Catalog Search Results
Author
Language
English
Description
"A powerful, timely debut, The Turner House marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family. The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone--and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to...
2) Influence
Author
Series
Influence (Carl Weber) volume 1
Publisher
Urban Books
Language
English
Formats
Description
"When famed attorney Bradley Hudson learns of his youngest son Langston's arrest for drug trafficking, he immediately assembles a team of lawyers and investigators, including members of his own family, to build a defense. With his reputation for being a shark in the courtroom, Bradley is confident he will get justice for his son--until he realizes he will be going up against an old foe, Assistant District Attorney James Brown. Is the ADA allowing...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"The great scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, once wrote about the Problem of race in America, and what he called "Double Consciousness," a sensitivity that every African American possesses in order to survive. Since childhood, Ailey Pearl Garfield has understood Du Bois's words all too well. Bearing the names of two formidable Black Americans--the revered choreographer Alvin Ailey and her great grandmother Pearl, the descendant of enslaved Georgians and...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for...
Author
Pub. Date
2022.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 3.9 - AR Pts: 5
Language
English
Description
"Celeste knows she should be excited to spend two weeks at her grandparents' lake house with her brother, Owen, and their cousins Capri and Daisy, but she's not. Bugs, bad cell reception, and the dark waters of the lake... no thanks. On top of that, she just failed her swim test and hates being in the water-it's terrifying. But her grandparents are strong believers in their family knowing how to swim, especially having grown up during a time of segregation...
Author
Language
English
Description
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American dream and the new South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Meet James Samuel Vincent - an affluent Manhattan attorney who shirks his modest Irish American background but hews to his father's philandering ways. James muddles through a topsy-turvy relationship with his son, Rufus, which is further complicated when Rufus marries Claudia Christie. Claudia's mother - Agnes Miller Christie - is a beautiful African American woman who survives a chance encounter on a Georgia road that propels her into a new life...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...
10) Mrs. Wiggins
Author
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
"The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going. Someone like Hubert Wiggins, the most eligible man in Lexington, Alabama--and the son of its most revered preacher. Proper and prosperous, Hubert is glad to finally have a wife, even one with Maggie's background. For Hubert has a secret he desperately needs to stay hidden. And Maggie's unexpected charm,...
Author
Series
Publisher
Crown Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children's Books
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
A little girl observes the ways that love is shown and shared throughout her day. From Sister's kisses when she wakes to eating breakfast with her family and playing with friends at school, love is all around.
13) Trinity: a novel
Author
Publisher
Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into the world in Fayetteville, North Carolina by a Black nurse who declares, "Lord Jesus, if that ain't the blackest little baby born this side of heaven." Later, Lottie will prove that she is the ancestors' promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanaian atrocities that have tormented Benjamin Lee, her grandfather, who was born during the Great Depression in Mississippi's red clay tobacco fields, and Benjamin Junior,...
Author
Publisher
Candlewick Press
Pub. Date
2020.
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 3.4 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Formats
Description
Evelyn Del Rey is Daniela's best friend. They do everything together and even live in twin apartments across the street from each other: Daniela with her mami and hamster, and Evelyn with her mami, papi, and cat. But not after today--not after Evelyn moves away. Until then, the girls play amid the moving boxes until it's time to say goodbye, making promises to keep in touch, because they know that their friendship will always be special. The tenderness...
Author
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.4 - AR Pts: 48
Language
English
Formats
Description
This poignant and powerful narrative tells the dramatic story of Kunta Kinte, snatched from freedom in Africa and brought by ship to America and slavery, and his descendants. Drawing on the oral traditions handed down in his family for generations, the author traces his origins back to the seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte, who was abducted from his home in Gambia and transported as a slave to colonial America. In this account Haley provides an imaginative...
16) Mama
Author
Publisher
New American Library
Pub. Date
[2005], ©1987
Language
English
Description
Mildred Peacock, a spirited African-American woman living in the declining Michigan town of Point Haven, decides to kick out her jealous husband, Crook, and raise her five children on her own.
Author
Language
English
Description
"From acclaimed author Marita Golden comes a moving African-American family drama of love and devotion in the face of Alzheimer's disease. You just can't plan for this kind of thing. Diane Tate certainly hasn't. She never expected to slowly lose her talented husband to the debilitating effects of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. As a respected family court judge, she's spent her life making tough calls, but when her sixty-eight-year-old husband's...
Author
Publisher
Berkley
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"A father's sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century, in this page-turning and intimate new novel from the author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls. It's a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah and daughter Trinity prepare...
19) Sonya's family
Author
Publisher
Rourke Educational Media
Pub. Date
[2017]
Accelerated Reader
IL: LG - BL: 1.1 - AR Pts: 1
Language
English
Description
Meet Sonya and her family. Her parents are divorced so she spends time with each of them separately. She has extended family like aunts, uncles and cousins as well. Sonya's family is special. -- Amazon.com.
Interlibrary Loan Request
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Des Moines Public Library can be requested from other libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? If the item was published recently, submit a purchase suggestion. Submit Request