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literary fiction books
Explore 104 verified literary fiction books in The Reading Room catalog and open any title for Book DNA, content awareness, and community discovery.
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Time of the Locust". . . A novel about an autistic boy whose drawings represent something much deeper than even the doctors who study can grasp; his father, s...The IntuitionistIt is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female eleva...New PeopleAs the twentieth century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweethear...Juniper's Whitening / VictimeseTwo plays exploring the pain of living and the difficulty of dying by a sensational new writer
Juniper's Whitening
"Tell me this - is it...By the Light of My Father's SmileA family from the United States goes to the remote Sierras in Mexico--the writer-to-be, Susannah; her sister, Magdalena; her father and moth...Kill 'em and LeaveFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction, Deacon King Kong, and ...The Icarus GirlThe audacious first novel from the award-winning and bestselling author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours • “Oyeyemi bri...Little RotOne weekend.
The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city.
A party that goes awry.
A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no on...ErasureThelonius "Monk" Ellison is an erudite, accomplished but seldom-read author who insists on writing obscure literary papers rather than the s...Hell of a BookIn Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline d...The Late AmericansIn the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volati...PetThere are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with...Holler, ChildIn Holler, Child’s eleven brilliant stories, LaToya Watkins presses at the bruises of guilt, love, and circumstance. Each story introduces u...The UntellingFrom the author of the Oprah Book Club Selection An American Marriage, here is an emotionally powerful novel that "succeeds mightily...truly...BitterBitter is an aspiring artist who has been invited to cultivate her talents at a special school in the town of Lucille. Surrounded by other c...Minor Black FiguresNew York simmers with heat and unrest as Wyeth, a painter, finds himself at an impasse in his own work.
After attending a dubious show put ...I Am Not Sidney PoitierI was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter ...Silver SparrowWith the opening line of Silver Sparrow, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story abo...John Henry DaysColson Whitehead’s triumphant novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died out...JazzIn the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopat...The Death of Vivek OjiOne afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son’s body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at h...Dr. No*Dr. No is the spy thriller as you’ve never read it before! Reinvented by Percival Everett, the twice Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The...Real Life"A novel of rare emotional power that excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend -- and a lifetime of buried pain. Almost eve...Every Kiss a WarThe twenty-seven stories in Leesa Cross-Smith's debut short story collection Every Kiss a War are set to the sounds of “frogs and crickets o...Master of PoisonsAward-winning author Andrea Hairston weaves together African folktales and postcolonial literature into unforgettable fantasy in Master of P...People Like Us**Two Black writers - with stories to tell, and some they'd rather forget.**
One wins the big prize, gets the book tour, walks into the spo...Parasol Against the AxeIn Helen Oyeyemi’s joyous new novel, the Czech capital is a living thing—one that can let you in or spit you out.
For reasons of her own, H...Paradise"Rumors had been whispered for more than a year. Outrages that had been accumulating all along took shape as evidence. A mother was knocked ...Come and Get ItIt's 2017 at the University of Arkansas, and Millie Cousins—a super-senior resident assistant at Belgrade Dormitory—just wants to graduate, ...Archangels of FunkRun from your past. Hide from your future. Protect your present.
The Water Wars have scrambled the world. Flood refugees are on the run. Di...Sag HarborBenji Cooper is one of the few Black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag ...The Nickel BoysWhen Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, ...KinVernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood ...PerishBear it or perish yourself. Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateful night in her cousin’s outhouse that change the trajectory of h...Deacon King KongIn September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known in the neighborhood as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Causeway H...Filthy AnimalsIn the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delica...A MercyA powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize--winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that ...The Bluest EyeIn Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children c...This Close to OkayOn a rainy October night in Kentucky, recently divorced therapist Tallie Clark is on her way home from work when she spots a man precariousl...Moon Witch, Spider KingIn Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape ...BelovedToni Morrison--author of Song of Solomon and Tar Baby--is a writer of remarkable powers: her novels, brilliantly acclaimed for their passion...Creatures of Passage"Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. E...So Much Blue"Kevin Pace's latest painting, like so much of his past, remains a secret. Ten years ago, he had an affair with a young watercolorist in Pa...The Crossing"Stay and die, or run and survive. Twins Virginia and Tommy Matthews have been on their own since they were orphaned at the age of five, sur...Crook Manifestot’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 brok...What the Fireflies KnewAn ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies Knew follows KB after her father dies of an overdose ...Friday BlackThe acclaimed debut short story collection from the author of Chain Gang All Stars; a piercingly raw and, at times, heartbreakingly satirica...The FraudIn her first historical novel, Zadie Smith transports the reader to a Victorian England transfixed by the real-life trial of the Tichborne C...The Book of Night WomenFrom a young writer who radiates charisma and talent comes a sweeping, stylish historical novel of Jamaican slavery that can be compared onl...Gingerbread"Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children's stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a d...Chain-Gang All-StarsShe felt their eyes, all those executioners…
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Star...The Vanishing HalfBrit Bennett’s chart topping novel, ***The Vanishing Half***, is a story that tracks the lives of twin African American twin sisters who, af...Half of a Yellow SunWith effortless grace, celebrated author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassion...Leaving Atlanta"It was the end of summer, a summer during a two-year nightmare. African American children around Atlanta were vanishing, and twenty-nine wo...The WonderAs a child Lucas thought that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man still living with his sister De...Song Yet SungFrom the New York Times-bestselling author of The Color of Water comes a powerful page-turner about a runaway slave and a determined slave c...FreshwaterThe astonishing debut novel from the acclaimed bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji, You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, and ...Miracle at St. AnnaInspired by a historical incident that took place in the village of St. Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany and by the experiences of the famed Buff...Black Leopard, Red WolfTracker 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 disappeare...NightcrawlingKiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex optimistically called the Regal-Hi. Both have dropped ou...The Underground RailroadCora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater ...SulaTwo girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morriso...The Good Lord BirdHenry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1857, when the region is a battleground between anti- and pro-slavery f...AmericanahAmericanah is a 2013 novel by the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, for which Adichie won the 2013 U.S. National Book Critics Circle...Swing Time"An ambitious, exuberant new novel moving from North West London to West Africa, from the multi-award-winning author of White Teeth and On B...The UnsettledTwo bold, utopic communities are at the heart of Ayana Mathis’s searing follow-up to her bestselling debut, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. Bon...Whiskey & RibbonsEvi―a classically-trained ballerina―was nine months pregnant when her husband Eamon was killed in the line of duty on a steamy morning in Ju...The Wonder of All ThingsAfter her ability to heal physical ailments is revealed to the world, thirteen-year-old Ava has trouble dealing with all the people who come...The ReturnedHarold and Lucille Hargrave's eight-year-old son, Jacob, died tragically in 1966. In their old age they've settled comfortably into life wit...On Beauty"Howard Belsey is an Englishman abroad, an academic teaching in Wellington, a college town in New England. Married young, thirty years later...The TreesAfter a series of brutal murders in a rural Mississippi town, investigators arrive and discover a large number of similar cases that all hav...You Made a Fool of Death with Your BeautyFeyi Adekola wants to learn how to be alive again.
It’s been five years since the accident that killed the love of her life and she’s al...Song of SolomonMilkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his l...Dear SenthuranIn their critically acclaimed novels, Akwaeke Emezi has introduced readers to a landscape marked by familial tensions, Igbo belief systems, ...James**A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view**
Whe...Dream CountChiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with he...Loved OneAfter falling in love one summer in Barcelona, Gabe and Julia went their separate ways—she to college, and he to pursue his dream of becomin...Will Do Magic for Small ChangeAndrea Hairston's historical fantasy Will Do Magic for Small Change presents a tale of alien science and earthbound magic and the secrets fa...PeacesWhen Otto and Xavier Shin declare their love, an aunt gifts them a trip on a sleeper train to mark their new commitment—and to get them out ...An American MarriageNewlyweds 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 o...Good DirtWhen ten-year-old Ebby Freeman heard the gunshot, time stopped. And when she saw her brother, Baz, lying on the floor surrounded by the shat...White TeethAt the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie an...Half-Blown RoseVincent, having grown up as the privileged daughter of artists, has a lovely life in many ways. At forty-four, she enjoys strolling the stre...A House for AliceIn the early hours of June 14, 2017, the world watches as flames leap up the sides of a residential high-rise in West London, consuming Gren...Tar BabyJadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Bla...Mr FoxFrom the prizewinning young writer of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a brilliant and inventive story of love, lies, and inspiration.
Fairy...Boy, Snow, BirdThis novel is a reimagining of the fairy tale Snow White recast as a story of family secrets, race, beauty, and vanity set in the United Sta...The Mothers"A dazzling debut novel from an exciting new voice, The Mothers is a surprising story about young love, a big secret in a small community--a...NW"Four Londoners--Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan--try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From ...Harlem Shuffle"Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked..." To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding...Redwood CourtSo begins award-winning poet DéLana R. A. Dameron’s debut novel, Redwood Court. The baby of the family, Mika Tabor spends much of her time i...26aA hauntingly beautiful, wickedly funny, and devastatingly moving novel of innocence and dreams that announces the arrival of a major new tal...Apex Hides the HurtThe town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to re...The Twelve Tribes of HattieIn 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. This “brutal, illumi...SuderIt's the middle of the season and the third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, Craig Suder, is in the midst of an inescapable slump. On top o...CaucasiaBirdie and Cole are the daughters of a black father and a white mother, intellectuals and activists in the civil rights movement in Boston i...God Help the ChildSpare and unsparing, God Help the Child--the first novel by Toni Morrison to be set in our current moment--weaves a tale about the way the s...The Heaven & Earth Grocery StoreIn 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find w...Colored TelevisionA brilliant take on love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex from the bestselling author of Ca...The Temple of My FamiliarA visionary cast of characters weave together their past and present in a brilliantly intricate tapestry of tales.
It is the story of the d...SymptomaticA young woman moves to New York City for what promises to be a dream job. Displaced, she feels unsure of her fit in the world. Then comes a ...The Third Life of Grange CopelandDespondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenant farmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to head North. Aft...Content Warning: EverythingIn their bold debut poetry collection, Akwaeke Emezi—award-winning author of Freshwater, PET, The Death of Vivek Oji,and Dear Senthuran—imag...A Brief History of Seven Killings"From the acclaimed writer of The Book of Night Women comes a masterful novel framed as a fictional oral history that explores the events an...