Blacker Than Blue

The beginning of Cleo Jones's life as a vampire was the end of her relationship with her first love and only submissive, college senior Benny Tarver. Mutual resentment and heartache have kept them apart for the past three years, but their responsibilities to the sisters of Alpha Beta Omega sorority have held them in each other's sights. With graduation looming, Benny knows it is time for her to move on from the sorority and her lingering feelings for Cleo, but when Cleo realizes she may lose Benny forever to a powerful demon, she must put her fears aside to discover if they can find the strength to let go of their pain and accept that the love between them is true. Annie and Sarah struggle to stay one step ahead of disaster as Annie's life becomes the war zone she once reported on.

Introduction Get Free or Die Tryin' Declaration of Rights Troubadours, Warriors, and Diplomats Notes Acknowledgements Index.

A source of controversy upon its 1929 publication, this novel was the first to openly address color prejudice among black Americans. The author, an active member of the Harlem Renaissance, offers insightful reflections of the era's mood and spirit in an enduringly relevant examination of racial, sexual, and cultural identity.

Every sorority has its secrets... And college freshman Ginger Carmichael couldn't care less. She has more important things on her mind, like maintaining her perfect GPA. No matter how much she can't stand the idea of the cliques and the matching colors, there's something about the girls of Alpha Beta Omega--their beauty, confidence, and unapologetic sexuality--that draws Ginger in. But once initiation begins, Ginger finds that her pledge is more than a bond of sisterhood, it's a lifelong pact to serve six bloodthirsty demons with a lot more than nutritional needs. Despite her fears, Ginger falls hard for the immortal queen of this nest, and as the semester draws to a close, she sees that protecting her family from the secret of her forbidden love is much harder than studying for finals.

Apparently, my twin and I are two of York's most notorious criminals. We've been Nightwalkers in the blue-light district since the vamps took over the world. Don't know how many years it's been. Long enough that a stream of fellow 'walkers have come and gone. Most don't last long selling their chi. End up face-down in the gutter, or worse. For us, one night and one sale change everything. Monsieur Garthelle is the first john to hunt me down. He calls me a chi thief in one breath and offers absolution--servitude--in the next. Maybe I'm a sucker, but I like living and breathing. Strange that such a powerful vamp would show leniency to a mere human. And something's not right with the chi I took from him. It won't go away. Neither will he, and he's forcing us to spy on his peers. Then a vamp turns up dead, and we go from playing eyes and ears to investigating a murder. This isn't what I signed up for. All I ever wanted was to sell a little chi, maybe steal some in return. I should've kept my damn hands to myself. This is my story. Look through my eyes.

A Finalist for the NAACP Image Award A Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction A Finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay An NPR Best Book of the Year A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite of the Year From the host of podcast "Stuck with Damon Young," cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in Americais enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. It’s a condition that’s sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the “being straight” thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to “Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies.” And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white. From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.

With every commitment comes sacrifice … College junior Jill Babineux knows where her priorities lie. Between a full course load, her blood pledge to feed a certain vampire, and all the community service hours she’s got to log with her sisters in Alpha Beta Omega Sorority, the last thing on her mind is finding love, especially with an immortal. Which works out just fine for Miyoko “Tokyo” Hayashi who’s been so busy enjoying her wild days and even kinkier nights, she’s never had a reason to speak to the tiny know-it-all. But after a random run-in and a few carefully plotted encounters, Miyoko learns that there’s more to the sorority’s least favorite member. Miyoko never thought she’d actually start to like the girl, let alone love her, but when true evil comes for Jill, Miyoko finds herself willing to do anything to protect her. Anything.

The Inside Songs of Amiri Baraka examines the full length of Baraka’s discography as a poet recording with musicians as well as his contributions to jazz and R & B, beginning with his earliest studio recordings in 1965 and continuing to the last year of his life, 2014. This recorded history traces his evolution from the era of Beat poetry and “projective verse,” through the period of the Black Arts Movement and cultural nationalism, and on to his commitments to “third world Marxism,” which characterized the last decades of his life. The music enfolding Baraka’s recitations ranges from traditional African drumming, to doo wop, rhythm and blues, soul and the avant garde jazz that was his great love and the subject of so much of his writing, and includes both in-studio sessions and live concert performances. This body of work offers a rare opportunity to think about not only jazz/poetry, but the poet in the recording studio and the relations of text to score.

Written in 1940 and intended as a follow-up to Stein's children's book "The World Is Round," published the previous year, "To Do" is a fanciful journey through the alphabet.