteen-year-old daughter Destiny. Will he do the right thing by his new family, or stand by his old one?

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.

#10

Lynched by Corporate America: The Gripping True Story of How One African American Survived Doing Business with a Fortune 500 Giant
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Herman Malone and Robert Schwab

ISBN: 0978509439
Pub. Date: October 2006
Format: Hardcover, 112pp
Publisher: HMRS Publishing

’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

 

Interesting Stats:

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Bebe Moore Campbell's titles account for 37% of all top ten fiction books sold

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Fiction to Non fiction ratio: 55% to 45% respectively

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The Best Selling Book: Confessions of a Video Vixen

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Highly Touted New Comer: Clarence Nero author of Three Sides to Every Story

 

AALBC.com generates book sales directly, and through a number of affiliate programs.  Our bestsellers list reflects sales generated via Amazon.com.  This list ranks book sales from November 1st through December 18th 2006.

For permission to reproduce this bestseller list, please contact troy@aalbc.com