J. D Jackson
Author
Lexile Measure
900L
Summary
When a federal judge and his secretary fail to appear for a scheduled trial and panicked clerks call for an FBI investigation, a harrowing murder case ensues and culminates in the imprisonment of a lawyer who imparts the story of who killed the judge and why. Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only...
2) Lockdown
Author
Lexile Measure
730L
Summary
Teenage Reese, serving time at a juvenile detention facility, gets a lesson in making it through hard times from an unlikely friend with a harrowing past.
Author
Series
Highway 59 volume 1
Summary
When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small town of Lark, where two murders--a black lawyer from...
Author
Pub. Date
2015
Summary
The New York Vigilance Committee was organized by free blacks working with white abolitionists to protect blacks from kidnappers and slave catchers on the streets. Soon such committees proliferated in the North, and began a collaboration known as the underground railroad. Until now, their stories have remained largely unknown. Building on fresh evidence, Eric Foner elevates the underground railroad from folklore to history.
Author
Series
Pike Logan thriller volume 1
Summary
They call it the Taskforce. Their existence is as essential as it is illegal. Commissioned at the highest level of the U.S. government, protected from the prying eyes of Congress and the media. Built around the top operators from across the clandestine, intelligence, and special forces landscape and designed to operate outside the bounds of U.S. law. Pike Logan was the most successful operator on the Taskforce, his instincts and talents unrivaled-until...
7) Game
Author
Lexile Measure
800L
Summary
If Harlem high school senior Drew Lawson is going to realize his dream of playing college, then professional, basketball, he will have to improve at being coached and being a team player, especially after a new--white--student threatens to take the scouts' attention away from him.
Author
Summary
When the roar of a low-flying plane awakens him in the middle of the night, Sheriff Winston Barnes knows something strange is happening at the nearby airfield on the coast of North Carolina. But nothing can prepare him for what he finds: a large airplane has crash-landed and is now sitting sideways on the runway, and there are no signs of a pilot or cargo. When the body of a local man is discovered, shot dead and lying on the grass near the crash...
10) Dope sick
Author
Pub. Date
2009
Summary
Seeing no way out of his difficult life in Harlem, seventeen-year-old Jeremy "Lil J" Dance flees into a house after a drug deal goes awry and meets a weird man who shows different turning points in Lil J's life when he could have made better choices.
11) Fallen angels
Author
Lexile Measure
650L
Summary
Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.
13) Taft
Author
Formats
Summary
The story of Fay Taft, a your white waitress, narrated by the black bar manager who gave her a job. The manager's feelings for her are paternal, but hers for him are sexual. What's more she has a brother who is a drug dealer and brings sleazy friends into the bar. By the author of The Patron Saint of Liars.
16) Homeboyz
Author
Series
Summary
Seventeen-year-old Teddy Anderson, who is known on the streets as T-Bear, decides to seek revenge on the person responsible for his little sister's death, which was caused by a stray bullet from a semiautomatic handgun.
Author
Summary
Now, in his debut essay collection, Daniel Black gives voice to the experiences of those who often find themselves on the margins. Tackling topics ranging from police brutality to the AIDS crisis to the role of HBCUs to queer representation in the Black church, Black celebrates the resilience, fortitude and survival of Black people in a land where their body is always on display.
Author
Summary
"Michael Bennett is a Super Bowl Champion, a three-time Pro Bowl defensive end, a fearless activist, a feminist, a grassroots philanthropist, an organizer, and a change maker. He's also one of the most scathingly humorous athletes on the planet, and he wants to make you uncomfortable. Bennett adds his unmistakable voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the...
Author
Lexile Measure
1030L
Summary
"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee." This was one of the most famous catch-phrases of boxing legend Muhammad Ali. Rising from poverty-stricken Louisville in the 1950s he became one of the world's greatest athletes. Beginning life as Cassius Clay, Ali would struggle against opponents both in and out of the ring. Segregation and racism stood as obstacles in his path, but as he climbed the boxing ranks, his social conscience grew. He refused to...