Black History Month is upon us! We’re highlighting Black authors and their books across various genres to celebrate.
Storytelling is one of the best ways to share multiple nonfiction and fiction journeys. From fantasy to self-help to historical fiction, there’s something for every reader on this list.
Check out our list of books below:
- Amari and the Night Brothers, Amari and the Great Game & Amari and the Despicable Wonders by B.B. Alston
Amari Peters has never stopped believing her missing brother, Quinton, is alive. Not even when the police told her otherwise, or when she got in trouble for standing up to bullies who said he was gone for good.
So when she finds a ticking briefcase in his closet, containing a nomination for a summer tryout at the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs, she’s certain the secretive organization holds the key to locating Quinton—if only she can wrap her head around the idea of magicians, fairies, aliens, and other supernatural creatures all being real.
- An Intrigue of Witches by Esme Addison
30-year-old Black woman Sidney Taylor is a talented early American history professor, working in fast-paced Washington DC, with her eyes on promotion. She’s also currently persona non grata. So when she receives an anonymous and very cryptic invitation to visit historic small-town Robbinsville, North Carolina and hunt for a missing archaeological treasure — it’s one she can’t refuse.
Soon, Sidney’s on an exciting treasure hunt, following two-hundred-year-old clues that lead her ever closer to the artefact she’s searching for. But what is the artefact? And why is Sidney starting to feel like she’s at the heart of a terrifying conspiracy she doesn’t understand? The answer blows Sidney’s world apart, plunging her into a dark, glittering world of secret societies, ancient bloodlines, witches and magic, linked to an ages-old conspiracy that could destroy the very principles upon which America was founded.
- Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett’s death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
Can Byron and Benny reclaim their once-close relationship, piece together Eleanor’s true history, and fulfill her final request to “share the black cake when the time is right”? Will their mother’s revelations bring them back together or leave them feeling more lost than ever?
- Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury
Daisy sees dead people—something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she’s completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion in northern Ontario where she spent her childhood summers, Daisy jumps at the chance to escape. But the house is nothing like Daisy expects, and she begins to realize that her experience with the supernatural might be no match for her mother’s secrets, nor what lurks within these walls…
A decade later, Brittney is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, a bestselling author who claims her stay at “Miracle Mansion” allowed her to see the error of her ways. But Brittney knows that’s nothing but a sham. She decides the new season of her popular Haunted web series will uncover what happened to a young Black girl in the mansion ten years prior and finally expose her mother’s lies. But as she gets more wrapped up in the investigation, she’ll have to decide: if she can only bring one story to light, which one matters most—Daisy’s or her own?
- Blood Debts & Blood Justice by Terry J. Benton-Walker
Thirty years ago, a young woman was murdered, a family was lynched, and New Orleans saw the greatest magical massacre in its history. In the days that followed, a throne was stolen from a queen.
On the anniversary of these brutal events, Clement and Cristina Trudeau—the sixteen-year-old twin heirs to the powerful, magical, dethroned family—are mourning their father and caring for their sick mother. Until, by chance, they discover their mother isn’t sick—she’s cursed. Cursed by someone on the very magic council their family used to rule. Someone who will come for them next.
- Girl on Fire by Alicia Keys
Lolo Wright always thought she was just a regular fourteen-year-old dealing with regular family drama: her brother, James, is struggling with his studies; her dad’s business constantly teeters on the edge of trouble; and her mother . . . she left long ago. But then Lolo’s world explodes when a cop pulls a gun on James in a dangerous case of mistaken identities. Staring down the barrel, with no one else to help, Lolo discovers powers she never knew she had. Using only her mind, she literally throws the cop out of the way.
Problem is that secrets like Lolo’s don’t stay a secret for long. Skin, a dangerous dealer with designs on taking over the neighborhood, hears of Lolo’s telekinetic abilities and decides that he needs her in his crew. Skin might not have Lolo’s powers, but he’s got nothing to lose and is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants. And what he wants is Lolo.
- Let It Go by Chelene Knight
A warm, candid and essential book that will guide the reader to carve a new path to joy as unique as each individual. Created by the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio, acclaimed writer and editor Chelene Knight, Let It Go draws on personal experience and the advice of leaders from various Black communities to share hard-won tools for joy-discovery—tools such as how to say no with love; how to call back activities that feel good; how to reshape communication with those closest to you; how to revise language; and most of all, how to learn to let go in order to redefine what we think joy is.
Organized around the seasons and the natural cycle of reflection and renewal, Let It Go showcases, through conversation and solitary reflection, the broad spectrum of Black realities and reveals the colourful kaleidoscope of joy and your own ways to find it.
- The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the “Ex-Colored Man”, living in post Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre ragtime, or by “passing” and living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man. Though the title suggests otherwise, the book is not an autobiography but a novel. However, the book is based on the lives of people Johnson knew and from events in his own life.
- Legendborn, Bloodmarked & Oathbound by Tracy Deonn
The first three books in Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn Cycle are set in a dazzling contemporary fantasy world that blends Southern Black Girl Magic with secret societies and the legend of King Arthur.
After her mother dies in an accident, 16-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
*Please note, Oathbound doesn’t release until March 4but you can catch up with the first two books in the series in the meantime!
- The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis
Bonaparte, Alabama – once 10,000 glorious Black-owned acres – is now a ghost town vanishing to depopulation, crooked developers, and an eerie mist closing in on its shoreline. Dutchess Carson, Bonaparte’s fiery, tough-talking protector, fights to keep its remaining one thousand acres in the hands of the last five residents.
Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, her estranged daughter Ava is drawn into Ark – a seductive, radical group with a commitment to Black self-determination in the spirit of the Black Panthers and MOVE, with a dash of the Weather Underground’s violent zeal. Ava’s eleven-year-old son Toussaint wants out – his future awaits him on his grandmother’s land, where the sounds of cicada and frog song might save him if only he can make it there.
The Unsettled is a spellbinding portrait of two fierce women reckoning with the steep cost of resistance: What legacy will we leave our children? Where can we be free?