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 - 20 of 20  There are a total of 42 valid entries on the list.

1. An American marriage

Book cover for "An American marriage"
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Author:
Jones, Tayari
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound and separated by forces beyond their control"--

2. Americanah

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Author:
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 1977-
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"A young woman from Nigeria leaves behind her home and her first love to start a new life in America, only to find her dreams are not all she expected"--

3. Another Brooklyn: a novel

Book cover for "Another Brooklyn"
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Author:
Woodson, Jacqueline
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
"Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything--until it wasn't."--Amazon.com.

4. Beloved

Book cover for "Beloved"
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Author:
Morrison, Toni
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
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...

5. Cry, the beloved country

Book cover for "Cry, the beloved country"
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Author:
Paton, Alan
Average Rating:
4 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
A novel depicting the racial ferment in the beautiful country of South Africa in 1948

6. The darkest child

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Author:
Phillips, Delores, 1950-2014
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eBook
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,...

7. Giovanni's room

Book cover for "Giovanni's room"
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Author:
Baldwin, James, 1924-1987
Average Rating:
4.6 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
"Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality."--Page 4 of cover.

8. Go set a watchman

Book cover for "Go set a watchman"
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Author:
Lee, Harper
Series:
To kill a mockingbird volume 2.
Average Rating:
3.4 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
This book is an historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014. Go Set a Watchman...

9. Home

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Author:
Morrison, Toni, 1931-2019
Average Rating:
4 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"--

10. Homegoing: a novel

Book cover for "Homegoing"
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Author:
Gyasi, Yaa
Average Rating:
4.3 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
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...

11. Native son

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Author:
Wright, Richard, 1908-1960
Average Rating:
3.8 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eBook
Description:
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...

12. The nickel boys: a novel

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Author:
Whitehead, Colson, 1969-
Average Rating:
4.4 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
Follows the experiences of two African-American teenagers at an abusive reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.

13. Red at the bone

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Author:
Woodson, Jacqueline
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook
Description:
"An unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from each other. Moving forward and backward in time, [the] novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child"--Publisher marketing.

14. Salvage the bones: a novel

Book cover for "Salvage the bones"
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Author:
Ward, Jesmyn
Average Rating:
3.7 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eBook
Description:
Enduring a hardscrabble existence as the children of alcoholic and absent parents, four siblings from a coastal Mississippi town prepare their meager stores for the arrival of Hurricane Katrina while struggling with such challenges as a teen pregnancy and a dying litter of prize pups.

15. Sing, unburied, sing: a novel

Book cover for "Sing, unburied, sing"
Star rating for Sing, unburied, sing
Author:
Ward, Jesmyn
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Jojo and his toddler sister Kayla live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother Leonie on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she's high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie's children...

16. Such a fun age: a novel

Book cover for "Such a fun age"
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Author:
Reid, Kiley
Average Rating:
3.9 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living, with her confidence-driven brand, showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her babysitter, Emira Tucker, is confronted while watching the Chamberlains' toddler one night, walking the aisles of their local high-end supermarket. The store's security guard, seeing a young black woman out late with a white child, accuses Emira of kidnapping two-year-old Briar....

17. Things fall apart

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Author:
Achebe, Chinua
Series:
African trilogy (Chinua Achebe) volume 1.
Average Rating:
3.6 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eBook
Description:
The contemporary African writer's classic novel depicting the destruction of traditional tribal life by the white man.

18. A time to kill: a novel

Book cover for "A time to kill"
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Author:
Grisham, John
Series:
Jake Brigance novels volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.2 stars
Formats:
Book, OverDrive eBook
Description:
Following the brutal rape of his ten-year-old daughter, Carl Lee Haily, a black man living in a small Mississippi town, kills the two white men accused of the crime A Southern town is shocked when a 10-year-old black girl is raped by two white men--until the girl's father takes the law into his own hands.

19. To kill a mockingbird

Book cover for "To kill a mockingbird"
Star rating for To kill a mockingbird
Author:
Lee, Harper
Series:
To kill a mockingbird volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.5 stars
Formats:
Book, Audiobook, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
Description:
"Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee exploreswith rich humor and unswerving honesty the irrationality of adult attitudes toward race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence, and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina and quiet heroism of one man's struggle for justice--but the weight of history will only tolerate so much."--Provided by publisher.

20. The vanishing half

Book cover for "The vanishing half"
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Author:
Bennett, Brit
Average Rating:
4.1 stars
Formats:
Book, Large Print, OverDrive eAudiobook, OverDrive eBook
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...