Dion Graham
Author
Language
English
Description
The biography of America's hottest political superstar-Barack Obama-from a journalist who has been covering his career since his successful run for U.S. Senate. Barack Obama's meteoric rise is the stuff of legend. Since his headline-grabbing speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Obama has come to represent the promise of unity among groups of all types-blacks and whites; Democrats, Republicans, and moderates; the upper, middle, and...
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English
Description
Voting is foundational in a democracy, yet over six million American citizens remain stripped of their ability to participate in elections. Once convicted of a felony, people who complete their sentences reenter society, but no longer with the civil rights they once had. They may return to school, secure employment to provide for their families, and become law-abiding, tax-paying citizens—sometimes for decades—and still be denied the voting rights...
204) West of Rehoboth
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Language
English
Description
New York Times and Essence best-selling author Alexs D. Pate is also a professor of African American studies at the University of Minnesota. Set in the turbulent 1960s, West of Rehoboth is the story of 12-year-old Edward Massey's summertime coming of age in the resort town of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Edward and his family have escaped the heat and violence of inner-city Philadelphia every summer for the last 5 years. Staying at his Aunt Edna's house...
205) Twenty-Seven Bones
Author
Language
English
Description
In the tradition of James Patterson and Thomas Harris, critically acclaimed author Jonathan Nasaw crafts taut thrillers that are sometimes shocking and always engrossing. A provocative and chilling tale, Twenty-Seven Bones is Nasaw's most accomplished work yet. FBI Special Agent E.L. Pender is bored with retirement and jumps at the chance to track down a lethal husband and wife serial killer team. But as the body count rises, Pender's frustration...
207) The Cut
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Series
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English
Description
Crime fiction writer George Pelecanos introduces Spero Lucas, an anti-hero making his place in the world one battle at a time. Includes a bonus work of short fiction focusing on Spero's early life.
Spero Lucas has a new line of work. Since he returned home to Washington, D.C. after serving in Iraq, he has been doing special investigations for a defense attorney. He's good at it, and he has carved out a niche: recovering stolen property, no questions...
Author
Language
English
Description
Uwem Akpan's stunning stories humanize the perils of poverty and violence so piercingly that few readers will feel they've ever encountered Africa so immediately. The eight-year-old narrator of "An Ex-Mas Feast" needs only enough money to buy books and pay fees in order to attend school. Even when his twelve-year-old sister takes to the streets to raise these meager funds, his dream can't be granted. Food comes first. His family lives in a street...
209) Infinite Hope
Author
Language
English
Description
From celebrated author and illustrator Ashley Bryan comes a deeply moving picture book memoir about serving in the segregated army during World War II, and how love and the pursuit of art sustained him.
In May of 1942, at the age of eighteen, Ashley Bryan was drafted to fight in World War II. For the next three years, he would face the horrors of war as a black soldier in a segregated army.
He endured the terrible lies white officers told about...
210) Three Wrecked Men
Author
Language
English
Description
This latest plunge in to the psyche of the lone American male by author Lysa Williams brings us three men struggling in the war against dysfunction: a high-school student who rides the NYC subway each night in search of that perfect moment of beauty; a narcoleptic painter, the erotic Vermeer, who falls asleep on contact; and a psychic male prostitute who spends his off hours creating miniature models of the seven wonders of the world. Williams guides...
211) Cross
Author
Series
Alex Cross novels volume 12
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Alex Cross' life is finally getting back to normal following the shooting death of his wife several years earlier. He's set up a practice as a psychologist once again and even has a chance at a new love. Then Cross' former partner, John Sampson, calls in a favor. He's tracking a serial rapist in Georgetown that bears a similarity to a case the two worked on years earlier and reveals a connection to Alex's wife's death. Cross is about to go for the...
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"This vivid portrayal of east Africa remains as fresh and revelatory now as on the day it was first published in 1972. Peter Matthiessen exquisitely combines nature and travel writing to portray the sights, scenes, and people he observed firsthand in several trips over the course of a dozen years. From the daily lives of wild herdsmen and drama of predator kills to the field biologists investigating wild creatures and the anthropologists seeking humanity's...
Author
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English
Formats
Description
In 1987, Dr. Benjamin Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head. Carson pioneered again in a rare procedure known as a hemispherectomy, giving children without hope a second chance at life through a daring operation in which he literally removes one half of their brain. Such breakthroughs aren't unusual for Ben Carson. He's been beating the odds since he was...
214) Birdland
Author
Language
English
Description
Swirling riffs of language and a propulsive beat set this gritty, transcendent novel in motion.
Amid the sparkle and hum of a New York City winter, Jed and his best friend, Flyer, are filming a documentary of their neighborhood. All around them are images that Jed's older brother Zeke wrote about: drummers, drunks, dog walkers, and the beautiful water towers that dot the city's skyline. But what Jed is really in search of is Zeke, a poet
...Author
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English
Description
"From two former military officers and award-winning authors, a chillingly authentic, geopolitical thriller that imagines a naval clash between the US and China in the South China Sea in 2034 -- and the path from there to a nightmarish global conflagration. On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South...
Author
Language
English
Description
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the widely acclaimed, bestselling author of American War—a beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving novel that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child.
"Told from the point of view of two children, on the ground and at sea, the story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves...
"Told from the point of view of two children, on the ground and at sea, the story so astutely unpacks the us-versus-them dynamics of our divided world that it deserves...
Author
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English
Formats
Description
Jesmond Toak works as a repo man in the fictional town of Johnsonville, located in a hurricane alley on the Florida coast. He has a troubled relationship with his father; their pastor's gay son, Bayonne, has become implicated in a suicide by gas asphyxiation of his boyfriend; and the woman Jesmond loves, Peaches Raymond, is married (to a threatening man they call Special Ed). As various deaths, disasters, and disappearance occur in the days leading...
Author
Series
Very short introductions volume 160
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English
Formats
Description
"Until recently, Africa was seen by the outside world as being without history, a continent left behind in the wider story of human progress. But our understanding of the African past is very different today. This Very Short Introduction examines the changing ways in which African history has been understood and represented by historians and by Africans themselves. Examples drawn from across the continent and from the African diaspora beyond are used...
Author
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English
Description
In this long-awaited memoir, illustrated with over 100 never-before-seen photos from his personal collection, the groundbreaking record producer chronicles his struggles, his success, and the celebrated artists that made him a legend. Legendary music producer L. A. Reid-the man behind artists such as Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, Kanye West, Rihanna, TLC, Outkast, Pink, Justin Bieber, and Usher-changed the music business forever. Now, he tells his story,...
220) Box
Author
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English
Description
What have I to fear? My master broke every promise to me. I lost my beloved wife and our dear children. All, sold South. Neither my time nor my body is mine. The breath of life is all I have to lose. And bondage is suffocating me. Henry Brown wrote that long before he came to be known as Box; he "entered the world a slave." He was put to work as a child and passed down from one generation to the next-as property. When he was an adult, his wife and...