Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence

Mother Country

A Novel

By: Jacinda Townsend
Narrated by: Kellye A. Saunders
Length: 10 hours 49 minutes

A transnational feminist novel about human trafficking and motherhood from an award-winning author.



Saddled with student loans, medical debt, and the sudden news of her infertility after a major car accident, Shannon, an African American woman, follows her boyfriend to Morocco in search of relief. There, in the cobblestoned medina of Marrakech,... Read more

The Birds of Opulence

By: Crystal Wilkinson
Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
Length: 4 hours 50 minutes

From the critically acclaimed, award-winning author of Blackberries, Blackberries and Water Street comes an astonishing new novel. A lyrical exploration of love and loss, The Birds of Opulence centers on several generations of women in a bucolic southern black township as they live with and sometimes surrender to madness.



The Goode-Brown family,... Read more

Everywhere You Don't Belong

By: Gabriel Bump
Narrated by: Korey Jackson
Length: 7 hours 15 minutes

“Young Claude is being raised by his grandma in Chicago’s changing South Shore, and folks in his life — his parents, friends, neighbors — are disappearing. There’s little he can count on besides his grandma, her friend Paul, and his not-quite girlfriend Janice. The violence that was once at a safe distance is now on their doorstep, with corrupt... Read more

Lot

Stories

By: Bryan Washington
Narrated by: Bryan Washington, Dion Graham, JD Jackson & Bahni Turpin
Length: 5 hours 41 minutes

“This is such a phenomenal book by a writer who should be on everyone’s radar for 2019. Washington has a detailed and poignant style that reveals the tender soul within all of his characters. None of the characters that we meet in Lot are strangers — they are our mothers, brothers, lovers, and friends. Washington pulls them all together through... Read more

A Lucky Man

Stories

By: Jamel Brinkley
Narrated by: Korey Jackson
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs,... Read more

Welcome to Braggsville

A Novel

By: T. Geronimo Johnson
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 12 hours 12 minutes

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2015 BY THE WASHINGTON POST, TIME, MEN’S JOURNAL, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, KANSAS CITY STAR, BROOKLYN MAGAZINE, NPR, HUFFINGTON POST, THE DAILY BEAST, AND BUZZFEEDWINNER OF THE 2015 ERNEST J. GAINES AWARD FOR LITERARY EXCELLENCELONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR... Read more