The Forthcoming: Firstborn Girls: A Memoir : Bernice L. McFadden

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.

Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”

Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.

A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.

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The Forthcoming: The Unexpected Diva: A Novel : Tiffany L. Warren

Born into slavery on a Mississippi plantation, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield has been raised in the safety of Philadelphia’s Quaker community by a wealthy adoptive mother. Sheltered and educated, Eliza’s happy childhood always included music lessons to nurture her unique gift: a glorious three octave singing voice that leaves listeners in awe. But on the eve of her twenty-fourth birthday, young Eliza’s world is thrown into a tailspin when her mother dies.

Eliza’s inheritance is contested by her mother’s white cousins, leaving her few options. She can marry her longtime beau, Lucien, though she has no desire to be a wife and mother. Or she can work as a tutor for rich families. Her mother’s dying wish was for Eliza to pursue her talent and become a professional singer, but that grand vision now seems out of reach.

When a chance performance on a steamboat to Buffalo, New York, leads to a surprising opportunity, fearless Eliza seizes her moment. Within a year she is touring America, singing to packed houses, and igniting controversy wherever she goes. In a country captivated by “the Swedish Nightingale” Jenny Lind, Eliza is billed by tour promoters as “the Black Swan.” An unlikely diva, Eliza is tall, dark-skinned, and robust of figure compared to the petite European prima donna, but even the harshest critics can’t deny Eliza’s extraordinary gift. Menaced by racist crowds, threatened by slave-catchers who kidnap free Black people, Eliza lives a public life full of risk, but one which also holds the promise of great riches, and the freedoms those buy.

From the churches of Philadelphia to Queen Victoria’s salon in Buckingham Palace, Eliza Greenfield will blaze her own path—with a voice that no listener will ever forget.

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The Forthcoming : Harlem Rhapsody : Victoria Christopher Murray

In 1919, a high school teacher from Washington, D.C arrives in Harlem excited to realize her lifelong dream. Jessie Redmon Fauset has been named the literary editor of The Crisis. The first Black woman to hold this position at a preeminent Negro magazine, Jessie is poised to achieve literary greatness. But she holds a secret that jeopardizes it all.
 
W. E. B. Du Bois, the founder of The Crisis, is not only Jessie’s boss, he’s her lover. And neither his wife, nor their fourteen-year-age difference can keep the two apart. Amidst rumors of their tumultuous affair, Jessie is determined to prove herself. She attacks the challenge of discovering young writers with fervor, finding sixteen-year-old Countee Cullen, seventeen-year-old Langston Hughes, and Nella Larsen, who becomes one of her best friends. Under Jessie’s leadership, The Crisis thrives…every African American writer in the country wants their work published there.
 
When her first novel is released to great acclaim, it’s clear that Jessie is at the heart of a renaissance in Black music, theater, and the arts. She has shaped a generation of literary legends, but as she strives to preserve her legacy, she’ll discover the high cost of her unparalleled success.

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The Forthcoming: Murder in Berkeley Square (The Lady Worthing Mysteries Book 3) : Vanessa Riley

A marriage of convenience saved Lady Abigail Worthing’s family from disgrace, but she’s finding her absent husband's endless conditions increasingly repressive. Unable to stay at their London home during the oncoming winter, she accepts a ride to the country from her neighbor, Stapleton Henderson. However, she's less than delighted that she’s his excuse to avoid a dinner held by Lord Charles Duncan, one of London's most powerful—and relentless—magistrates. More irritating, women are decidedly unwelcome at the evening’s prestigious discussion of criminality—even though Abigail and Stapleton have solved several cases together . . .  

Then an unexpected blizzard strands them at Lord Duncan’s with his now-houseguests. Suddenly, an evening of fine dining, fine brandy, and insightful debate becomes an inescapable—and deadly—ordeal. The ultimate test for Abigial’s skill. One of the dinner guests is found dead in front of the Berkley Square mansion. And when another party is murdered, Abigail discovers each had received a taunting, prophetic nursery rhyme . . . coincidence, or clues left by a killer on the loose?

Through deft interrogation, she learns everyone present is connected to Lord Duncan's greatest failure in the courts: the conviction of a Martinique plantation informant for a murder he didn’t commit. But as Abigail races to find who was really responsible for the miscarriage of justice, she'll be forced to put her own and Stapleton's lives at risk in a gambit that will alter their fates forever—or end them permanently.

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The Forthcoming : It Happened One Homecoming: A collection of short stories : Cheris Hodges

It Happened One Homecoming: A Collection of Short Stories. . .

It’s Time For Us

She is . . .
Shauna Carter is a fashion designer getting ready to launch her signature line of fashion, but before she puts on her fashion show, she has to celebrate her classmate’s second chance at happily ever after. She didn’t expect to run – chest first—into the groomsman who she was quietly crushing on when she was an undergraduate at Johnson C. Smith University, an HBCU in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He is. . .
Michael “Mike” Broussard has one regret in life and that’s letting Shauna Carter get away. Sure, he was a notorious playboy in college, but that was only because he knew he couldn’t be the partner that Shauna deserved. But times have changed and he’s ready to show her that now is the time for them to make that move to be together.


After Halftime

Sometimes, a dream can become a nightmare. . .

Autumn Brown-Robinson has one wish before a terminal illness takes her life. She wants to reunite her college besties. She and her three best friends were supposed to be the next biggest girl group taking over for the 99 and 2000s. But outside forces tore their sisterhood apart.

Fast forward to now. Autumn is back in Charlotte for JCSU’s homecoming,
and she has a plan to reunite the band before it’s too late. But can past hurts be healed before it’s too late?


Love, healing and forgiveness, It Happened One Homecoming . . .

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The Forthcoming : Black Godfather: The Black Death : K'Wan

Since he was old enough to dream, all Antoine Grimm ever wanted was to be a soldier like his grandfather, Big Ben Grimm. Coming from a military family, he has always been taught that there is no greater honor for a man than to serve his country. This is what motivated him to steal his older brother’s identity at the age of sixteen and sneak off to enroll in the United States Army. He left in search of the glorious stories he’d heard his grandfather tell, but what he found was the bitter truth that came with war. When Grimm left, he had been a doe-eyed kid with dreams, but upon his return to U.S. soil, the kid he left as has become a battle-hardened soldier trying to cope with post-traumatic nightmares.

When Grimm returns to his home, he finds that not only has he changed, but so has his neighborhood. The drug epidemic has ravaged the streets he grew up playing in and decimated everything in its path, including his family. Unable to sit idle while the community he grew up in crumbles under the weight of pushers, pimps, and addicts, Grimm decides to take a stand.

Reuniting with members from his old army ranger unit, Grimm trades his war one war for another, turning his fury from enemies foreign to those domestic.

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17th Annual Great Midwest Book Fest : 6/21/25