Soul with Heart Book Club: Books for 2001-2002

Hailed as one of "the most successful Black authors of the last quarter-century" (The New York Times), Eric Jerome Dickey captures the humor and heartache of modern love in this sexy, soulful tale.   Attraction can be instant. So can the consequences. Just ask Leonard, Debra, Tyrel, and Shelby. Four friends with so much in common: They're good-hearted, loyal, and vulnerable to the complicated state of relations between men and women. They're all searching for love--or at least unqualified affection. Either way, their lives are about to change....   A witty, honest portrait of the choices we make in the search for happy ever after, Friends and Lovers chronicles the lives of four young Black people through the joy, laughter, and pain of not-so-everyday life.

Why do Men Cheat? Why do Women Allow It? Who is the Other Woman? Who is to Blame? Finally, a book that reveals all sides of the infidelity drama, the conniving cheater, the tolerant wife and girlfriend, and the scandalous other woman. If you're sick and tired of scientific theories, Never Satisfied tells it like it is from the perspective of the players and the victims.

Devil in a Blue Dress honors the tradition of the classic American detective novel by bestowing on it a vivid social canvas and the freshest new voice in crime writing in years, mixing the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the racial realism of Richard Wright to explosive effect.

Renowned hip-hop artist, political activist and bestselling author Sister Souljah brings the streets of New York to life in a powerful and utterly unforgettable first novel.

Jordan Greene moves from the deep south to New York City and finds more than he ever bargained for. When he shares a ride with a vivacious young white girl, a romance grows between the unlikely pair - much to the chagrin of his friends and family. Love on the other side of the colour bar forces him to examine his own values and follow his heart. Smart and believable After the last page is turned you'll still have plenty to savour.' - Essence'

From the author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman comes a deep and compassionate novel. A young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to teach visits a black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting.

The extraordinary debut short story collection from the award-winning author of Family and Life is Short But Wide. "In its strong folk flavor, Cooper's work reminds us of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston ... It is a delight to read." --Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author "The label 'short' story is a woefully inadequate description of these intensely, explicitly moral tales. 'Parable' is more appropriate. Cooper's stories are rich in wisdom and insight." --Belles Lettres

E. Lynn Harris's blend of rich, romantic  storytelling and controversial contemporary issues like  race and bisexuality have found an enthusiastic and  diverse audience across America. Readers celebrate  the arrival in paperback of his second novel,  Just As I Am, which picks up where  Invisible Life left off,  introducing Harris's appealing and authentic characters to a  new set of joys, conflicts, and choices. Raymond,  a young black lawyer from the South, struggles to  come to terms with his sexuality and with the grim  reality of AIDS. Nicole, an aspiring  singer/actress, experiences frustration in both her career and  in her attempts to find a genuine love  relationship. Both characters share an eclectic group of  friends who challenge them, and the reader, to look at  themselves and the world around thern through  different eyes. By portraying Nicole's and Raymond's  joys, as well as their pain, Harris never ceases to  remind us that life, like love, is about  self-acceptance. In this vivid portrait of contemporary  black life, with all its pressures and the  complications of bisexuality, AIDS, and racism, Harris  confirms a faith in the power of love -- love of all  kinds -- to thrill and to heal, which will warm the  hearts of readers everywhere.

From the bestselling author of Deacon King Kong and the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird: The modern classic that spent more than two years on The New York Times bestseller list and that Oprah.com calls one of the best memoirs of a generation.  Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her twelve black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color Of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. The son of a black minister and a woman who would not admit she was white, James McBride grew up in "orchestrated chaos" with his eleven siblings in the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. "Mommy," a fiercely protective woman with "dark eyes full of pep and fire," herded her brood to Manhattan's free cultural events, sent them off on buses to the best (and mainly Jewish) schools, demanded good grades, and commanded respect. As a young man, McBride saw his mother as a source of embarrassment, worry, and confusion--and reached thirty before he began to discover the truth about her early life and long-buried pain. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. Fleeing pogroms, her family emigrated to America and ultimately settled in Suffolk, Virginia, a small town where anti-Semitism and racial tensions ran high. With candor and immediacy, Ruth describes her parents' loveless marriage; her fragile, handicapped mother; her cruel, sexually-abusive father; and the rest of the family and life she abandoned. At seventeen, after fleeing Virginia and settling in New York City, Ruth married a black minister and founded the all- black New Brown Memorial Baptist Church in her Red Hook living room. "God is the color of water," Ruth McBride taught her children, firmly convinced that life's blessings and life's values transcend race. Twice widowed, and continually confronting overwhelming adversity and racism, Ruth's determination, drive and discipline saw her dozen children through college--and most through graduate school. At age 65, she herself received a degree in social work from Temple University. Interspersed throughout his mother's compelling narrative, McBride shares candid recollections of his own experiences as a mixed-race child of poverty, his flirtations with drugs and violence, and his eventual self- realization and professional success. The Color of Water touches readers of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son.

"In a debut novel that blends the rich, earthy atmosphere of the deep South and a voice imbued with spiritual grace, Bernice L. McFadden tells the story of two women: a modest, churchgoing wife and mother, and the young prostitute she befriends." "When Sugar arrives in 1950s Bigelow - waltzing down the main square of the sweltering tiny Arkansas town as if she has every right to be there - no one tosses out the welcome mat or invites her in for a Coke. The Bigelow women hate her from the minute they lay eyes on her - on the bouncing blond wig and red-painted lips that tell them she has never known a hard day's work. All they know is they want her gone, out of their town, and away from their men." "But Sugar has traveled too far and survived too much to back down now. She parks herself in the house at #10 Grove Street, even though she feels there is something about Bigelow that is calling up the past she prayed she'd left behind." "Deep in her soul, Pearl Taylor knows what it is that Sugar feels, because it happened to her. It was the day her world shut down, the day the devil himself murdered her young daughter, Jude. It wasn't that Pearl stopped believing in God, exactly; she just couldn't trust him the way she used to. Then Sugar moves in next door, and Pearl's life irrevocably changes. Over sweet potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming the lives of two women - and an entire community."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

25th Anniversary Edition "A magnificent treasure for all cultures and all time." --St. Petersburg Times   It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo's dictatorship. It doesn't have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas--the Butterflies. In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters--Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé--speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from secret crushes to gunrunning, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo's rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez's imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human costs of political oppression.

Best friends since their college days, Ibn, Colin, Michael, and Dexter share something unusual in common: Her name is Erika -- "Bunches" to her friends. She's the kid sister of a friend who died, and the four buddies have promised to look out for her. But now she's all grown up -- a twenty-four-year-old knockout of a medical student who's arousing some not-so-sisterly feelings in the brothers. When one of them acts on those feelings, they will all -- including Erika -- discover how far they're willing to go in the name of friendship, loyalty, and love. The result is this savvy, entertaining novel filled with the wit, humor, and right-on observation about contemporary relationships that distinguished Good Peoples. Four Guys and Trouble is the irresistible follow-up to Marcus Major's acclaimed debut novel -- and one certain to win this gifted author a wealth of captivated new readers.

Issac Coleman, a man whose tragic mistake cost him years away from those who mattered to him, returns to the world he left. He attempts to get reacquainted with his now teenage son, but finds only rejection. Issac meets up with Miracall Lake and she helps him to face his fears.