Black Authors

Locking Up Our Own

By: James Forman, Jr.

Narrated by: Kevin R. Free

Length: 8 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

Former public defender James Forman, Jr., is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of color. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand the war on crime that began in the 1970s and why it was supported by many African American leaders in the nation’s urban centers.Forman shows us that the first... Read more

An Extraordinary Union

By: Alyssa Cole

Narrated by: Karen Chilton

Length: 10 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

As the Civil War rages between the states, a courageous pair of spies plunge fearlessly into a maelstrom of ignorance and danger, combining their unique skills to alter the course of history and break the chains of the past in New York Times bestselling Alyssa Cole’s first installment in The Loyal League ...1861. Elle Burns is a former slave... Read more

Jake the Fake Keeps it Real

By: Craig Robinson & Adam Mansbach

Narrated by: Sullivan Jones

Length: 1 hour 46 minutes

Abridged: No

For fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate comes the first book in a side-splitting illustrated series from comedian and film star Craig Robinson, #1 New York Times bestselling author Adam Mansbach, and NAACP History Maker recipient and cartoonist Keith Knight.
 
Jake can barely play an instrument, not even a kazoo. And his art? It’s better... Read more

Sugar

By: Bernice L. McFadden

Narrated by: Myra Lucretia Taylor

Length: 8 hours 44 minutes

Abridged: No

A novel by a critically acclaimed voice in contemporary fiction, praised by Ebony for its “unforgettable images, unique characters, and moving story that keeps the pages turning until the end.”A young prostitute comes to Bigelow, Arkansas, to start over, far from her haunting past. Sugar moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the... Read more

The President’s Kitchen Cabinet

By: Adrian Miller

Narrated by: Ron Butler

Length: 9 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

James Beard award–winning author Adrian Miller vividly tells the stories of the African Americans who worked in the presidential food service as chefs, personal cooks, butlers, stewards, and servers for every First Family since George and Martha Washington. Miller brings together the names and words of more than 150 black men and women who... Read more

Harriet Tubman

By: Catherine Clinton

Narrated by: Shayna Small

Length: 8 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

The definitive biography of one of the most courageous women in American history "reveals Harriet Tubman to be even more remarkable than her legend" (Newsday).
Celebrated for her exploits as a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman has entered history as one of nineteenth-century America's most enduring and important figures. But... Read more

They Can't Kill Us All

By: Wesley Lowery

Narrated by: Ron Butler

Length: 8 hours 10 minutes

Abridged: No

A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it.

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting... Read more

The Sun is Also a Star

By: Nicola Yoon

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin, Raymond Lee & Dominic Hoffman

Length: 8 hours 3 minutes

Abridged: No

The #1 New York Times bestseller and National Book Award Finalist from the bestselling author of Everything, Everything will have you falling in love with Natasha and Daniel as they fall in love with each other.

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not... Read more

Dust Tracks on a Road

By: Zora Neale Hurston

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 11 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

“Warm, witty, imaginative.... This is a rich and winning book.”—The New YorkerDust Tracks on a Road is the bold, poignant, and funny autobiography of novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, one of American literature’s most compelling and influential authors. Hurston’s powerful novels of the South—including Jonah’s Gourd Vine... Read more

Everfair

By: Nisi Shawl

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 12 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Everfair is a wonderful Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Fabian Socialists from Great Britian join forces with African-American missionaries to purchase land from... Read more

You Can't Touch My Hair

By: Phoebe Robinson

Narrated by: Phoebe Robinson, Jessica Williams & John Hodgman

Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • "A must-read…Phoebe Robinson discusses race and feminism in such a funny, real, and specific way, it penetrates your brain and stays with you." –Ilana Glazer, co-creator and co-star of Broad City

A hilarious and timely essay collection about race, gender, and pop culture from upcoming comedy superstar and 2 Dope... Read more

The Doctor Is In

By: Brenda Hampton & Carl Weber

Narrated by: Lynnette Freeman

Length: 8 hours 23 minutes

Abridged: No

Dr. Kasen Phillips has the magic touch when it comes to helping his patients who are in dire need of counseling services, but when the love of his life winds up missing in action, Kasen's life takes a horrific turn for the worse. His office manager, Voncile Harper, is there to lend a helping hand. She's on a mission to shake Kasen from his... Read more

Sing for Your Life

By: Daniel Bergner

Narrated by: Ryan Vincent Anderson

Length: 8 hours 53 minutes

Abridged: No

The New York Times bestseller about a young black man's journey from violence and despair to the threshold of stardom: "A beautiful tribute to the power of good teachers" (Terry Gross, Fresh Air).

"One of the most inspiring stories I've come across in a long time."-Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review

Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing... Read more

Original Gangstas

By: Ben Westhoff

Narrated by: J. D. Jackson

Length: 15 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

"Raw, authoritative, and unflinching ... An elaborately detailed, darkly surprising, definitive history of the LA gangsta rap era." -- Kirkus, starred review

A monumental, revealing narrative history about the legendary group of artists at the forefront of West Coast hip-hop: Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur.

Amid rising... Read more

The Defender

By: Ethan Michaeli

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 22 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded the Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a “Modern Moses,” becoming one... Read more

Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil

By: Lezley McSpadden

Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts

Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

This revelatory memoir by the mother of Michael Brown, the African American teenager killed by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, sheds light on one of the landmark events in recent history.“I wasn’t there when Mike Mike was shot. I didn’t see him fall or take his last breath, but as his mother, I do know one thing... Read more

Medical Apartheid

By: Harriet A. Washington

Narrated by: Ron Butler

Length: 19 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted... Read more

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

By: Helen Oyeyemi

Narrated by: Ann Marie Gideon, Bahni Turpin & Piter Marek

Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

From the award-winning author of Boy, Snow, Bird and Mr. Fox comes an enchanting collection of intertwined stories. Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret-Oyeyemi's keys not only... Read more

We Love You, Charlie Freeman

By: Kaitlyn Greenidge

Narrated by: Karole Foreman, Myra Lucretia Taylor & Cherise ...

Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Frustrated by the limitations of cross-race communication in her predominantly white town, a young African-American girl teaches herself to sign. Years later, Laurel uproots her husband and daughters from their downwardly-mobile, over-educated and underpaid life in the South End of Boston for Cortland County, Massachusetts. The Freemans are to... Read more

The Illegal

By: Lawrence Hill

Narrated by: Gideon Emery

Length: 12 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

Keita Ali has nothing: no bank account, no papers, no legal identity. A runner, he has fled home-- a brutal dictatorship that produces the world' s fastest marathoners-- to live as an illegal refugee in a wealthy western nation, surviving on winnings from local races. But the government is cracking down on illegal immigrants, so Keita-- who will... Read more

American Ace

By: Marilyn Nelson

Narrated by: Marilyn Nelson

Length: 1 hour 21 minutes

Abridged: No

This riveting novel in verse, perfect for fans of Jacqueline Woodson and Toni Morrison, explores American history and race through the eyes of a teenage boy embracing his newfound identity
 
Connor’s grandmother leaves his dad a letter when she dies, and the letter’s confession shakes their tight-knit Italian-American family: The man who raised... Read more

Negroland

By: Margo Jefferson

Narrated by: Robin Miles

Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Soon to be a television series by New York Times bestselling essayist Roxane Gay At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac—here is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of Margo Jefferson’s rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned with... Read more

This Way Home

By: Wes Moore & Shawn Goodman

Narrated by: JD Jackson

Length: 7 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

“Brimming with hard realities about the choices we make, the friendships we keep, and the unlikely allies we find along the way, this affecting novel helps to fill the gaping hole left by Walter Dean Myers’s passing.” —Booklist
 
“A taut, haunting tragedy.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
One young man searches for a place to call home in this gut-wrenching,... Read more

Carl Weber's Kingpins: Miami

By: Nikki Turner

Narrated by: Soozi Cheyenne

Length: 8 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestselling author Carl Weber has brought together eight of the best Urban Street writers to participate in the most highly anticipated series of 2015, the Kingpin series. Every city has an underworld leader. In the Kingpin series,
we will visit eight cities and ride along with that city's kingpin as he rules the streets. The... Read more