New Jersey girl Zora Emerson is attending her pre-college prep at Halstead University, where the incredibly wealthy and stuck-up students go, and after only a week she is feeling academically confident but socially out of place; then an awkward mix-up of cell phones brings her into closer contact with Owen Whittelsey (prince of a small European country) and his security guards--but it is when Owen asks her to be his date at his brother's royal wedding...

"A dazzling literary debut novel-within-a-novel, in the vein of The Prophets, about a young author writing about the forbidden love affair between E.M. Forster and Mohammed el Adl - in which Mohammed's story collides with his own, blending fact and fiction"--

She's had celebrity, isn't hurting for money, and is living peacefully single. Still, Sonya Richardson can't resist starring on a hit reality dating show to show America what a real black woman is like. This former pro athlete refuses to act like a diva or put up with any drama. But one contestant is throwing Sonya off her game. He's surprisingly kind, way too easy to spill her secrets to -- and giving her the kind of hope she hasn't felt in a long,...

Inside: Tracey never fit in anywhere as a child, so she worked hard to make college different. Out in the world, she didn't talk about her parents, or her travels, or the languages she spoke. She didn't talk much at all because it frequently led to black people asking why she talked "white" and white people asking where she was from. No one believed she was a native Southerner.

But the people she met in grad school weren't satisfied with knowing

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When recently widowed Joe Murphy "meets" Shawna Mitchell in an online forum, all he's seeking is advice on keeping his home and his family together. Shawna's compassionate e-mails become his lifeline, and as months pass their correspondence grows deep and warm. Discovering that Shawna lives only blocks away. . .well, it feels like more than luck. It feels a lot like hope. With three children to raise, Shawna has no interest in getting close to another...

Paige is a full-figured wedding planner who, at 40, has given up on dating. Instead, she indulges in a passionate one-night stand with a man she meets in a hotel bar and then throws herself into her career. As luck would have it, she lands a major client soon afterwards, and the groom's brother happens to be none other than Matthew, the man from her fling. To make matters worse, he's white ... and ten years her junior. Although Matthew is ready

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Hope Warren doesn't do happily-ever after. Or optimism in general. After a breakup that shredded her self-esteem, and earning a so-far-useless art degree, the only thing she's (barely) living for is a dream home way out of reach. So when outgoing Irishman Dylan Healy keeps getting in her face, she's sure there's a catch. He's challenging her idle creativity. He's as kind as he is charismatic. And he's sparking a hunger Hope didn't know she had. Suddenly...

"Karissa Glover is a movie producer who moves into a decrepit but functional old mansion in the West Adams Heights area of Los Angeles, where black celebrities of yesteryear--Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers, and others--once resided. The former owner was a white actress, Blair Kendrick, who often starred as the 'bad girl'--a femme fatale--in films noir of the 1940s. However, Blair's career was cut short when she was tragically killed by the mob after...

Jayd Jackson, happily in a relationship with the coolest white boy ever, deals with her ex-boyfriend, who is trying to break them up, and her best friend Nellie who is causing all sorts of drama as she runs for junior class homecoming Princess against the Athletes and Cheerleaders.

Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award Windsor Armstrong is a polished, Harvard educated, African-American professor of Russian literature. Her son, Pushkin X, is an exceedingly famous pro-football player, an achievement that impresses his mother not at all. Even more distressing, however, is that her beloved son has just become engaged to a gorgeous white Russian émigré who also happens to be a lap dancer. For Windsor, this is no laughing matter....