Adults - Black History Month Featured Titles

Updated March 21, 2026
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The Underground Railroad : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from...
Beloved : a novel
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
Discover Toni Morrison's most iconic work in this Pulitzer-prize winning novel that exemplifies her powerful and important place in contemporary American literature. 'An American masterpiece' AS Byatt It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an...
Grand union : stories
Smith, Zadie
Paper Book
In the summer of 1959, an Antiguan immigrant in north-west London lives the last day of his life. A mother looks back on her early forays into matters of the human heart, considering the destructive nature of desire. A disgraced cop stands amid the broken shards of his life...
James : a novel
Everett, Percival
Paper Book
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle James is a profound and ferociously funny novel from one of our greatest living writers, Percival Everett. The Sunday Times Bestseller Winner of the...
Kindred
Butler, Octavia E.
Paper Book
Octavia E. Butler's ground-breaking masterpiece, with an original foreword by Ayòbámi Adébáyò. 'A marvel of imagination, empathy and detail' NEW YORK TIMES 'The marker you should judge all other time-travelling narratives by' GUARDIAN ...
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
McBride, James
Paper Book
WATERSTONES FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH FOR OCTOBER 2024 THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER BARACK OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK AMAZON.COM NO.1 BOOK OF THE YEAR 'I loved this book' BONNIE GARMUS 'A generous, compassionate book about the...
Go tell it on the mountain
Baldwin, James
Paper Book
"Nothing but the darkness, and all around them destruction, and before them nothing but the fire--a bastard people, far from God, singing and crying in the wilderness!" First published in 1953, Baldwin's first novel is a short but intense, semi-autobiographical exploration of the troubled life of...
The vanishing half
Bennett, Brit
Paper Book
THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 'An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner...
Razorblade tears
Cosby, S. A.
Paper Book
A BLACK FATHER. A WHITE FATHER. TWO MURDERED SONS. A QUEST FOR VENGEANCE. *SUNDAY TIMES THRILLER OF THE MONTH* * FINANCIAL TIMES CRIME BOOKS OF THE YEAR* * BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING LIST 2022* 'Superb.....
Black cake : a novel
Wilkerson, Charmaine
Paper Book
THE INSTANT NO. 2 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER **Featured on Barack Obama's Summer Reading List 2022** **A Grazia Instagram 'IT' book to watch out for****Soon to be a major Hulu series by Oprah Winfrey, Aaron Kaplan and Marissa Jo Cerar**...
The sellout : a novel
Beatty, Paul.
Ebook
A Book of the Decade, 2010-2020 (Independent) * One of the New York Times' '100 Best Books of the 21st Century' A LAUGH-OUT-LOUD SATIRE ABOUT RACE, CLASS AND INEQUALITY IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA, BY A LITERARY GENIUS AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME ...
Seven days in June : a novel
Williams, Tia
Paper Book
A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER (JUNE 2021) 'A sexy, modern love story' Reese Witherspoon 'I absolutely loved it' Jodi Picoult ...
Washington Black
Edugyan, Esi
Paper Book
Escape is only the beginning ... Inspired by a true story, Washington Black is an extraordinary tale of a world destroyed and made whole again.
Girl, woman, other
Evaristo, Bernardine
Paper Book
THE SUNDAY TIMES 1# BESTSELLER & BOOKER PRIZE WINNER RECIPIENT OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARD *One of Goodreads Most Popular Books of the Past Decade* This is Britain as you've never read it. This is Britain as...
Nightcrawling
Mottley, Leila
Paper Book
LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 - THE YOUNGEST EVER BOOKER NOMINEETHE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER_______________'Mottley attempts to do for Oakland something of what The Wire did for Baltimore' THE TIMES'A soul...
Let us descend : a novel
Ward, Jesmyn
Paper Book
* AN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * 'A spectacular achievement' ANTHONY DOERR 'Extravagantly beautiful' DAILY MAIL 'One of the greatest writers of all time' JACQUELINE WOODSON 'Extraordinary' GUARDIAN'The...
The reformatory : a novel
Due, Tananarive
Paper Book
Jim Crow Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., who for a trivial scuffle with a white boy is sent to The Gracetown School for Boys. But the segregated reformatory is a chamber of horrors, haunted by the boys that have died there. In order to survive the school...
Between the world and me
Coates, Ta-Nehisi
Ebook
Winner, Kirkus Prize for Non-Fiction, 2015 In the 150 years since the end of the Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the story of race and America has remained a brutally simple one, written on flesh: it is the story of the black body, exploited to create the...
Barracoon : the story of the last "black cargo"
Hurston, Zora Neale
Ebook
Abducted from Africa, sold in America. A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker. This account illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery...
The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks
Skloot, Rebecca
Paper Book
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. Born a poor black tobacco farmer, her cancer cells - taken without her knowledge - became a multimillion-dollar industry and one of the most important tools in medicine. Yet Henrietta's family did not learn of her 'immortality' until...

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