Alternative Black Fiction II
Explore a curated list of alternative Black fiction books that challenge norms and celebrate diverse voices. Discover unique stories, unconventional narratives, and groundbreaking authors in this essential collection.
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The Man in My Basement
by Walter Mosley
To save the home that has belonged to his family for generations, Charles Blakey, a young black man whose life is slowly crumbling around him, agrees to rent out his basement for the summer to a mysterious stranger.
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Shades of Black
by Eleanor Taylor Bland
Presents a collection of crime and mystery stories by such authors as Chris Benson, Evelyn Coleman, Walter Mosely, Hugh Holton, and Penny Mickelbury.
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The Coyote Kings of the Space-age Bachelor Pad
by Minister Faust
Hamza and Yehat are The Coyote Kings–best friends, one a disgruntled dishwasher and the other a video store clerk, but each brilliant in his own right. Yehat builds prototypes of space-age inventions in his spare time, while Hamza, a former English honors student who was kicked out of the university, writes lush, lyrical poems when he’s not blocked–which, these days, is nearly always. When the gorgeous, mysterious Sherem shows up in E-Town decked out in desert finery, Hamza’s creative spark is ignited. Who is this sophisticated woman that speaks arcane African tongues, quotes from obscure comics andStar Warsmovies, yet seems somehow too ethereal for the world Hamza inhabits? And what is the lost artifact that she and a cast of coiffed collectors and criminal cultists so desperately seek? As Hamza falls blindly in love with Sherem, little does he know that he and Yehat play the biggest part of all in the recovery of the ancient relic–and in the future of all living beings. . . .
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Fledgling
by Octavia E. Butler
A young girl suffering from amnesia wakes up to find that she's actually a middle-aged vampire.
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Joplin's Ghost
by Tananarive Due
From the award-winning writer of The Good House, The Living Blood, and more, Joplin's Ghost is a chilling tale of a star-in-the-making whose life goes haywire as she is haunted by the ghost of a long-dead music legend. When Phoenix Smalls was ten, she nearly died at her parents' jazz club when she was crushed by a turn-of-the-century piano. Now twenty-four, Phoenix is launching a career as an R & B singer. She's living the life young artists envy and seems destined for fame and fortune. But a chance visit to a historical site in St. Louis ignites a series of bizarre, erotic encounters with a spirit who may be the King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin. The music of Scott Joplin is strange enough to the ears of the hip-hop generation, but the idea that these antique sounds are being channeled by the protegee of rap superstar G-Ronn is nothing short of ludicrous. With growing violence in G-Ronn's inner circle and a ghost bent on living forever through her, Phoenix's life suddenly hangs in the balance," writes Tananarive Due. Can the power of her own inner song and the love of a music writer who believes in her give Phoenix the strength to fight to live out her own future? Or will she be trapped forever in Scott Joplin's doomed, tragic past?
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The Bitten
by L. A. Banks
In this fourth and most daring book in Banks's series, Damali Richards and Carlos Rivera now have the chance to explore their love. But they are quickly thrust into a web of vampire politics and intrigue when one of the four Master vampires steals one of the Keys that opens the sixth seal as foretold in Revelations.
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The Forbidden
by L. A. Banks
Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned in this exciting fifth book of the Vampire Huntress series by the bestselling author of "The Damned." Original.
