Bernice L. McFadden

Set in a small Arkansas town in the 1950s, this tale of loyalty and friendship between two African-American women finds Jude turning to the church after the death of her daughter, and to a young woman who turns out to be a prostitute. A first novel. Reprint.

Sugar

A young woman must learn to love and trust again after experiencing the brutality of ritual servitude in West Africa.

Praise Song for the Butterflies

Having struggled throughout her life for an understanding of her identity, Sherry wonders at an uncharacteristic display of anger on the part of her mother and digs into her family's past throughout the course of a cross-country journey. By the author of Sugar. 15,000 first printing.

Nowhere is a Place

Combining original characters with fictionalized versions of historical figures, tells the story of African-American author Easter Bartlett's journey through the Jim Crow South to the vibrant cultural scene of New York's Harlem Renaissance.

A Novel

Glorious

Despite being born to a broken-hearted mother and a faithless father, Campbell still believes in the power of love?if she can ever find it. Living in the same neighborhood, but unknown to Campbell until a chance meeting brings them together, is Donovan, the ?little man? of a shattered home?a family torn apart by anger and bitterness. In the face of these daunting obstacles, Donovan dreams of someday marrying, raising a family, and playing for the NBA. But, deep inside Campbell and Donovan live the histories that have shaped their lives. What they discover?together and apart?forms the basis of this compelling, sensual, and surprising novel.

A Novel in Three Stories

Loving Donovan

Sugar Lacey returns to her childhood home in Short Junction, Arkansas, where she confronts love, hatred, and black magic, which leads her to St. Louis where an old friendship puts her courage and compassion to the test.

This Bitter Earth

'Riveting... one of America’s most creative and necessary writers' SAPPHIRE 'Absorbing' TLS A memoir about four generations of women whose lives illuminate a century of American history, by the author of Richard and Judy Book Club pick Sugar On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died. She was in a car crash on the motorway turnoff to Detroit. For a few minutes, she was clinically dead. From the moment of her resuscitation, we follow a remarkable life, all the way up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar. In 80s Brooklyn, growing up in terror of her alcoholic father, young Bernice loses herself in books. But it’s not until she reads Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, stories about ‘messy, beautiful, joyful Black people’ so reminiscent of her loved ones, that she sees herself within their pages. Bernice’s family story begins in Sandersville, Georgia, with freedwoman Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1870. Her descendants survived Reconstruction, Jim Crow, joined the ‘great migration’, cried when Dr King was assassinated during The Civil Rights Movement. Wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down through generations of women like Lou’s handmade quilt. Tracing her roots gives Bernice the strength to write her own story. A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving account of a life shaped both by family history and a drive to be something more. 'McFadden’s ability to tell a story makes this one of the most engrossing memoirs I have read in a long time... People will talk about these First Born Girls for years to come!' TARANA BURKE, activist and author of Unbound 'Remarkable... Firstborn Girls is an absolute treasure' DEESHA PHILYAW, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Four Generations, One Extraordinary Story

Firstborn Girls

My Name is Butterfly

"Simply miraculous... As her saga becomes ever more spellbinding, so does the reader's astonishment at the magic she creates. This is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, and at the center of The Book of Harlan is the restorative force that is music." - Washington Post Harlan and his best friend are invited to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre, but after the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, they are thrown into Buchenwald-the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany-irreparably changing the course of Harlan's life.

The Book of Harlan

"Childhood can be rough. But for Kenzie growing up in the Lowe home means opening the bottom drawer of her father's dresser to choose which of the three belts coiled, waiting like snakes, she wants to get whipped with; trips to Beehive Liquors for her father's vodka; and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment 5A. She goes to school, she holds odd jobs, and develops her own craving for the bottle. Twenty years have passed and it's now the nineties but not everything has changed for Kenzie. She is still haunted by her childhood, and learning that her father is dying she is shocked by her own desire to be with him during his final hours."--Jacket.

The Warmest December

Selected as a Go On Girl! Book Pick “100 Notable Books of 2012” —New York Times “50 Best Books of 2012” —Washington Post "McFadden works a kind of miracle -- not only do [her characters] retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises . . . Beautiful and evocative, Gathering of Waters brings three generations to life . . . The real power of the narrative lies in the richness and complexity of the characters. While they inhabit these pages they live, and they do so gloriously and messily and magically, so that we are at last sorry to see them go, and we sit with those small moments we had with them and worry over them, enchanted, until they become something like our own memories, dimmed by time, but alive with the ghosts of the past, and burning with spirits." --New York Times Book Review "Read it aloud. Hire a chorus to chant it to you and anyone else interested in hearing about civil rights and uncivil desires, about the dark heat of hate, about the force of forgiveness." --Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered, NPR "McFadden combines events of Biblical proportions--from flooding to resurrection--with history to create a cautionary, redemptive tale that spans the early twentieth century to the start of Hurricane Katrina. She compellingly invites readers to consider the distinctions between 'truth or fantasy' . . . In McFadden's boldly spun yarn, consequences extend across time and place. This is an arresting historical portrait of Southern life with reimagined outcomes, suggesting that hope in the enduring power of memory can offer healing where justice does not suffice." --Publishers Weekly "The rich text is shaped by the African American storytelling tradition and layered with significant American histories. Recalling the woven spirituality of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, this work will appeal to readers of mystic literature." --Library Journal "McFadden makes powerful use of imagery in this fantastical novel of ever-flowing waters and troubled spirits." --Booklist "In this fierce reimagining, the actual town of Money, MS narrates the story about the ghost of Emmett Till and his from-the-other-side reunification with the girl he loved as a child in Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden." --Ebony Magazine Gathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi--a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families. Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955. Anxious to escape the town, Tass marries Maximillian May and relocates to Detroit. Forty years later, after the death of her husband, Tass returns to Money and fantasy takes flesh when Emmett Till's spirit is finally released from the dank, dark waters of the Tallahatchie River. The two lovers are reunited, bringing the story to an enchanting and profound conclusion. Gathering of Waters mines the truth about Money, Mississippi, as well as the town's families, and threads their history over decades. The bare-bones realism--both disturbing and riveting--combined with a magical realm in which ghosts have the final say, is reminiscent of Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Gathering of Waters

"McFadden's reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold of addiction." --Publishers Weekly "Riveting. . . . So nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes." --Toni Morrison, author of Beloved "The sharpness of the prose and power of the story make it hard to stop reading even the most brutal scenes . . . The story feels real perhaps because it’s familiar . . . Or maybe, as Frey points out, the story is too vivid to be read purely as fiction. But in this Precious-style novel, genre is the least of our concerns." --Bust magazine "This is a story that cuts across all race and social strata in its need to be told." --The Dallas Morning News The Warmest December is the incredibly moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism that determined years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make. Bernice L. McFadden is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels.

"Bernice L. McFadden is one of the best contemporary literary writers out there today...Her brilliance, her talent as a novelist, is the very life she breathes into all of her characters." --Terry McMillan, from the Introduction "Bernice L. McFadden was one of the best writers to emerge in the post-Waiting to Exhale explosion that introduced at least a dozen Black female novelists. Loving Donovan has generated near-cult status among readers. After more than a decade since it appeared, Donovan is being reissued. How fitting that Terry McMillan has written a new introduction. If you've read Donovan before, you will fall in love all over again. And if this is your first time, prepare yourself for an intense romance between an enigmatic antihero and a heroine who will feel like your homegirl." --Essence Magazine "Loving Donovan is brilliant. By exploring the depth of her characters, the novel transforms what, on the surface, may appear to be the run-of-the-mill, paperback sentimental, tear-jerking coupling, into an understanding, unflinching, expertly told tale of human nature." --AALBC One of Library Journal's 25 Key Indie Fiction Titles for Fall 2014-Winter 2015! "A two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist also twice honored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, McFadden presents a love story starring Campbell and Donovan--both from shattered homes, both still hopeful, and both shaped more by history than they can imagine. Don't miss." --Library Journal Prepub Alert "Loving Donovan firmly establishes McFadden among the ranks of those few writers of whom you constantly beg for more." --Black Issues Book Review "McFadden is clearly adept in keeping the reader entertained, captivated, and on our toes to try to figure out what's going to happen next. The rich characters, life situations, and language all wrapped up in such a small book and saying so much is a feat." --Brown Girl Reading Praise for Bernice L. McFadden: "McFadden works a kind of miracle--not only do her characters retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises." --New York Times, on Gathering of Waters "Searing and expertly imagined." --Toni Morrison, on The Warmest December With a new introduction by Terry McMillan. The first section of McFadden's unconventional love story belongs to Campbell. Despite being born to a brokenhearted mother and a faithless father, Campbell still believes in the power of love...if she can ever find it. Living in the same neighborhood, but unknown to Campbell until a chance meeting brings them together, is Donovan, the "little man" of a shattered home--a family torn apart by anger and bitterness. In the face of daunting obstacles, Donovan dreams of someday marrying, raising a family, and playing in the NBA. But deep inside, Campbell and Donovan live with the histories that have shaped their lives. What they discover--together and apart--forms the basis of this compelling, sensual, and surprising novel.

ReShonda Tate Billingsley

J.D. Mason

Three national bestselling authors join talents in a multi-dimensional novel that illustrates the importance of love, family, and forgiveness. After a lifetime of womanizing, making babies, and then disappearing and taking no responsibility for his actions, Amos Davis has finally reached an impasse—literally crashing his car down a one-way street. It may be the only road to redemption for the aging musician, now afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease, for it has brought together the three daughters he abandoned. But when it comes to their deadbeat dad, their hearts may already be sealed… Cass, the child of Amos’s mistress, has had enough heartache, from losing her mother to the tragic end of her marriage. Amos was never there for her—why should this talented cake maker be sweet to him now? Toya, always the “other woman” in her affairs with married men, was deeply scarred by Amos’s public denial of her existence years ago. Will seeing him again send her further down a troubled path? A gifted writer, Tomiko channels her pain into her stories of the father she never knew. In her imagined world, she is safe—but will she ever risk her heart on real love? A powerful interplay of memory and reality, this emotionally taut novel weaves the voices of three authors to deliver an unforgettable tale of one man’s struggle to make peace with his failures, his family and the destinies of those who must forgive to move forward with their own lives and dreams.

Finding Amos

KIenzie's childhood in the Lowe home in apartment A5 is fraught with violence, alcoholism, and abuse, and the young woman dreams of escaping her own life. By the author of Sugar. Reprint.

Bernice L. McFadden has been named the Go On Girl! Book Club's 2018 Author of the Year WINNER of the 2017 American Book Award WINNER of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Fiction) 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee (Fiction)! A Washington Post Notable Book of 2016 "McFadden uses the experiences of her own ancestors as loose inspiration for the life of Harlan, whom she portrays from his childhood in Harlem through imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and his struggles afterward to put his life back together." --Library Journal "Simply miraculous...As her saga becomes ever more spellbinding, so does the reader's astonishment at the magic she creates. This is a story about the triumph of the human spirit over bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, and at the center of The Book of Harlan is the restorative force that is music." --Washington Post "Bernice L. McFadden took me on a melodious literary journey through time and place in her masterpiece, The Book of Harlan. It's complex, real, and raw...McFadden intricately and purposefully weaves history as a backdrop in her fiction. The Book of Harlan brilliantly explores questions about agency, purpose, freedom, and survival." --Literary Hub, one of Nicole Dennis-Benn's 26 Books From the Last Decade that More People Should Read "McFadden's writing breaks the heart--and then heals it again. The perspective of a black man in a concentration camp is unique and harrowing and this is a riveting, worthwhile read." --Toronto Star "The Book of Harlan is an incredible read. Bernice McFadden...has created an amazing novel that speaks to lesser known aspects of the African-American experience and illuminates the human heart and spirit. Her spare prose is rich in details that convey deep emotions and draw the reader in. This fictional narrative of Harlan Elliot's life is firmly grounded amidst real people and places--prime historical fiction, and the best book I have read this year." --Historical Novels Review, Editors' Choice "McFadden packs a powerful punch with tight prose and short chapters that bear witness to key events in early twentieth-century history: both World Wars, the Great Depression, and the Great Migration. Partly set in the Jim Crow South, the novel succeeds in showing the prevalence of racism all across the country--whether implemented through institutionalized mechanisms or otherwise. Playing with themes of divine justice and the suffering of the righteous, McFadden presents a remarkably crisp portrait of one average man's extraordinary bravery in the face of pure evil." --Booklist, Starred review The Book of Harlan opens with the courtship of Harlan's parents and his 1917 birth in Macon, Georgia. After his prominent minister grandfather dies, Harlan and his parents move to Harlem, where he eventually becomes a professional musician. When Harlan and his best friend, trumpeter Lizard Robbins, are invited to perform at a popular cabaret in the Parisian enclave of Montmartre--affectionately referred to as "The Harlem of Paris" by black American musicians--Harlan jumps at the opportunity, convincing Lizard to join him. But after the City of Light falls under Nazi occupation, Harlan and Lizard are thrown into Buchenwald--the notorious concentration camp in Weimar, Germany--irreparably changing the course of Harlan's life. Based on exhaustive research and told in McFadden's mesmeric prose, The Book of Harlan skillfully blends the stories of McFadden's familial ancestors with those of real and imagined characters.

Margaret Atwood

Aimee Bender

Edwidge Danticat

Valerie Martin

A chilling noir collection featuring fifteen crime and mystery tales and six poems from female authors. Joyce Carol Oates, a queen-pin of the noir genre, has brought her keen and discerning eye to the curation of an outstanding anthology of brand-new top-shelf short stories (and poems by Margaret Atwood!). While bad men are not always the victims in these tales, they get their due often enough to satisfy readers who are sick and tired of the gendered status quo, or who just want to have a little bit of fun at the expense of a crumbling patriarchal society. This stylistically diverse collection will make you squirm in your seat, stay up at night, laugh out loud, and inevitably wish for more. With stories by: Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood (poems), Valerie Martin, Aimee Bender, Edwidge Danticat, Sheila Kohler, S.A. Solomon, S.J. Rozan, Lucy Taylor, Cassandra Khaw, Bernice L. McFadden, Jennifer Morales, Elizabeth McCracken, Livia Llewellyn, Lisa Lim, and Steph Cha. Praise for Cutting Edge “The indefatigable Joyce Carol Oates gathers a strong list of names . . . . Emerging and established authors provide attention-grabbing short works: especially notable are Edwidge Danticat's story on the quotidian horror of domestic violence, Bernice L. McFadden’s comic take on the appropriation of racial friendship, and Lisa Lim’s illustrations of a grotesque marriage.” —Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine “But of course, in the end, it isn't the themes or the innovations on the format of the short story anthology that make the tales collected in Cutting Edge most “feel” as if you were reading Joyce Carol Oates herself. It is the writing. The tight plots and fresh, flowing prose that go about their business until—snap!—the story’s well-oiled mousetrap does its job.” —New York Journal of Books “The 15 stories and six poems in this slim yet weighty all-original noir anthology . . . are razor-sharp and relentless in their portrayal of life, offering snapshots of dysfunction, everyday toil, and brief joy. It is unusual, however, in its scope, zeroing in not only on what the female characters endure but what they dish out . . . . Each story sears but does not cauterize, leaving protagonists and readers raw . . . . Fans of contemporary crime fiction won’t want to miss this one.” —Publishers Weekly

New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers

Cutting Edge

"McFadden works a kind of miracle--not only do her characters retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises." --New York Times, on Gathering of Waters "Riveting...so nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes." --Toni Morrison, on The Warmest December "McFadden's lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth....McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos." --New York Times, on Glorious "An engrossing multigenerational saga...With her deep engagement in the material and her brisk but lyrical prose, McFadden creates a poignant epic of resiliency, bringing Sherry to a well-earned awareness of her place atop the shoulders of her ancestors, those who survived so that she might one day, too." --Publishers Weekly, on Nowhere Is a Place The Bernice L. McFadden Collection features four novels from the three-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist: Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious (2010), Nowhere Is a Place (2006), and The Warmest December (2001).

Bernice L. McFadden

Books

Your next favorite book is out there