Black by Popular Demand
Books by Black authors releasing each week!
It’s not too late to squeeze in your July reading! Check out Black Pearl Books of Austin, Texas.
This week we included a few titles we missed the last month as well. Happy Reading!
Solomon Dark
In the year 1845, Solomon is a tortured slave on the Walken Plantation in South Carolina. Born a slave, Solomon yearns for his freedom. He's married to Irene, the love of his life. One day, she's sold off by master to a nearby plantation to pay off Master Walken's debt. Heartbroken, Solomon escapes one night to find Irene so that they can escape north, to freedom. It's dark, it's cold, and slave catchers and dogs are tracking him down. Solomon meets a stranger, a unique black man he assumes is a free man, running into a nearby cabin. This stranger promises Solomon everything he yearns for--freedom, Irene, even power. But it comes with a cost.
(Thriller)
A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit: The Vision of Mary McLeod Bethune
An intimate and searching account of the life and legacy of one of America's towering educators, a woman who dared to center the progress of Black women and girls in the larger struggle for political and social liberation
When Mary McLeod Bethune died, tributes in newspapers around the country said the same thing: she should be on the Mount Rushmore of Black American achievement. Indeed, Bethune is the only Black American whose statue stands in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, and yet for most, she remains a marble figure from the dim past. Now, seventy years later, Noliwe Rooks turns Bethune from stone to flesh, showing her to have been a visionary leader with lessons to still teach us as we continue on our journey toward a freer and more just nation.
Any serious effort to understand how the Black civil rights generation found role models, vision, and inspiration during their midcentury struggle for political power must place Bethune at its heart. Her success was unlikely: the fifteenth of seventeen children and the first born into freedom, Bethune survived brutal poverty and caste subordination to become the first in her family to learn how to read and to attend college. She gave that same gift to others when in 1904, at age twenty-nine, Bethune welcomed her first class of five girls to the Daytona, Florida, school she had founded and which would become the university that bears her name to this day. Bethune saw education as an essential dimension of the larger struggle for freedom, vitally connected to the vote and to economic self-sufficiency, and she enlisted Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and many other powerful leaders in her cause.
(Nonfiction)
A Beach House Beginning (Original)
Sometimes, the real crime is not giving in to love.
When ex-con Wes Calhoun moves into Brambleberry House, his neighbor Jenna Haynes gives him a wide berth. Widowed, and the former target of a stalker, the single mom errs on the side of extreme caution when it comes to men--and her heart. So Jenna vows to keep a neighborly distance. Until she needs help--and surly Wes comes to the rescue.
Jenna learns that Wes's tattooed exterior belies his kindness, dedication to his daughter and his lonely heart. Wrongfully convicted and exonerated, Wes is just trying to piece his life back together. And he stirs feelings Jenna thought long buried. Should she trust an ex-con with her heart, or safely lock it up and throw away the key?
(Romance)
A Beauty in the Beast (Original)
Thirteen years ago, a tragic fire left junior prom queen Eden Tempest orphaned and scarred, inside and out. Now she's the town recluse--isolated, mysterious and emotionally guarded...the complete opposite of Mason Powers, TV's most famous renovator. Yet Mason is battling his own rocky past--personal and professional. Eden's plan to renovate her ill grandmother's home into a bed-and-breakfast is the perfect opportunity for Mason to get back to work and redeem his reputation. And Eden herself...well, their attraction is undeniable. But is their unexpected connection enough to heal both their traumatic pasts and bring their beauty into the light?
(Romance)
