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 "Calling Me Home"
Star rating for Calling Me Home
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Description:

A soaring debut interweaving the story of a heartbreaking, forbidden love in 1930s Kentucky with an unlikely modern-day friendship

Eighty-nine-year-old Isabelle McAllister has a favor to ask her hairdresser, Dorrie Curtis. It's a big one. Isabelle wants Dorrie, a black single mother in her thirties, to drop everything and drive her from her home in Arlington, Texas, to a funeral in Cincinnati—with no clear explanation why—tomorrow.

...
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,...

3. Home

Book cover for "Home"
Star rating for Home
Average Rating:
4 stars
Description:
"The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"--
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 "Passing"
Star rating for Passing
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Description:
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING TESSA THOMPSON AND RUTH NEGGA
Two women in 1920s New York discover how fluid and dangerous our perceptions of race can be in this electrifying classic of the Harlem Renaissance—with an introduction by Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of We Love You, Charlie Freeman, finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
“The genius of this book is that its protagonists . . . are complex
...
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 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...