Black Authors

47

By: Walter Mosley

Narrated by: Ossie Davis

Length: 6 hours 17 minutes

Abridged: No

47 is the first young adult novel to be written by bestselling author Walter Mosley. A master storyteller, Mosley deftly mixes speculative and historical fiction in this daring novel. Set in a plantation, 47 (a young slave boy) is growing up under the watchful eye of a brutal slave master. His life seems doomed, until he meets the mysterious... Read more

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

By: Z. Z. Packer

Narrated by: Shirley Jordan

Length: 6 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

Audie® Award Finalist!

A remarkable debut short-story collection by a fresh and captivating new voice in American literature. Read more

The Family Business

By: Carl Weber & Eric Pete

Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Patricia R. Floyd, Michael Early, ...

Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

New York Times best-selling author Carl Weber and award-winning novelist Eric Pete team up to deliver the first in a much-anticipated new trilogy. The Family Business features two times the heat, two times the fun, and two times the drama as the members of an unforgettable family (not to mention lovers and hangers-on) find their way in and out... Read more

The Family Business 2

By: Carl Weber & Treasure Hernandez

Narrated by: Ezra Knight, Diana Luke, Lisa Smith, Adam Alexa...

Length: 9 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

In his typical jaw-dro In his typical jaw-dropping fashion, Carl Weber returns with part two of his New York Times bestselling Family Business series. He's brought along a friend in bestselling author Treasure Hernandez, and together they've added more drama and new family members to the mix. to the world of Duncans. By day they are upstanding... 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

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

If Beale Street Could Talk

By: James Baldwin

Narrated by: Bahni Turpin

Length: 7 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

From one of the most important writers of the twentieth century comes a stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime—"a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless” (The New York Times Book Review)."One of the best... 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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Coming of Age in Mississippi

By: Anne Moody

Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts

Length: 15 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the... Read more

Playing Hurt

By: John Saunders & John U. Bacon

Narrated by: Dion Graham

Length: 8 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

For the first time ever, the popular late host of ESPN's The Sports Reporters and ABC's college football openly discusses a lifelong battle with depression.

During his three decades on ESPN and ABC, John Saunders became one of the nation's most respected and beloved sportscasters. In this moving, jarring, and ultimately inspiring memoir,... Read more

Black Detroit

By: Herb Boyd

Narrated by: James Shippy

Length: 10 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the nation’s fabric.Herb Boyd moved to Detroit in 1943, as... Read more

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom

By: Lynda Blackmon Lowery

Narrated by: Damaras Obi

Length: 1 hour

Abridged: No

A memoir of the Civil Rights Movement from one of its youngest heroes

A Sibert Informational Book Medal Honor Book
Kirkus Best Books of 2015
Booklist Editors' Choice 2015
BCCB Blue Ribbon 2015

As the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed... Read more

Twelve Years a Slave

By: Solomon Northup

Narrated by: Peter Jay Fernandez

Length: 8 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

Twelve Years a Slave (Originally published in 1853 with the sub-title: "Narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington city in 1841, and rescued in 1853, from a cotton plantation near the Red River in Louisiana") is the written work of Solomon Northup; a man who was born free, but was bound into slavery later in... 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

Queen of Bebop

By: Elaine M. Hayes

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 13 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

Queen of Bebop brilliantly chronicles the life of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of the most influential and innovative musicians of the twentieth century and a pioneer of women’s and civil rights.Sarah Vaughan, a pivotal figure in the formation of bebop, influenced a broad array of singers who followed in her wake, yet the breadth and depth of... 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

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

By: Beverly Daniel Tatum

Narrated by: Beverly Daniel Tatum

Length: 13 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America.

Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? How can we get past our reluctance to... 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