Celebrity Book Club Picks by Black Authors You Need To Read

A glorious chronicle of a life like none other — enlightening, entertaining, surprising, empowering — and a testament to the world-changing power of Black motherhood. Matriarch is one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America — and the wisdom that women pass on to each other, mothers to daughters, across generations.

Who hasn’t wanted to murder an ex — figuratively, at least? In this explosive debut thriller, a woman’s seemingly perfect romantic life is on the verge of collapse as she uncovers a hidden history surfacing dark secrets that have deadly consequences.

A young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer.

As the Civil War looms, a young girl must face a life-altering decision after awakening her sister’s ghost in this “poignant story of love, family and friendship [that] celebrates the power of liberation” (People).

A playwright must grapple with her difficult year and writer’s block while falling for the single dad living next door in this emotional debut novel from Ashley Jordan.

“A warm, smart, hilarious, delicious, riveting” (Curtis Sittenfeld) debut about the uncomfortable, unbreakable ties of family as four adult siblings come home to confront the state of their own lives and each other. Big-hearted, hilarious, and poignant, Leave Your Mess at Home is an insightful debut about forgiveness, unconditional love, and becoming who you want to be, asking the question: What do we owe to our families, and what do we owe to ourselves?

Jane has high hopes that her life is about to turn around. She’s about to finish her second novel — a centuries-spanning epic her artist husband dubs her “mulatto War and Peace.” But things don’t work out quite as hoped. Desperate for a plan B, like countless writers before her, Jane turns her gaze to Hollywood. Things finally seem to be going right for Jane — until they go terribly wrong … Funny, piercing, and page turning, Colored Television is Senna’s most on-the-pulse ambitious, and rewarding novel yet.

A dazzling novel about a young Black woman who walks the streets of Oakland and stumbles headlong into the failure of its justice system. This debut of a blazingly original voice “bursts at the seams of every page and swallows you whole” (Tommy Orange, author of There There).

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing.

This beautiful, page-turning and redemptive story of a mother’s gripping journey across the Caribbean to find her stolen children and piece her family back together is a “celebration of motherhood and female resilience” (The Observer).

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black.

A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young Black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.

Two estranged siblings delve into their mother’s hidden past — and how it all connects to her traditional Caribbean black cake — in this immersive family saga, “a character-driven, multigenerational story that’s meant to be savored” (Time).

A remarkable novel about J. P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who was forced to hide her true identity and pass as white in order to leave a lasting legacy that enriched our nation, from the New York Times bestselling authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

“[A] richly textured and deeply moving debut” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) about one unforgettable Southern Black family and its youngest daughter’s coming of age in the 1990s. With visceral clarity and powerful prose, Dameron reveals the devastation of being made to feel invisible and the transformative power of being seen. Redwood Court is a celebration of extraordinary, ordinary people striving to achieve their own American dreams.

In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocked, and, in front of everybody, shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range. The reasons for this desperate burst of violence and the consequences that spring from it lie at the heart of Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s funny, moving novel and his first since his National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird. Told with insight and wit, Deacon King Kong demonstrates that love and faith live in all of us.