Dion Graham
1) Sooley
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
After seventeen-year-old Samuel "Sooley" Sooleymon receives a college scholarship to play basketball for North Carolina Central, he moves to Durham from his native, war-torn South Sudan, enrolls in classes, joins the team, and prepares to sit out his freshman season, but Sooley has a fierce determination to succeed so he can bring his family to America, working tirelessly on his game until he dominates everyone in practice, and when Sooley is called...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 3.4 - AR Pts: 10
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Maverick feels strongly about family ties, making choices he feels necessary to help support his mom while his King father serves time, and leave him literally holding his son in a doctor's waiting room after he gets paternity test results back and his babymomma ghosts. Now the child he's raising is impacting the lives of his family and his girlfriend, and the gang life he led to support them all financially could leave them all bearing his responsibilities...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America. In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed...
Author
Series
Harlem trilogy (Colson Whitehead) volume 1
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Formats
Description
""Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home. Few people know he descends from a...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
"When Jack Morgan stops by Private's Paris office, he envisions a quick hello during an otherwise relaxing trip filled with fine food and sightseeing. But Jack is quickly pressed into duty after a call from his client Sherman Wilkerson, asking Jack to track down his young granddaughter who is on the run from a brutal drug dealer. Before Jack can locate her, several members of France's cultural elite are found dead--murdered in stunning, symbolic fashion....
Author
Pub. Date
2019.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"From the best-selling author of The Monk of Mokha, a spare, powerful story of two men, Western contractors sent to work far from home, tasked with paving a road to the capital in a dangerous and largely lawless country. Four and Nine are partners, working for the same company, sent without passports to a nation recovering from ten years of civil war. Together, operating under pseudonyms and anonymous to potential kidnappers, they are given a new...
Author
Series
Dark star trilogy (Marlon James) volume 1
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Formats
Description
"In the first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search...
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Joshua and Lauren are the perfect couple. Newly married, they're wildly in love, each on a successful and rewarding career path. Then Lauren is diagnosed with a terminal illness. As Lauren's disease progresses, Joshua struggles to make the most of the time he has left with his wife and to come to terms with his future- a future without the only woman he's ever loved. He's so consumed with finding a way to avoid the inevitable ending that he never...
Author
Series
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Formats
Description
When creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, setting off a chain of seemingly unrelated events, people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase and protests erupt globally-until the world finds out what has frightened the monsters out of the dark.
11) Tread of angels
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The year is 1883, and the mining town of Goetia is booming as prospectors from near and far come to mine the powerful new element Divinity from the high mountains of Colorado with the help of the pariahs of society known as the Fallen. The Fallen are the descendants of demonkind living among the Virtues, the winners in an ancient war, with the descendants of both sides choosing to live alongside Abaddon's mountain in this tale of the mythological...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 5.9 - AR Pts: 3
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Using an "Everyman" player as his narrator, Kadir Nelson tells the story of Negro League baseball from its beginnings in the 1920s through the decline after Jackie Robinson crossed over to the majors in 1947. Illustrations from oil paintings by artist Kadir Nelson.
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 4.1 - AR Pts: 8
Language
English
Formats
Description
Ten-year-old Anthony Joplin has made it to double digits! Which means he's finally old enough to play in the spades tournament every Joplin Man before him seems to have won. So while Ant's friends are stressing about fifth grade homework and girls, Ant only has one thing on his mind: how he'll measure up to his father's expectations at the card table. Then Ant's best friend gets grounded, and he's forced to find another spades partner. And Shirley,...
14) The Starless Sea
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a rare book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues -- a bee, a key, and a sword -- that lead...
16) Ball Don't Lie
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 4.7 - AR Pts: 10
Language
English
Formats
Description
-- Ball Don’t Lie -- Riveting " -- Gritty and mesmerizing."I have never before seen blacktop ball depicted so well. In this novel, you will find its flash, its power, and its elegance without chains. This is powerful "Truly authentic in its examination of both the game I love and the invariable missteps toward manhood. You cannot fail to be moved by the eloquence and truth of this story. An ALA Best Book for Young Adults An ALA Quick Pick for...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a powerful and hugely-entertaining novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy glory. "It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray...
Author
Publisher
Crown
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and...
Author
Series
Infinity ring volume 2
Publisher
Scholastic
Pub. Date
c2012.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 6.4 - AR Pts: 7
Language
English
Description
As thousands of Viking warriors attack Paris, Sera, Riq, and all the people of the city struggle to defend themselves and Dak remains a prisoner, forced to work for the invading army.
20) John Woman
Author
Pub. Date
2018.
Language
English
Formats
Description
At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets...