Ocean State Libraries

"Two half sisters, Effia and Esi, unknown to each other, are born into two different tribal villages in 18th century Ghana. Effia will be married off to an English colonial, and will live in comfort in the sprawling, palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle, raising half-caste children who will be sent abroad to be educated in England before returning to the Gold Coast to serve as administrators of the Empire. Her sister, Esi, will be imprisoned beneath...

"An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On Beauty. Two brown girls dream of being dancers--but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It's a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early twenties,...

"Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong--so she's given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It's time for Eve to grow up and prove herself even though she's not entirely sure how. Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner is on a mission to dominate...

"A novel about African Americans in Florida that centers on the life of Janie and her three marriages." --

Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown, and an occasional roll in the hay to relieve all that career-driven tension. But romance? Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt. Romantic partners, whatever their gender, are a distraction at best and a drain at worst. So Dani asks the universe for the perfect friend-with-benefits--someone who knows the score and knows their way around the bedroom. When big, brooding security...

In the Washington Square area of New York City in the late nineteenth century, devastating betrayals by both her father and her lover leave shy and fragile Catherine Sloper permanently scarred.

"Nineteen years old, broke, and effectively an orphan, Magnolia doesn't have much to look forward to. She feels stuck and haunted: by her overdrawn bank account, by her predatory landlord, by the ghost of her late grandmother Mama Brown. One night while working at her dead-end gas station job, a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia's luck around. He offers her a lucrative "modeling" job at his family's funeral...

"This is a novel about racial identity set in New York in 1929. Soon to be a major motion picture starring Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga and Alexander SkarsgAArd. Irene Redfield, married to a successful physician, enjoys a comfortable life in Harlem, New York. Reluctantly, she renews her friendship with old school friend, Clare Kendry. Clare, who like Irene is light skinned, apassesaTM as white and is married to a racist white man who has no idea about...

A novel about a life-changing summer along the beaches of Martha's Vineyard. Oak Bluffs is the most exclusive black beach community in the country, a mecca for the crème de la crème of black society. Thirty years ago, Amelia Vaux Tanner and her husband built a house high on the bluffs, a cottage they named Chateau Laveau. "Ama's" three gifted "goddaughters:" Esperanza "Perry" Soto, an Afro-Latina lawyer; Olivia Jones, a Wall Street analyst; and...

"Fourteen years after her mother's disappearance, Josephine, with her future in doubt in a world where single women are closely monitored, is offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will and leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time."--