Black Authors

The Awakening of Malcolm X

By: Ilyasah Shabazz & Tiffany D. Jackson

Narrated by: Landon Woodson

Length: 7 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

This program includes a bonus interview with the author.

The Awakening of Malcolm X is a powerful narrative account of the activist's adolescent years in jail, written by his daughter Ilyasah Shabazz along with 2019 Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe award-winning author, Tiffany D. Jackson.

No one can be at peace until he has his freedom.

In... Read more

Where Sleeping Girls Lie

By: Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Narrated by: Natalie Simpson

Length: 16 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In Where Sleeping Girls Lie — a YA contemporary mystery by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, the New York Times-bestselling author of Ace of Spades — a girl new to boarding school discovers dark secrets and coverups after her roommate disappears.

It’s like I keep stumbling into a dark room, searching for the switch to make things bright again...

Sade... Read more

A Deadly Inside Scoop

By: Abby Collette

Narrated by: Chandra Skyye

Length: 9 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

This book kicks off a charming cozy mystery series set in an ice cream shop—with a fabulous cast of quirky characters.



Recent MBA grad Bronwyn Crewse has just taken over her family's ice cream shop in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and she's going back to basics. Win is renovating Crewse Creamery to restore its former glory, and filling the menu with... Read more

The Light Always Breaks

By: Angela Jackson-Brown

Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt & Neill Thorne

Length: 12 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

As 1947 opens, Eva Cardon is the twenty-four-year-old owner of Washington, D.C.’s, most famous Black-owned restaurant. When her path crosses with Courtland, a handsome white senator from Georgia, both find themselves drawn to one another—but the danger of a relationship between a Black woman and a white man from the South could destroy them and... Read more

Not the Girl You Marry

By: Andie J. Christopher

Narrated by: January LaVoy

Length: 8 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days gets a millennial makeover in this romantic comedy by USA Today bestselling author Andie J. Christopher.

“The way Jack sets out to win Hannah back is really the stuff of true romance.”—NPR

Jack Nolan is a gentleman, a journalist, and unlucky in love. His viral success has pigeon-holed him as the how-to guy for a buzzy,... Read more

Black Love Matters

By: Jessica P. Pryde

Narrated by: Jessica P. Pryde, Gina Daniels, Julienne Irons,...

Length: 7 hours 40 minutes

Abridged: No

An incisive, intersectional essay anthology that celebrates and examines romance and romantic media through the lens of Black readers, writers, and cultural commentators, edited by Book Riot columnist and librarian Jessica Pryde.
 
Romantic love has been one of the most essential elements of storytelling for centuries. But for Black people in... Read more

African Town

By: Charles Waters & Irene Latham

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Ronald Peet, Andrew Eiden, ...

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Chronicling the story of the last Africans brought illegally to America in 1860, African Town is a powerful and stunning novel-in-verse.

In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda.... Read more

Rainbow Milk

By: Paul Mendez

Narrated by: Paul Mendez

Length: 11 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Nominated for a 34th annual Lambda Literary Award • An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a thrilling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah's Witness upbringing.
 
"The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting... Read more

Dread Nation

By: Justina Ireland

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 11 hours 56 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times bestseller * Six starred reviewsAt once provocative, terrifying, and darkly subversive, Dread Nation is Justina Ireland's stunning vision of an America both foreign and familiar—a country on the brink, at the explosive crossroads where race, humanity, and survival meet.Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk... Read more

My Dear Henry: A Jekyll & Hyde Remix

By: Kalynn Bayron

Narrated by: Clifford Samuel

Length: 7 hours 49 minutes

Abridged: No

"Clifford Samuel's low, melodious voice sounds like it was made for this atmospheric queer retelling of the Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde story." - AudioFile Magazine

A teen boy tries to discover the reason behind his best friend's disappearance—and the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic stranger—in misty Victorian London, in Kalynn Bayron's My... Read more

Revival Season

By: Monica West

Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt

Length: 8 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

The daughter of one of the South’s most famous Baptist preachers discovers a shocking secret about her father that puts her at odds with both her faith and her family in this debut novel.

“Spellbinding…Revival Season should be read alongside Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus.” —The Washington Post
A... Read more

Stakes Is High

By: Mychal Denzel Smith

Narrated by: Mychal Denzel Smith

Length: 3 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Brave, clear-eyed, and passionate, Stakes Is High is the book we need to guide us past crisis mode and through an uncertain future.

The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our... Read more

Marcus Makes a Movie

By: Kevin Hart

Narrated by: Kevin Hart

Length: 3 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Stand-up comedian and Hollywood box-office hit Kevin Hart keeps the laughs coming in a middle-grade novel about a boy who has big dreams of making a blockbuster superhero film. Perfect for readers of James Patterson's Middle School series and Lincoln Peirce's Big Nate series.
 
Marcus is NOT happy to be stuck in after-school film class . . .... Read more

The World According to Fannie Davis

By: Bridgett M. Davis

Narrated by: Bridgett M. Davis

Length: 10 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

As seen on the Today Show: This true story of an unforgettable mother, her devoted daughter, and their life in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s and 1970s highlights "the outstanding humanity of black America" (James McBride).
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty... Read more

Gathering Blossoms Under Fire

By: Alice Walker

Narrated by: Aunjanue Ellis, Walker & Janina Edwards

Length: 22 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize­–winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and women’s activist, and intellectual.

For the first time, the... Read more

Qualified

By: Shari Dunn

Narrated by: Shari Dunn

Length: 9 hours 57 minutes

Abridged: No

A groundbreaking work challenging the false narrative that diversity equals a lack of qualifications by uncovering the impact of “competency checking,” a practice that unjustly scrutinizes Black people and other people of color, forcing them to repeatedly prove their worth, intelligence, and even their right to be in the workplace.The... Read more

Trouble in Queenstown

By: Delia Pitts

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 11 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

With Trouble in Queenstown, Delia Pitts introduces private investigator Vandy Myrick in a powerful mystery that blends grief, class, race, and family with thrilling results.

"Turpin masterfully distinguishes among characters of different genders, ages, and ethnic backgrounds, ensuring that each voice is distinct and authentic."—AudioFile

Evander... Read more

The Perishing

By: Natashia Deón

Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts & Kevin R. Free

Length: 11 hours 21 minutes

Abridged: No

A Black immortal in 1930s Los Angeles seeks to recover the memory of her past in this visionary novel from NAACP Image Award nominee Natashia Deón

Lou, a young Black woman, wakes up in an alley in 1930s Los Angeles with no memory of how she got there or where she’s from. Taken in by a caring foster family, Lou dedicates herself to her education... Read more

Mainline Mama

By: Keeonna Harris

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 7 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

A powerful exploration of self-resilience, family, and community from activist and prison abolitionist Keeonna Harris.Keeonna and Jason met as young teens. Only fourteen, Keeonna had never had a boyfriend before, dreamed of attending Spelman to become an obstetrician, and thought she was “grown.” Within a year she was pregnant and Jason was in... Read more

Promise Boys

By: Nick Brooks

Narrated by: Alfred Vines, Anthony Lopez, Brad Sanders, Chri...

Length: 6 hours 29 minutes

Abridged: No

Winner of the 2024 Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production for Young Adults!

"Skilled vocal performances from more than a dozen narrators immerse listeners in a schoolyard murder mystery involving race, wealth, and power."- AudioFile

This audiobook features a full cast, musical accompaniment, and sound design. Listen along and become... Read more

Patsy

By: Nicole Dennis-Benn

Narrated by: Sharon Gordon

Length: 17 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

When Patsy gets her long-coveted visa to America, it comes after years of yearning to leave Pennyfield, the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised. More than anything, Patsy wishes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, whose letters arrive from New York steeped in the promise of a happier life and the possible... Read more

The Last Nomad

By: Shugri Said Salh

Narrated by: Waceke Wambaa

Length: 9 hours 39 minutes

Abridged: No

A remarkable and inspiring true story that "stuns with raw beauty" about one woman's resilience, her courageous journey to America, and her family's lost way of life.

Winner of the 2022 Gold Nautilus Award, Multicultural & Indigenous Category

Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live... Read more

Sharks Don't Sink

By: Jasmin Graham

Narrated by: Jasmin Graham

Length: 6 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

The uplifting story of a young Black scientist’s challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature’s most misunderstood animal—the shark.

"Jasmin Graham has that winning combination of talent and grit needed to excel as a scientist. Every girl who wants to be a marine... Read more

Die verschwindende Hälfte (Ungekürzte Lesung)

By: Brit Bennett

Narrated by: Tessa Mittelstaedt

Length: 12 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Zwei Schwestern, die eine ganze Welt trennt Ein kleiner Ort im ländlichen Louisiana. Seine afroamerikanischen Bewohner blicken mit Stolz auf eine lange Tradition und Geschichte, und vor allem auf ihre Kinder, die von Generation zu Generation hellhäutiger zu werden scheinen. Stella und Desiree etwa, Zwillingsschwestern von ganz unterschiedlichem... Read more