Annotated lists of hardcover books which received a starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from any or all of the following review sources: Booklist, Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Titles are listed by approximate date of publication, then by alphabetically by author.

Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine - unless otherwise noted.

2004

• Soul City
  Author: Toure
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 19.95 ISBN: 0316741582 Date: 2004
  LJ
  From the popular author of the groundbreaking debut The Portable Promised Land comes an inventive and hilarious first novel about an African-American utopia threatened by the darker side of human nature.
  Suggested Reading List: Debuts
  Updated 10.7.04

2003

• Daughter: A Novel
  Author: Bandele, Asha
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0743211847
  LJ
  The gifted and charismatic author of the acclaimed memoir The Prisoner's Wife delivers a bold and heartrending first novel that explores the silence of black women and illuminates the fragile complexity of the mother-daughter bond.
  Suggested Reading List: Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 8.14.03

• Such Sweet Thunder
  Author: Carter, Vincent O.
  Publisher: Steerforth $ 25.95 ISBN: 1586420585
  PW Booklist
  Written in 1963 but never published, this literary portrait of black urban life in pre-World War II America, an era marred by racial segregation and relentless daily injustices, is told from the perspective of a young boy growing up during the 1920s and 1930s in Kansas City.
  they can't get out of their minds.
  Suggested Reading List: Music & Fiction
  Updated 4.16.03

• The Salt Roads
  Author: Hopkinson, Nalo
  Publisher: Warner $ 22.95 ISBN: 0446533025 Date: 2003
  LJ Kirkus
  "Whirling with witchcraft and sensuality, this latest novel by Hopkinson (Skin Folk; Midnight Robber) is a globe-spanning, time-traveling spiritual odyssey."--Publishers Weekly.
  Updated 10.8.03

• The Known World
  Author: Jones, Edward P.
  Publisher: Amistad $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060557540
  Kirkus LJ Booklist
  Henry Townsend, a black bootmaker and former slave in antebellum Virginia, becomes a proprietor of his own plantation--as well as his own slaves. This modern masterpiece explores what happens when he dies and "the known world" unravels.
  Suggested Reading Lists: Historical Fiction Stars | All Stars
  Updated 10.2.03

• Love
  Author: Morrison, Toni
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23.95 ISBN: 0375409440
  Kirkus Booklist PW
  From the internationally acclaimed Nobel laureate comes a richly conceived novel that illuminates the full spectrum of desire. More than the wealthy owner of the famous Cosey Hotel and Resort, Bill Cosey shapes the yearnings of six women for father, husband, lover, guardian, friend--yearnings that dominate their lives long after his death.
  Suggested Reading List: All Stars
  Updated 9.08.03

• Sexual Healing
  Author: Nelson, Jill
  Publisher: Agate $ 23.95 ISBN: 0972456201 Date: 2003
  PW
  Nelson, bestselling author of Volunteer Slavery and Straight, No Chaser, has written a steamy and uproarious debut novel that tells the story of Lydia and Acey, two successful midcareer professionals. But their career success is matched by their romantic and sexual frustrations.
  Updated 5.12.03

• Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
  Author: Packer, Z.Z.
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 23.95 ISBN: 1573222348
  Kirkus PW LJ
  Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is the highly anticipated debut of a remarkable writer of short stories and winner of the Whiting Writers' Award and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
  Suggested Reading Lists: All Stars | First Fiction & Mystery Debuts
  Updated 1.16.03

2002

• The Emperor of Ocean Park
  Author: Carter, Stephen L.
  Publisher: Knopf $ 26.95 ISBN: 0375413634
  Kirkus Booklist
  The Emperor of Ocean Park is as brilliant in its suspense as in its acute social observation. Set in the privileged world of New York-Washington-Martha's Vineyard upper-crust African-American society and the inner circle of an Ivy League law school, it tells the story of a complex family with a single seductive and dangerous link to the shadowlands of crime.
  

• The Bondwoman's Narrative
  Author: Crafts, Hannah, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
  Publisher: Warner $ 24.95 ISBN: 0446530085
  PW
  Possibly the first novel written by a black woman slave, this work is both a historically important literary event and a gripping autobiographical story in its own right.
  

• Walk Through Darkness
  Author: Durham, David Anthony
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385499256
  PW
  The second novel by the acclaimed author of Gabriel's Story is history infused by myth, the intense narrative of an escaped slave trying to reunite with his pregnant wife.
  Suggested Reading List: Historical Fiction Stars

• The Ecstatic
  Author: Lavalle, Victor
  Publisher: Crown $ 22.95 ISBN: 0609610147
  PW
  Something is wrong with Anthony, and it's getting worse. Schizophrenia runs in his family's blood, picking off an uncle here, a mother there, and has now found a home in Anthony's mind. From the acclaimed author of the short-story collection Slapboxing with Jesus comes this inventive, funny, and heartbreaking first novel.
  Suggested Reading List: First Fiction Debuts

• Shackling Water
  Author: Mansbach, Adam
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 22.95 ISBN: 0385502052
  LJ Booklist Kirkus
  In the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, Adam Mansbach captures the rhythms of jazz in a remarkable debut novel about a young man looking for his muse in Harlem.
  

• Miracle at St Anna
  Author: McBride, James
  Publisher: Riverhead $ 24.95 ISBN: 1573222127
  LJ
  Based on the historical incident of an unspeakable massacre at the site of St. Anna Di Stazzema, a small village in Tuscany, and on the experiences of the famed Buffalo soldiers from the 92nd Division in Italy during World War II, Miracle at St. Anna is a singular evocation of war, cruelty, passion, and heroism. It is the story of four American Negro soldiers, a band of partisans, and an Italian boy who encounter a miracle--though perhaps the true miracle lies in themselves.
  Suggested Reading List: World Wars
  

• Free: Stories
  Author: Nailah, Anika
  Publisher: Doubleday $21.95 ISBN: 0385502931
  Booklist
  In spare, elegant stories, Anika Nailah brilliantly exposes the injustices and struggles African Americans confront, the skills they develop in order to survive, and the psychological and spiritual costs of survival.
  Reading Group Guide
  

• Making Callaloo: 25 Years of Black Literature 1976 - 2002
  Author: Rowell, Charles H. (ed)
  Publisher: St Martins $ 17.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0312288980
  PW
  A stunning anthology of African-American literature featuring some of today's most prominent authors, this volume is a compelling collection of poetry and fiction, all previously published within the pages of Callaloo.
  

• The Ties That Bind
  Author: Snoe, Eboni
  Publisher: BET $ 6.99 (paper) ISBN: 1583143386
  Booklist
  The conclusion to the Family Reunion series finds Essence Stuart confronting her biological father, politician Cedric Johnson, after he cruelly rejects her. Essence also has a chance encounter with detective Titan Valentine, who Cedric has hired to investigate her. When they fall in love, it takes Grandfather Johnson's meddling to get the couple to admit their feelings and take a chance at love.
  

• Portable Promised Land: Stories
  Author: Toure
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 23.95 ISBN: 0316666432
  Library Journal
  With stunning language and dazzling characters, this debut by Tour introduces Soul City, a wholly imagined utopia where magic happens and black is beautiful.
  Suggested Reading List: First Fiction Debuts
  

2001

• Whispers in the Dark: Marti Macalister
  Author: Bland, Eleanor Taylor
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312203799
  Booklist PW
  Homicide detective Marti MacAlister, and her partner, Matthew Jessenovik, are assigned a most unusual case--all they have of their victim is an arm. Meanwhile, Marti's troubled best friend Sharon is lured to the Bahamas by a man who makes Sharon's friends and family uneasy.
  

• Gabriel's Story
  Author: Durham, David Anthony
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385498144
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  In this literary debut, Durham recounts the adventures and trials of a black pioneer family in the late 1870s. At the center of the story is Gabriel, a young man who moves reluctantly from the urban North with his mother and younger brother to join his stepfather, a homesteader in Kansas. When he runs away to become a cowboy, his search for excitement brings trouble and danger.
  Suggested Reading List: Historical Fiction Stars & Western Stars
  

• Bombingham
  Author: Grooms, Anthony
  Publisher: Free Press $ 24 ISBN: 0743205588
  Publishers Weekly
  In the 1960s, unsolved racially motivated bombings in Birmingham, Alabama gave the town the nickname of Bombingham. This is the backdrop for Grooms story as a young African-American boy and his family strive for peace and understanding through the decade.
  

• Pipe Dream
  Author: Jones, Solomon
  Publisher: Villard $ 13.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 0375756604
  Booklist Kirkus
  Debut novelist Jones plumbs the depths of the drug world as four addicts are pursued for a murder they didn't commit. The story winds through the streets of Philadelphia as the four struggle to escape not only from the police but from the hungers that have all but swallowed them whole.
  

• Sap Rising
  Author: Lincoln, Christine
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 20 ISBN: 0375421408
  Library Journal
  A powerful debut collection of wise and assured stories includes tales of bedeviled and struggling young African Americans whose lives unfold in rural settings as distinctive as the characters themselves.
  

• A Day Late and a Dollar Short
  Author: McMillian, Terry
  Publisher: 0670896764 $ 25.95 ISBN: 0670896764
  Kirkus PW
  Long-awaited, this high-spirited new novel introduces the Price family: matriarch Viola, her sometimes-husband Cecil, and their four adult kids, each of whom sees life--and one another--through thick and thin, and entirely on their own terms. With her hallmark exuberance and sassy cast of characters, the author of Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back takes readers ever further into the hearts, minds, and souls of America.
  

Fearless Jones
Author: Mosley, Walter
Publisher: Little Brown $ 24.95 ISBN: 0316592382
Kirkus PW
Mosley returns to mysteries at last with his most engaging hero since Easy Rawlins. When Paris Minton meets a beautiful new woman, before he knows it he has been beaten up, slept with, shot at, robbed, and his bookstore burned to the ground. He's in so much trouble he has no choice but to get his friend, Fearless Jones, out of jail to help him.
• West of Rehoboth
  Author: Pate, Alexs D.
  Publisher: Morrow $ 24 ISBN: 038097679x
  Kirkus Booklist
  

• The Wind Done Gone
  Author: Randall, Alice
  Publisher: Houghton Mifflin $ 23 ISBN: 061810450x
  Kirkus
  In a brilliant act of literary invention, Randall revisits the world of Gone With the Wind from an African-American point of view as Scarlett's mulatto half-sister--beautiful and brown--gets to tell "her" story.
  The Wind Done Gone web site
  

• John Henry Days
  Author: Whitehead, Colson
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385498195
  Kirkus PW Booklist
  From the author of The Intuitionist comes a retelling of the legend of John Henry that sweeps across generations and cultures in a stunning, hilarious, and unsettling portrait of American society.
  

2000

• Rails Under My Back
  Author: Allen, Jeffrey Renard
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374246262
  Kirkus LJ
  In an astonishing debut novel exploring the bonds and boundaries of an African-American family, Allen tracks the interwoven lives of two brothers married to two sisters.

• Tuff
  Author: Beatty, Paul
  Publisher: Knopf $ 23 ISBN: 0375401229
  PW
  When 19-year-old Winston "Tuffy" Foshay is offered $20,000 to run for city council, he gamely embarks on one of the most outlandish campaigns in political history, one that topples both his vision of the world and his place in it.
  

• Scream in Silence
  Author: Bland, Eleanor Taylor
  Publisher: Minotaur $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312203780
  Booklist
  An arsonist on the loose in sleepy Lincoln Prairie appears to be graduating from simple blazes to sophisticated bombs. Before his acts become deadly, middle-aged homicide detective Marti MacAlister and her tired but dedicated partner, Matthew Jessenovik, must stop the culprit.

• The Black Rose: The Magnificent Story of Madame C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire
  Author: Due, Tananarive
  Publisher: Ballantine $ 25.95 ISBN: 0345439600
  Kirkus
  Before his death in 1992, Alex Haley embarked on the research and planning of a major novel based on C.J. Walker's life. Now critically acclaimed writer Due brings Haley's work to inspiring completion in a compelling, richly textured narrative.
  

• Not a Day Goes By
  Author: Harris, E. Lynn
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 19.95 ISBN: 0385498241
  PW
  In a book destined to enlarge his readership, bestselling author Harris soars to new heights with Not a Day Goes By, a wicked little love story that will be a beach read favorite. "What's got audiences hooked? Harris's unique spin on the ever-fascinating topics of identity, class, intimacy, sexuality, and friendship".--"Vibe".

• The Big Mango
  Author: Kelley, Norman
  Publisher: Akashic $ 14.95 (trade paper) ISBN: 1888451106
  PW
  

• The Fisher King
  Author: Marshall, Paule
  Publisher: Scribner $ 23 ISBN: 0684872838
  Kirkus PW
  Hailed as "one of our finest American novelists" (San Francisco Chronicle), the author of Brown Girl, Brownstones returns with a moving and revelatory story of jazz, love, family conflict, and the artist's struggles in society.
  Suggested Reading List: Music & Fiction
  

• Orange Laughter
  Author: Ross, Leone
  Publisher: Farrar Strauss Giroux $ 23 ISBN: 0374226768
  Booklist
  Set in 1990s New York City and 1960s North Carolina, Orange Laughter is a multitude of tales: of Tony who fights madness; of Mikey, Tony's childhood friend, whose hopes and dreams now live on in his daughter; and of Agatha, who has a heart full of painful secrets.
  

• Hotel Alleluia
  Author: Roy, Lucinda
  Publisher: H arperCollins $ 25 ISBN: 0060193956
  PW
  From the critically acclaimed author of Lady Moses comes a powerful new novel of sisterhood and racial identity set against the violence of revolution-torn Africa.

• The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart
  Author: Walker, Alice
  Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679455876
  Library Journal PW
  Fictional stories based on Walker's life, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart is a wise and moving treasure about love and life by the author of The Color Purple and By the Light of My Father's Smile.
  

1999

• Coq Au Vin
  Author: Carter, Charlotte
  Publisher: Mysterious Price: $ 22 ISBN: 0892966785 Date: 1999
  PW Booklist
  A poetry-spouting jazz-playing, French-speaking Black American Princess searches for her missing aunt in this sexy and hilarious mystery set in Paris, France.
  

• Where to Choose
  Author: Mickelbury, Penny
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster Price: $22 ISBN: 0684837420 Date: 1999
  Booklist
  One year after her husband was murdered, Carol Ann Gibson still hasn't put her life together. When she investigates problems in the racially mixed neighborhood of her childhood, she soon becomes a target herself.
  

• Inner City Blues: Charlotte Justice
  Author: Woods, Paula
  Publisher: W.W. Norton Price: $ 23.95 ISBN: 039304680x Date: 1999
  Kirkus
  This debut novel featuring black LAPD homicide detective Charlotte Justice is set during the epochal L.A. riots. Justice saves a curfew-breaking black doctor from a potentially lethal beating - only to discover nearby the body of a one-time radical.
  Suggested Reading List: Debuts

  Links:

  General:
  LII: Black History Month Resources
  African American History Month
  African American Information - IPL

  Book Related:
  AALBC - African American Literature Book Club
  African American Mystery Authors
  African American Writers - A Celebration
  Blackwriters.org
  Mosaicbooks.com
  Quarterly Black Review
  SciFi Noir