Darkness Before Dawn (Hazelwood High Trilogy, #3)
by Sharon M Draper
Hope shines in the face of fear in this conclusion to Sharon M. Draper’s award-winning Hazelwood High trilogy. In her senior year, things are finally looking a little brighter for Keisha. Still haunted by the suicide of her ex-boyfriend, Andy, she finds comfort in the attentions of the new track coach, twenty-three-year-old Jonathan Hathaway, the principal’s son. How can Keisha not be swept off her feet by a tall, dark, handsome “lemon drop wrapped in licorice” who treats her like a woman, not...
A pampered young black girl who has been mysteriously transported back to the days of slavery, struggles to escape her bondage.
The Awakening of Malcolm X
by Ilyasah Shabazz and Tiffany D. Jackson
No one can be at peace until he has his freedom. In Charlestown Prison, Malcolm Little struggles with the weight of his past. Plagued by nightmares, he drifts through days unsure of his future. Slowly, he befriends other prisoners and writes to his family. He reads all the books in the prison library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam. Malcolm grapples with race, politics, religion, and justice in the 1940s. And as his time in jail comes to an end, he begins to awaken - emerging fro...
The summer after his absentee father is killed in a random shooting, Paul volunteers at a Harlem soup kitchen where he listens to lessons about "the social contract" from an elderly African American man, and mentors a seventeen-year-old unwed mother who wants to make it to college on a basketball scholarship.
Iron Tongue of Midnight (Forge & Fracture)
by Brittany N. Williams
A stunning new novel by the Author of Way Past CoolThere aren't many choices for inner-city teenagers, and Dante and his friends know it. Dante needs a heart operation; Pook wants to go to college and medical school; and they all want to get out of Babylon. None of these dreams are possible -- until they find a suitcase, tossed from a drug dealer's car during a police chase. Thinking that it contains the money that will finally give them the escape route they've been seeking, they take it, but f...
Sparks fly when Orion and Ray meet for the first time at a roller rink in Memphis. But these star-crossed souls have a past filled with secrets that threaten to tear them apart before their love story even begins. Found poetry, grief, and fate collide in this powerful debut. Ray: Just once I’d like my birthday to be about me, and not the day my father died. I want to be Ray Jr., the tall girl from Memphis with the poetry beats and the braids that stay poppin’. And when I meet Orion at the skati...
The life of a thirteen-year-old Harlem youth on his way to becoming a confirmed heroin addict is seen from his viewpoint and from that of several people around him.
Sixteen-year-old Nate, an academically gifted student who attends an exclusive private boarding school, straddles two cultures as he returns home for occasional visits to see his family and "gangsta crew" in Harlem, New York.