Starting the Conversation: Adult Fiction

In our commitment to serve our community and foster the pursuit of knowledge, we offer these resources to help begin important conversations.

Showing 1 - 9 of 9  There are a total of 42 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Beloved"
Star rating for Beloved
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
After Paul D. finds his old slave friend Sethe in Ohio and moves in with her and her daughter Denver, a strange girl comes along by the name of "Beloved." Sethe and Denver take her in and then strange things begin to happen. Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil War, this profoundly affecting chronicle of slavery and its aftermath is Toni Morrison's greatest novel, a dazzling achievement, and the most spellbinding reading experience of the...
Book cover for "The darkest child"
Star rating for The darkest child
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
"A new edition of this award-winning modern classic, with new introduction, excerpt, and discussion guide Pakersfield, Georgia, 1958: Thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn is the sixth of ten fatherless siblings. She is the darkest-skinned among them and therefore the ugliest in her mother, Rozelle's, estimation, but she's also the brightest. Rozelle--beautiful, charismatic, and light-skinned--exercises a violent hold over her children. Fearing abandonment,...
Book cover for "Homegoing"
Star rating for Homegoing
Author:
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
"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...
Book cover for "Mudbound"
Star rating for Mudbound
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Description:
In 1946, Laura McAllan tries to adjust after moving with her husband and two children to an isolated cotton farm in the Mississipi Delta.
Book cover for "The nickel boys"
Star rating for The nickel boys
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Description:
Follows the experiences of two African-American teenagers at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
Book cover for "Things fall apart"
Star rating for Things fall apart
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:
The contemporary African writer's classic novel depicting the destruction of traditional tribal life by the white man.
Book cover for "The vanishing half"
Star rating for The vanishing half
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Description:
"The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and...
Book cover for "Washington Black"
Star rating for Washington Black
Author:
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Book cover for "The water dancer"
Star rating for The water dancer
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Description:
"Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage--and lost his mother and all memory of her when he was a child--but he is also gifted with a mysterious power. Hiram almost drowns when he crashes a carriage into a river, but is saved from the depths by a force he doesn't understand, a blue light that lifts him up and lands him a mile away. This strange brush with death forces a new urgency on Hiram's private rebellion. Spurred on by his improvised plantation...