As a preacher's daughter, Monique is expected to be an example at church although she hates its restrictive rules. When she discovers she physically cannot have sex, and after her boyfriend breaks up with her for that reason, two unexpected teens from church become her main supports as she desperately tries to break the rules against all the odds.

"Opal Pruitt is just about to turn 18 in the oppressively hot summer of 1936. She works hard at her job, takes care of her beloved Granny, and dreams about boys with her cousin Lucille. The young black teenager's journey to adulthood will be forged in fire, though, as the Ku Klux Klan attacks her Colored Town neighborhood and she endures a vicious beating at the hands of an unknown white attacker. Although slavery is over, Parsons, Georgia is still...

"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community--and the things that ultimately haunt us most. Set within a contemporary black community in Southern California, Brit Bennett's mesmerizing first novel is an emotionally perceptive story about community, love, and ambition. It begins with a secret. "All good secrets have a taste before you tell them, and if we'd...

After a liver transplant, Andre suddenly becomes a time traveler, but is his soulmate Michael, who lives in 1969, or Blake, his donor's brother, who is training him in 2021? Weeks ago, Andre Cobb received a much-needed liver transplant. He passes out and wakes up somewhere totally unexpected... in 1969, where (when?) he connects with Michael. Just as suddenly, he slips back to present-day Boston, where the family of his donor is waiting to explain...

Quinn's journal is where she writes down everything -- in list format -- that she doesn't want to admit out loud, or even face; once they're written, she can release them and feel a little bit more at peace. When the journal goes missing and her list of biggest fears is posted online with a challenge to face each of them or else have the entire journal go public, it's time for Quinn to move out of the realm of her mind and into real life. She's not...

Sixteen-year-old Novah feels like her life has been put on hold, taking care of her four younger siblings while her older sister Ariana gets to play volleyball and hang out--but when their parents are killed in a car crash Ariana and Novah will have to learn to cooperate.

Jay is forced to continually cover for his sister, Nicole, who hangs out with the wrong crowd; however, Jay can't deal with it any more. Soon after, Nic fails to return home. When she's deemed missing, the police barely bother to search for her; she's just another lost Black girl. Jay feels guilty and he thinks, "If I hadn't hung up on her that night, she would be home spending time with our grandma. If I was a better brother, she'd be finishing senior...

After seventeen-year-old Summer's parents go on the run, she is placed in the care of Olu, a cousin she barely knows, but with Olu and friends' efforts, stoic Summer eventually learns to open up. Summer Uzoma's parents went on the run after they were accused of committing a crime, leaving her behind. She has been alternating stays with her friends' families, and secretly visits her old home. But she's fine: she has her skateboard and her bus pass....

Sixteen-year-old twins Clement and Cristina feel lost after their father's death, but find a new sense of purpose as they work to quell the rising tensions between New Orleans's magic and non-magic communities and find out who cursed their mother. Thirty years ago, a young woman was murdered, a family was lynched, and New Orleans saw the greatest magical massacre in its history. In the days that followed, a throne was stolen from a queen. On the...

"In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is...