the melanin library

Before I Let Go

Kennedy Ryan • 2022

<b>"Real, raw, magnificent</b>--<b><i>Before I Let Go</i> is the beautiful angst I love to read."</b> --<b>Colleen Hoover, #1 <i>New York Times </i>bestselling author</b><br> <br> <br> <br> <b>A Good Morning America Book Buzz Pick!</b><br> <br> Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn't solve or save everything.<br> <br> <br> <br> It couldn't save their marriage.<br> <br> <br> <br> Yasmen wasn't prepared for how her life fell apart, but she's is finally starting to find joy again. She and Josiah have found a new rhythm, co-parenting their two kids and running a thriving business together. Yet like magnets, they're always drawn back to each other, and now they're beginning to wonder if they're truly ready to let go of everything they once had.<br> <br> <br> <br> Soon, one stolen kiss leads to another...and then more. It's hot. It's illicit. It's all good--until old wounds reopen. Is it too late for them to find forever? Or could they even be better, the second time around?<br> <br> <br> <br> <b>Award-winning and bestselling "powerhouse" author Kennedy Ryan is at her absolute best in this compelling, scorching novel about hope and healing, and what it truly means to love for a lifetime (<i>USA Today).</i><br> <br> <br> <br> Book of the Month Club<i> </i>selection<br> <br> NPR Best Books of 2022<br> <br> <i>Entertainment Weekly</i> Best Romances of 2022<br> <br> <i>Washington Post</i> 10 Best Romances of the Year<br> <br> <i>Women's Health</i> Best Books of the Year<br> <br> <i>Publishers Weekly </i>Best Romance Books of 2022</b>

The Middle Daughter

Chika Unigwe • 2023

Seven Days in June

Tia Williams • 2022

The instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon book club pick is "a heady combination of book love and between-the-sheets love.” (Ruth Ware)<br/><br/>“Tia Williams’s book is a smart, sexy testament to Black joy, to the well of strength from which women draw, and to tragic romances that mature into second chances. I absolutely loved it.”<br/>—JODI PICOULT, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways and Small Great Things<br/><br/>Seven days to fall in love, fifteen years to forget, and seven days to get it all back again...<br/><br/>Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning novelist, who, to everyone’s surprise, shows up in New York.<br/><br/>When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that fifteen years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. While they may be pretending not to know each other, they can’t deny their chemistry—or the fact that they’ve been secretly writing to each other in their books through the years.<br/><br/>Over the next seven days, amidst a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect—but Eva’s wary of the man who broke her heart, and wants him out of the city so her life can return to normal. Before Shane disappears though, she needs a few questions answered...<br/><br/>With its keen observations of creative life in America today, as well as the joys and complications of being a mother and a daughter, Seven Daysin June is a hilarious, romantic, and sexy-as-hell story of two writers discovering their second chance at love.<br/><br/>A Best Book of the Year: NPR • Kirkus • Marie Claire • PopSugar • New York Public Library • Bustle • Reader’s Digest • Literary Hub<br/>A Best Book of the Summer: Harper’s Bazaar • Oprah Daily • Shondaland • The Los Angeles Times • CBS News • PureWow • Good Housekeeping • BuzzFeed • theSkimm<br/>A Best Romance of 2021: The Washington Post • USA Today • Vulture • Goodreads • BookPage • BuzzFeed • Happy Mag

The Poet X

Elizabeth Acevedo • 2018

How To Succeed in Witchcraft

Aislinn Brophy • 2022

The Witchery

S. Isabelle • 2022

The Blood Trials

N. E. Davenport • 2022

Blood Debts

Terry J. Benton-Walker • 2023

So Let Them Burn

Kamilah Cole • 2024

Bloodmarked

Tracy Deonn • 2022

Legendborn

Tracy Deonn • 2020

The Weight of Blood

Tiffany D. Jackson • 2022

Out There Screaming

Jordan Peele • 2023

The Reformatory

Tananarive Due • 2023

The Black Girl Survives in This One

Desiree S. Evans • 2024

You''re Not Supposed to Die Tonight

Kalynn Bayron • 2023

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me

Jamison Shea • 2023

There''s No Way I''d Die First

Lisa Springer • 2024

Outdrawn

Deanna Grey • 2023

Monday''s Not Coming

Tiffany D. Jackson • 2018

Hood Feminism

Mikki Kendall • 2020

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement

Angela Y. Davis • 2016

In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, the renowned activist examines today’s issues—from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition and more.   Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis has been a tireless fighter against oppression for decades. Now, the iconic author of Women, Race, and Class offers her latest insights into the struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.   Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today’s struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine.   Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build a movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that “freedom is a constant struggle.”   This edition of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle includes a foreword by Dr. Cornel West and an introduction by Frank Barat.

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers • 2019

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

Richard Rothstein • 2018

New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection<br/>One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year<br/>One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year<br/>Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction<br/>An NPR Best Book of the Year<br/>Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction<br/>Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction)<br/>Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History)<br/>Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize<br/>This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review).<br/>Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past. 13 illustrations

Reel: A Hollywood Renaissance Novel

Kennedy Ryan • 2021

A Love Hate Thing

Whitney D. Grandison • 2020

The Brown Sisters Series Collection 3 Books Set By Talia Hibbert (Get A Life Chloe Brown, Take a Hint Dani Brown, Act Your Age Eve Brown)

Talia Hibbert • 2024

I Accidentally Summoned a Demon Boyfriend

Jessica Cage • 2024

The Partner Plot

Kristina Forest • 2024

Sight Unseen

Kasha Thompson • 2023

Cosmic Kiss: An Alien Burlesque Romance (Galactic Gems Series)

Clio Evans • 2023

That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf

Kimberly Lemming • 2023

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Human

Kimberly Lemming • 2023

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon

Kimberly Lemming • 2023

Seven Days in June

Tia Williams • 2021

The Davenports

Krystal Marquis • 2024

The Neighbor Favor

Kristina Forest • 2023

What a Match

Mimi Grace • 2022

Sweethand

N. G. Peltier • 2021

Instructions for Dancing

Nicola Yoon • 2021

Confessions of an Alleged Good Girl

Joya Goffney • 2022

Charming as a Verb

Ben Philippe • 2020

Love Radio

Ebony LaDelle • 2022

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute

Talia Hibbert • 2023

Ace of Spades

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé • 2021

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry

Joya Goffney • 2021