29 Books Published by Agate Publishing, Inc on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

The free-standing successor novel by the author of the critically acclaimed The Last Thing You Surrender, Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s 54 Miles launches forward twenty years to the fateful weeks of March 1965—from the infamous “Bloody Sunday” march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on the 7th to the triumphant entry into Montgomery on the 25th that climaxed the voting rights campaign—and the families who find themselves confronting the past amid another flashpoint in American history.

Young Adam, who has been raised in Harlem by his white father, George, and Black mother, Thelma, goes back to his parents’ home state of Alabama to participate in the voting rights campaign, only to be brutalized in the Bloody Sunday melee. He is still recovering from this when he is struck a heavy emotional blow, learning for the first time—and in the cruelest way imaginable—of a family secret that sends him spiraling and plunging further into danger. To save him, and any hope for their relationship, Thelma is drawn back, for the first time in twenty years, to the South she both hates and fears, and to a reckoning that may result in an incalculable loss.

Meanwhile, Thelma’s brother Luther is also spiraling, but in a different way. Forty-two years after his parents were lynched before his eyes, and twenty years after the man who led the lynch mob walked out of court a free man, Luther has just made a shocking discovery. He‘s found the murderer, Floyd Bitters, helpless and enfeebled in a rest home—unable to move or even to speak. The old man is literally at Luther’s mercy. And Luther, who has never overcome this trauma that defined his life, is suddenly forced to relive it all again as he grapples with the awful question of what justice now demands.

An inspiring collection of pithy, easy-to-recall one-liners and quotable short passages from historic and contemporary thought leaders throughout the African Diaspora.

Famous Black Quotations, first published in 1986, has long been the go-to resource for the eloquent words of Black history makers. In this new, expanded edition, Famous Black Quotations for the Twenty-First Century, editor Janet Cheatham Bell includes the words of people who have come to prominence in recent decades, such as Barack and Michelle Obama, Alicia Garza, John Legend, Colin Kaepernick, Kamala Harris, and Nikole Hannah-Jones. Bestselling author Bell has curated more than five hundred quotes along with dates, sources, and biographical information of the people quoted. This guide to significant events in the experiences of people of African descent can be used to educate and inspire. Much has changed in the past few decades as Black Americans speak out to demand fair treatment and equal opportunity, and Famous Black Quotations for the Twenty-First Century has been updated and repackaged to inspire a new generation.

This Life is the debut novel by Quntos KunQuest, a longtime inmate at Angola, the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary. This marks the appearance of a bold, distinctive new voice, one deeply inflected by hiphop, that delves into the meaning of a life spent behind bars, the human bonds formed therein, and the poetry that even those in the most dire places can create.

Lil Chris is just nineteen when he arrives at Angola as an AU—an admitting unit, a fresh fish, a new vict. He’s got a life sentence with no chance of parole, but he’s also got a clear mind and sharp awareness—one that picks up quickly on the details of the system, his fellow inmates, and what he can do to claim a place at the top. When he meets Rise, a mature inmate who’s already spent years in the system, and whose composure and raised consciousness command the respect of the other prisoners, Lil Chris learns to find his way in a system bent on repressing every means he has to express himself.

Lil Chris and Rise channel their questions, frustrations, and pain into rap, and This Life flows with the same cadence that powers their charged verses. It pulses with the heat of impassioned inmates, the oppressive daily routines of the prison yard, and the rap contests that bring the men of the prison together.

This Life is told in a voice that only a man who’s lived it could have—a clipped, urgent, evocative voice that surges with anger, honesty, playfulness, and a deep sense of ugly history. Angola started out as a plantation—and as This Life makes clear, black inmates are still in a kind of enslavement there. This Life is an important debut that commands our attention with the vigor, dynamism, and raw, consciousness-expanding energy of this essential new voice.

Could you find the courage to do what’s right in a world on fire?

Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard Pitts, Jr.’s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States.

An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman’s life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese … a young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war … a black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion.

Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does it take to change someone’s mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?

The barbershop is where the magic happens. Boys go in as lumps of clay and, with princely robes draped around their shoulders, a dab of cool shaving cream on their foreheads, and a slow, steady cut, they become royalty. That crisp yet subtle line makes boys sharper, more visible, more aware of every great thing that could happen to them when they look good: lesser grades turn into As; girls take notice; even a mother’s hug gets a little tighter. Everyone notices.

A fresh cut makes boys fly.

This rhythmic, read-aloud title is an unbridled celebration of the self-esteem, confidence, and swagger boys feel when they leave the barber’s chair—a tradition that places on their heads a figurative crown, beaming with jewels, that confirms their brilliance and worth and helps them not only love and accept themselves but also take a giant step toward caring how they present themselves to the world. The fresh cuts. That’s where it all begins.

Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut is a high-spirited, engaging salute to the beautiful, raw, assured humanity of black boys and how they see themselves when they approve of their reflections in the mirror.

Once marginalized merely as a “rabble rouser” and “racial provocateur,” Reverend Alfred Charles Sharpton, Jr, has remade himself over and over again throughout his decades-long career. He has emerged stronger in each incarnation and has prevailed as the nation’s most powerful black political powerbroker, eclipsing Jesse Louis Jackson, who himself inherited that role from Martin Luther King, Jr. Sharpton has miraculously transcended the divisive racial politics of his past and is now courted by white and black politicians alike, including President Barack Obama, who will need his help to solidify his base within the African-American community as the 2012 presidential elections approach.

Dispensing with his flamboyant physical appearance of yesteryear—the suede jogging suits combined with the gold medallion and the bouffant hairdo—Sharpton is transformed. He is currently the host of a syndicated radio talk show produced by media mogul Cathy Hughes. He is a multimillionaire, thanks in large part to his role as anchor of a nationally televised MSNBC news show. Two decades ago, Sharpton struggled to pay his bills and faced numerous eviction hearings. He has gone from the embarrassing epicenter of the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, in which a 15-year-old received national media attention for falsely accusing six men (including an Assistant District Attorney) of raping her, to a (short-lived) candidate for the 2004 presidential nomination.

Sharpton has become a part of the country’s cultural and celebrity elite: he belongs to social clubs with actors Alec Baldwin and Laurence Fishburne as well as former political nemesis Rudolph Giuliani; he flew to Los Angeles to personally bless the newborn twins of Mariah Carey and Nick Cannon; and he presided over the funeral ceremonies of Michael Jackson and James Brown, the man Sharpton calls a father-like figure who mentored and groomed him after his biological father deserted him at age 10 and impregnated his stepsister.

The Evolution of Al Sharpton is the first comprehensive biography to shine a critical spotlight on Sharpton, and it will trace the mesmerizing story of Sharpton’s continual reincarnation. Based on over 60 hours of exclusive interviews with Sharpton, as well as interviews with his closest associates, adversaries, and family members—including an unprecedented interview with Al Sharpton, Sr., The Evolution of Al Sharpton will elucidate and illuminate one of the nation’s most controversial and evolved black civil rights leaders of the last three decades, and one who will not be fading from the limelight anytime soon.

Never Stop is the wrenching memoir of Simba Sana, the co-founder and CEO of Karibu Books, a major indie bookselling phenomenon and perhaps the most successful black-owned book-industry business ever. Sana, the son of a poor, mentally ill single mother, built Karibu into a nationally celebrated mini-chain based in his native city of Washington, D.C.—and then experienced its collapse and failure while also going through a personal bottoming out. Sana shows how his experience with Karibu jump-started his lifelong journey to better understand himself, human nature, faith, and American culture—which ultimately helped him develop the powerful personal philosophy that drives his life today.

Born Bernard Sutton in Washington, D.C., in the aftermath of the city’s riots over Martin Luther King’s assassination, Sana grew up in the cycle of poverty and violence that dominated inner-city life in the 70s and 80s. Although Sana’s drive and intelligence helped set him apart in the classroom, he still spent plenty of time on D.C.’s tough streets. As a result of being bullied and from a desire to gain respect, he became involved with boxing, first as a fighter and later as a manager. Sana’s academic success got him into college, where he began to evolve into a man whose life embodied contradictions: committed to self-improvement and self-discipline but irrevocably marked by the chaos of his upbringing; an emerging businessman who’s also an impassioned Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist; living the corporate life at Ernst and Young by day while leading radical consciousness-raising groups at night.

Building Karibu became Sana’s opportunity to bind the disparate elements in his life together. He was able to capitalize on his business acumen while also cultivating his racial and cultural consciousness. Ultimately, though, the divisions in his identity and his accumulated emotional wounds confounded his effort to overcome his business reversals, and everything Sana built—marriage, family, and business—was lost in an incredibly brief time. Sana had to rebuild his life, and his identity, and set out to do so in a way that focused principally on the meaning and importance of love.

In this memoir, Sana details his search for love and truth with startling and profoundly moving intimacy. Something Good is a personal story of immense power and insight that will appeal to anyone seeking to live a more fulfilling life, no matter where they’re from or what path they’ve taken thus far. Throughout, Sana is guided by Einstein’s dictum: The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.

Grant Park is a page-turning and provocative look at black and white relations in contemporary America, blending the absurd and the poignant in a powerfully well-crafted narrative that showcases Pitts’s gift for telling emotionally wrenching stories.

Grant Park begins in 1968, with Martin Luther King’s final days in Memphis. The story then moves to the eve of the 2008 election, and cuts between the two eras. Disillusioned columnist Malcolm Toussaint, fueled by yet another report of unarmed black men killed by police, hacks into his newspaper’s server to post an incendiary column that had been rejected by his editors. Toussaint then disappears, and his longtime editor, Bob Carson, is summarily fired within hours of the column’s publication.

While a furious Carson tries to find Toussaint—while simultaneously dealing with the reappearance of a lost love from his days as a 60s activist—Toussaint is abducted by two white supremacists plotting to explode a bomb at Barack Obama’s planned rally in Chicago’s Grant Park. Toussaint and Carson are forced to remember the choices they made as young men, when both their lives were changed profoundly by their work in the civil rights movement.

Jabari Asim’s debut novel returns readers to Gateway City, the fictional Midwestern city first explored in his acclaimed short story collection, Taste of Honey. Against a 1970s backdrop of rapid social and political change, Only the Strong portrays the challenges and rewards of love in a quintessential American community where heartbreak and violence are seldom far away.

Moved by the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver decides to abandon his career as a professional leg-breaker and pursue a life of quiet moments and generous helpings of banana pudding in the company of his new, sensuous lover. His erstwhile boss, local kingpin Ananias Goode, is also thinking about slowing down—but his tempestuous affair with Dr. Artinces Noel, a prominent pediatrician, complicates his retirement plans. Meanwhile, Charlotte Divine, the doctor’s headstrong protégée, struggles with trials of her own.

With prose that’s sharp, humorous, and poetic, Asim skillfully renders a compelling portrait of urban life in the wake of the last major civil-rights bill. Massive change is afoot in America, and these characters have front-row seats.

Maxine Clair, award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Rattlebone and the novel October Suite, has assembled a deeply inspirational yet practical book to help readers access their inner creativity. Imagine This is a beautifully written set of deeply personal stories from which Clair draws examples of how we can be aware of the now, keep ourselves motivated, and create work of which we are proud.

Imagine This explains how some of us consciously choose the vehicle through which we express our magnificence—be it business, art, science, or other—while others of us have dutifully plied a trade in arenas that society has suggested are worthwhile, with self-expression only fixed on a hobby. Both, Clair maintains, can contribute to a good life. Occasionally, however, a moment comes that is sufficiently insistent on deep examination. In that moment, we float the possibility for expression of a greater self.

Imagine This shows readers how to be aware of these moments and how our inner creativity is always seeking an outlet. By combining captivating memoir with step-by-step advice, Clair helps us find and develop our own unique and personal creative outlets.

Justice While Black is a must-read for every young black male in America—and for everyone else who cares about their survival and well-being. This is a first-of-its-kind essential guide for African-American families about how to understand the criminal justice system, and about why that system continues to see black men as targets—and as dollar signs.

The book provides practical, straightforward advice on how to deal with specific legal situations: the threat of arrest, being arrested, being in custody, preparing for and undergoing a trial, and navigating the appeals and parole process. The primary goal of this book is to become a primer for African Americans on how to avoid becoming ensnared in the criminal justice system.

While the precarious safely of black males has received renewed interest in the past year because of the deaths of teenagers Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, the fact is that this group has always been under threat from the armed guardians of the white social order. The tactics have been modernized, but the impact is still devastating—we are witnessing an epic criminalization of the African-American community at levels never before seen since the end of slavery.

Pulitzer Prize winner Clarence Page is one of the most nationally recognized and highly regarded syndicated columnists in the country. His newest book commemorates the 30th anniversary of his column’s first appearance in the Chicago Tribune. It is the first such collection, and a long overdue archive of his best work covering a wide range of topics. Page has been a broadcast mainstay for decades, and his column, which is featured in over 150 newspapers, provides keen insight on the day’s most pressing issues. While Page is known for his liberal-leaning views, readers have always appreciated his unbiased approach in directing criticism across the political spectrum.

Culture Worrier: Selected Columns 1984–2014 brings Page’s unique perspective within the African-American and political communities, and his wealth of fascinating experiential knowledge, to the foreground of our ongoing national dialogue. As a veteran media member who has lived through the transition from print’s heyday to modern mobile publishing, from the Vietnam War through the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from the Civil Rights movement to the election of Barack Obama, Page is one of the most revered and uniquely qualified commentators of our time.

This fourth novel by O.H. Bennett represents a departure from his earlier work, characterized by rich depictions of African-American families rendered in quiet but powerfully charged prose. These qualities are present in Recognition, but with the addition of a twisting plot and thriller-like intensity.

Dana, a single-mother, is driving home one rainy evening when, as she passes a homeless panhandler, she recognizes the features of her long-absent husband. Warren Reynolds disappeared from Dana’s life a decade earlier — his body mysteriously missing after a terrible auto accident from which a pregnant Dana was rescued. After glimpsing the man she believes might be her husband, Dana begins surreptitiously searching for him, and is plunged back into memories of the difficulties they were grappling with at the time of Warren’s disappearance. She struggles with whether she can reveal her belief that her husband might be alive to her friends, her in-laws, and, most importantly, her son.

Masterful and psychologically penetrating, Recognition is a taut, engrossing work from a critically acclaimed author. Bennett, known for his terse style and vivid characters rooted in the mainstream of African-American experience, has put his rich, unique, and riveting storytelling talents on full display for all readers.

Author and essayist Kiese Laymon is one of the most unique, stirring, and powerful new voices in American writing. How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America is a collection of his essays, touching on subjects ranging from family, race, violence, and celebrity to music, writing, and coming of age in Mississippi. In this collection, Laymon deals in depth with his own personal story, which is filled with trials and reflections that illuminate under-appreciated aspects of contemporary American life. New and unexpected in contemporary American writing, Laymon’s voice mixes the colloquial with the acerbic, while sharp insights and blast-furnace heat calls to mind a black 21st-century Mark Twain. Much like Twain, Laymon’s writing is steeped in controversial issues both private and public. This collection introduces Laymon as a writer who balances volatile concepts on a razor’s edge and chops up much-discussed and often-misunderstood topics with his scathing humor and fresh, unexpected takes on the ongoing absurdities, frivolities, and calamities of American life.

This powerful new novel by O. H. Bennett tells the story of a makeshift family struggling to stay together as life wears away at their bonds of blood and love. At the center of the family is Gail Neighbors, the hardworking single mother of two sons, Mason and Tyler. Mason, the older, grew up without knowing his father, a feckless gambler and womanizer. Tyler, the younger, sings in the church choir and enjoys a close relationship with his father, Dan, who left Gail a few years before still spends plenty of time at the house. To make ends meet, Gail has taken in two boarders: Annie, an elderly woman with a diminishing grip on reality, and Jackie, the 20-year-old single mother of baby Cole, who can’t fully accept her overwhelming new responsibilities. Creatures Here Below renders with tremendous richness and care the realities of a black teenaged male whose life is taking a turn toward the worse.

In today’s society, every woman needs a gay best friend?someone who gives it to her straight about life, clothes, sex, and relationships. For example, on the hit TV show, ?The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” the breakout star, NeNe, has introduced the world to her gay best friend, Dwight Eubanks. On ?Sex In The City,” Carrie Bradshaw often turned to her gay best friend, Stanford, and ?Will and Grace” was all about the relationship between a woman and her gay best friend. The gay best friend?smart, sympathetic, and straight-talking?is the new must-have; no woman wants to be without one.

Enter Terrance Dean, who offers direct and to-the-point insights on some of life’s most challenging issues?family, friends, career, love, sex, and intimate relationships of all kinds?mixed with a little sass, wit, humor, forwardness, and spirituality, as only a gay man can do. He speaks candidly to women about healing their souls of past hurts in order to tap into their fabulousness.

This book will help women discover the strength they need for a life of loving relationships and abundant success. And it’s all done from a place of love, coming from their gay best friend.

When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, chef and widower Simon Fortier knows how he plans to face the storm—riding it out inside his long-time home in the city’s Treme neighborhood, just as he has through so many storms before. But when the levees break and the city is torn apart, Simon disappears. His son, Julian, a celebrated jazz trumpeter, rushes home to a New Orleans he left years before to search for his father. As Julian crisscrosses the city, fearing the worst, he reconnects with Sylvia, Simon’s companion of many years; Parmenter, his father’s erstwhile business partner and one of the most successful restaurateurs in New Orleans; and Velmyra, the woman Julian left behind when he moved to New York. Julian’s search for Simon deepens as he finds himself drawn into the troubled history of Silver Creek, the extravagantly beautiful piece of land where his father grew up, and closer once again to Velmyra. As he tries to come to grips with his father’s likely fate, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of his father and the city he loved so much, while unraveling the mysteries of Silver Creek.

In The Burning City, Alaya Dawn Johnson continues the trilogy begun with her debut, Racing the Dark, delving deeper into the world of magic wielded by women who understand the dark trade-offs of power and sacrifice. Lana, the heroine, has become the black ange l —a harbinger of destruction unheard of in the islands for 500 years. Nui’ahi, the sleeping volcano of the great city Essel, has erupted. In the chaos, the city is reshaping itself and violence threatens from all corners. A rebel movement has formed in the destroyed heart of the city, determined to oust Kohaku, the mad Mo’i of Essel. Lana wants no part of the rebels’ cause — the death spirit still chases her, and the great witch Akua has kidnapped Lana’s mother. But the more Lana looks for her mother, the more she is drawn into the city’s political conflicts. As Kohaku descends deeper into madness, determined to subdue the city by any means necessary, his wife has run away to the fire temple, where she too is slowly converted to the rebel’s cause. When long-running tensions spill over into civil war, Lana must make her hardest decision yet: her mother’s life, or a city’s freedom?

Since 1976, when he was an 18-year-old junior at USC, Leonard Pitts’ writing has been winning awards, including the Pulitzer and five National Headliner Awards. This book collects his best newspaper columns, along with select longer pieces. The book is arranged chronologically under three broad subject headings: ?Waiting for Someday to Come,” about children and family; ?White Men Can’t Jump (and Other Stupid Myths),” about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other fault lines of American culture; and ?Forward from this Moment,” about life after the September 11 attacks, spirituality, American identity, and Britney Spears.

Pitts has a readership in the multi-millions across the country, and his columns generate an average of 2500 email responses per week. His enthusiastic fans are certain to embrace this collection of the best of his newspaper and magazine work, published to coincide with the release of his first novel, Before I Forget. Forward from this Moment is an essential collection from one of America’s most important voices.

Like the other women of her island, Lana expected to become a diver, harvesting jewels from a native fish. But during her initiation dive, she finds a blood-red jewel that marks her as someone with power. Though she hides the jewel, the mark it represents will drive her away from her home island and into an apprenticeship with a one-armed witch. Alaya Dawn Johnson has created an unforgettable coming-of-age story set in a world where wielding the power of magic requires understanding the true meaning of sacrifice.

“Family Affair is about who we are and how our past has shaped us. It reflects the prism of the individual
and collective black experience in contemporary America, which is just as varied and colorful as the different shades of our skin. Being black in America is not a one size fits all idea.”
—Terrie Williams, author off Black Pain

Original essays from Carolyn Kilpatrick, Isaac Hayes, Beverly Johnson, Max Siegel, Cathy Hughes, Bishop Paul S. Morton, Reverend Otis Moss, Ruby Dee, Thurbert Baker and others underscore a new era in American life

Veteran lifestyle journalist/editor Gil Robertson is back with a new anthology that explores ’identity’ within the African American community in the new millennium. His new book, Family Affair: What It Means to Be African American Today - the follow up to his bestselling 2006 anthology Not in My Family: AIDS in the African American Community cleaves thought the physical, social, political and historical characteristics that have come to define the African-American community and offers up a multitude of perspectives on how to embrace a more positive future. Through personal stories and essays by contributors representing various elements of the black community, the book delves into an identity that’s been thrown off course due to a number of external and internal factors. Family Affair is divided into five sections representing the key features that influence the African American identity: Family, Culture, Relationships, Community and Self. Each section features religious leaders, institutional leaders, elected officials, and celebrities from the worlds of music, film and broadcasting ’ as well as plenty of ordinary people with extraordinary stories. Family Affair offers revelations and insights on topics that the majority of African American only talk about in secret. The goal: to stimulate dialogue that supports reflection, healing and understanding.

Family Affair is the most up-to-the-moment book yet on the

Essay highlights from Family Affair: What It Means to Be African American Today

Soul music legend Isaac Hayes:
“I eventually dropped out of school out of plain embarrassment. It was very difficult to do, because I really liked school and I loved to learn. I always liked reading and unlike the kids of today, it was anything but an interruption of what I wanted to do. It was what I wanted to do. But the shoes that I wore bore cardboard in their bottoms to cover up gaping holes. It wasn’t long before the girls noticed and my self-consciousness outgrew my desire to attend classes. I didn’t have any clothes and in an odd sort of way, I literally couldn’t afford to go to school. What saved me, ironically, was music. My music teachers took a special interest in me, as I’d taken a special interest in music. It was always my salvation. Even when I was picking cotton in Covington, music was an escape from the scorching sun and the laborious tasks I was up against. I’d sing a song or hum a tune and imagine myself in another place "maybe a juke joint" and all the pain would go away. It was a temporary fix, but it worked every time. But this time, the pain was too deep. It hurt too much.”

TV One CEO Cathy Hughes:
“In order to protect our history and legacy, we have to take ownership of it. It’s our images, our news, our chronological story, and our inheritance. We cannot expect other groups, be it intentionally or unintentionally, to accurately describe, portray and empower us. We need to document, preserve and build our own stories, from our own perspectives. A lot of the omission from history books that we classify as racism is actually just ignorance on the part of the writers who do not understand our culture ’ so it’s just easier for them not to tell the story at all. Completely eliminating us from certain accounts and concentrating on their own is often just plain lack of knowledge. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, so every culture looks out for their ’own’ first. That’s what we should be about, but whenever Black people practice it, there seems to always be a cry of alarm. Perhaps guilt is the reason for that concern.”

This powerful novel of three generations of black men bound by blood — and by histories of mutual love, fear, and frustration — gives author Leonard Pitts the opportunity to explore the painful truths of black men’s lives, especially as they play out in the fraught relations of fathers and sons. As 50-year-old Mo tries to reach out to his increasingly tuned-out son Trey (who himself has become an unwed teenaged father), he realizes that the burden of grief and anger he carries over his own estranged father has everything to do with the struggles he encounters with his son. Part road novel, part character study, and part social critique, and written in compulsively readable prose, Before I Forget is the work of a major new voice in American fiction. Pitts knows inside and out the difficulties facing black men as they grapple with the complexities of their roles as fathers.

Joshua and Christophe are twins, raised by a blind grandmother and a large extended family in a rural town on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. They’ve just finished high school and need to find jobs, but in a failing post-Katrina economy, it’s not easy. Joshua gets work on the docks, but Christophe’s not so lucky. Desperate to alleviate the family’s poverty, he starts to sell drugs. He can hide it from his grandmother but not his twin, and the two grow increasingly estranged. Christophe’s downward spiral is accelerated first by crack, then by the reappearance of the twins’ parents: Cille, who abandoned them, and Sandman, a creepy, predatory addict. Sandman taunts Christophe, eventually provoking a shocking confrontation that will ultimately damn or save both twins. Ward inhabits these characters, and this world—black Creole, poor, and drug-riddled, yet shored by family and community—to a rare degree, without a trace of irony or distance.

Chinese New Year, 2042. Armstrong, an upwardly mobile Harlem resident, is out celebrating with his boss (and lover) when they’re assaulted in her hotel room. She ends up in the Jacuzzi minus her head; the cops are convinced he’s to blame. Armstrong goes on the lam, dodging the cops while trying to figure out exactly what happened that night. Answers come in the form of Oona, a sultry sex worker with an unexpectedly deep reservoir of information. As Armstrong digs for the whole story, a disgraced ex-cop is invited back to the force to combat a powerful designer drug that’s all the rage with the young, rich, and bored. As the two men’s paths draw inexorably together, the story behind the new drug becomes clearer ? and far more sinister. This absorbing debut novel is a dark, erotic thriller with a powerful sci-fi kick.

In this landmark collection of personal essays, stories, brief memoirs, and polemics, a broad swath of black Americans unite to bear witness to the devastation AIDS has wrought on their community.  Not in My Family marks a new willingness on the part of black Americans—whether prominent figures from the worlds of politics, entertainment, or sports, or just ordinary folks with extraordinary stories — to face the scourge that has affected them disproportionately for years. Editor Gil Robertson has enlisted a remarkable group of contributors, including performers like Patti LaBelle, Mo’Nique, and Hill Harper; bestselling authors like Randall Robinson and Omar Tyree; political leaders like Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders; religious leaders like Rev. Calvin Butts, and many, many more.

The fatherless black family is a problem that grows to bigger proportions every year as generations of black children grow up without an adult male in their homes. As this dire pattern grows worse, what can men do who hope to break it, when there are so few models and so little guidance in their own homes and communities? Where can they learn to ?become Dad?” When Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Pitts?who himself grew up with an abusive father whose absences came as a relief?interviewed dozens of men across the country, he found both discouragement and hope, as well as deep insights into his own roles as son and father. An unflinching investigation, both personal and journalistic, of black fatherhood in America, this is the best, most pivotal book on this profoundly important issue.

The third title in the Nia Guide series is a positive and practical guide to making the right choices in order to foster wellness in every aspect of life, from health and fitness to nutrition to psychic and emotional well-being. It’s full of insightful perspectives on the daily challenges black women face when it comes to taking care of themselves?at home or at work, in their families, relationships, and office environments. As with every Nia Guide, it offers a plethora of helpful tips, practical suggestions, useful insights, and personal stories from other successful black women, developed with the editors and contributors to NiaOnline.com

Second in a series of empowerment guides from NiaOnline.com, the web’s leading community site for black women. It’s a frank and personal guide to handling the complexities, conflicts, and challenges of being a successful black working woman today, from balancing work and personal lives, dealing with race- and gender-related issues in the office, seeking out the most fulfilling work, and finding the composure, peace, and strength necessary to fight (and win!) the corporate wars. Full of insightful perspectives on the realities of black women’s working lives, helpful tips and suggestions, and personal stories from other successful black women.

The first in three-volume series of empowerment guides from NiaOnline.com, the leading online community site for black women, this is a practical guide to developing leadership skills, pursuing workplace success and effectiveness, climbing the corporate ladder, and achieving empowerment for today’s African American working woman. It’s full of useful, up-to-the minute data, helpful tips and suggestions, and personal stories from a broad range of successful black women.