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Publication Date:  September 5, 2017 Format:  Paperback  Genre:  Fantasy Fiction Publisher:  Schribner Length:  305 pages Buy:  Kindle   | Audiobook  Synopsis Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man. He doesn’t lack in fathers to study, chief among them his Black grandfather, Pop. But there are other men who complicate his understanding: his absent White father, Michael, who is being released from prison; his absent White grandfather, Big Joseph, who won’t acknowledge his existence; and the memories of his dead uncle, Given, who died as a teenager. His mother, Leonie, is an inconsistent presence in his and his toddler sister’s lives. She is an imperfect mother in constant confli...

Release Date:  September 12, 2007 Publisher:  Recorded Books Format:  Audio Length:  10 hours 58 minutes Narrator:  Kim Staunton Genre:  Fiction Buy:   Audible  |  Kindle  |  Paperback Synopsis:  Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin. Review:  Octavia Butler's most famous novel, The Kindred is amazing book.  Dana, a young African American woman, married to a white man, who has just started a career as a writer in California, is suddenly...

Title:   The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow Publisher: Algonquin Books 272 pages Genre: Fiction Synopsis:  Rachel, the daughter of a danish mother and a black G.I., becomes the sole survivor of a family tragedy after a fateful morning on their Chicago rooftop. Forced to move to a new city, with her strict African American grandmother as her guardian, Rachel is thrust for the first time into a mostly black community, where her light brown skin, blue eyes, and beauty bring a constant stream of attention her way. It’s there, as she grows up and tries to swallow her grief, that she comes to understand how the mystery and tragedy of her mother might be connected to her own uncertain identity. Review:  Switching time periods and perspectives Heidi tells the story of Rachel, the girl who literally fell from the sky with the rest of her family.  Did they jump? Were they pushed? Now Rachel is living in NY with her grandmother in an African-America...