Title:  Milk in My Coffee
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1 - Eric Jerome Dickey’s latest novel and I love it. Milk In My Coffee is an example that things are not always as they appear. Milk In My Coffee is the story of a what happens when a "good" (there’s more of us than some would have everyone believe) black man becomes involved with a white woman. Told with an excellent sense of timing, likeable characters, drama, and Dickey’s wonderful humor, this book is definitely a keeper. Oh, by the way, if you done have a Rachelle Farrell CD, you might want to pick one up, it sets a wonderful mood and assists in defining the characters through there taste in music. Luckily (or unlucky depending on how big of a fan of Ms. Farrell you are), Rachelle Farrell has two CDS. The first is the self-titled CD, Rachelle Farrell, which is produced by George Duke. The second is First Instrument, on the Blue Note label. A straight up jazz CD. Both are wonderful, a wonderful companion with the novel.

Title:  You Send Me: The Life & Times of Sam Cooke
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Author:  Daniel Wolff, with G. David Tenenbaum, Clifton White, & S.R. Crain
Publisher:  William Morrow & Company, Incorporated
Date Published:  February 1996
Format:  Trade Paper

2 - One of the BEST biographies written in the past 10 years. You Send Me is the story of the late, great Same Cooke, one of the greatest singers ever. A wonderful book of an extra-ordinary life. Based on interviews with Cooke’s family, associates and legal documents and transcripts, Wolff not only painstaking piece together Cooke’s life, but tells it in a captivating manner. And since I have you already in the music store, go ahead and get the wonderful compilation CD, Sam Cooke: The Man And His Music, on the RCA label. Not only does the CD have all of the great hits, but it also have a couple of his signature gospel recordings. If you aren’t a fan of the Great Cooke, you will be.

Title:  Sula
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3 - Ah, the coming of blackbirds.... In my opinion, one of the best books of the century. Morrison’s examination of what happens when a community encounters a person, Sula, that is truly free and exposes the responsibility that comes with that freedom. This book sealed Morrison’s place in my heart and mind encouraging me to give Beloved another try. A marvel.

Title:  The Color Purple
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4 - Sure you’ve seen the movie, but the novel is Walker’s living literary masterpiece. There’s not many novels that can break your heart and put it back together again. I am simply in awe of Walker and this is the book that did it.

Title:  The Living Is Easy
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5 - The Living Is Easy is the first novel by the youngest member of the Harlem Renaissance and the author of The Wedding, Dorothy West. This is the story of the selfishness of a woman who breaks up the home of her married sisters in order to feel the essence and remembrance of her mother no matter the consequences and the hardships that her sisters endure because of this. An excellent study of human nature told in a captivating narrative. A CLASSIC.

Title:  One Must Wait
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Author:  Penny Mickelbury
Publisher:  Simon & Schuster Trade
Date Published:  December 1997
Format:  Trade Cloth

6 - Carole Ann Gibson, an African-American lawyer, who is ready to hang up her law degree forever. Suddenly her lawyer husband is killed while working on a secretive case that has been taking an emotional toll on him before his death. Carole Ann leaves her Washington DC home and travels to the swamp lands of Louisiana to find her husband killer...that is if she can keep herself from becoming a meal for the alligators. An excellent suspense novel.

Title:  Caught in a Rundown; A Novel Introducing Jewel Averick and Dee Sweet
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7 - An excellent mystery/suspense novel that introduces the Lucy and Ethel of suspense novels, Jewel Averick and Dee Sweet. Jewel Averick is a spoiled, attention loving wife of a baseball player who becomes tired of the attention her husband spends on his baseball memorabilia collection and not on her. Dee Sweet, the wife of a baseball player, has a gang of kids and a husband she suspects of cheating. These two women, who didn’t care for each other in the beginning of the novel, finds themselves in a scavenger hunt for a baseball mitt of a Negro Baseball League hero that has been missing for 40 years. Not only does Saxton give a brief history lesson of the Negro Baseball League, she established the next mystery-solving, crime-fighting duo. I haven’t laughed so much or so long reading a mystery novel before in my life. Wait until you get to the Jewel and Dee In A Car Chase Episode!!! HILARIOUS!

Title:  Push
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8 - I love this book. Push is the story of Precious Jones, a teenager that has a hard life. An abuse mother, a sexually abuse father that she has two children by, and is HIV positive. Sure, it sounds like a downer and bears resemblance to The Color Purple, but this little novel is much more. It’s the story of surviving and the beautiful soul of Precious. Wonderful.

Title:  Yesterday Will Make You Cry
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9 - This has to be the most powerful, beautiful novels that I’ve ever read. Lyrical, poetic, Yesterday Will Make You Cry is a masterpiece waiting to happen. Himes’ classic novel of a white prison inmate and his life, what got him in prison and the life that he lead in prison. Not only was I moved by the detail, and character development, but Himes’ poetic prose and narrative is remarkable. When this novel was originally published, as Cast The First Stone, the publishing company deleted all of the poetic prose of the novel, all that was left was the graphical details of prison life, revealing only half of the story. Thus, stripping Himes of his rightful place in American literature. A masterwork.

Title:  Windy City
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10 - The second installment of Holton’s Police Commander Larry Cole suspense series. I love this series and this is my favorite novel in it. In this novel we have a rich white couple with strange sexual tastes and a hobby of being serial killers as well. Scary and gripping. If you haven’t read any of Holton’s novel, you are in for a treat. If you want to start at the beginning of Holton’s Cole series, be aware that he writes his novel in reverse, with his first novel starting off in the future and all following novels working their way back into the past.

Title:  Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo
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11 - My first Ntozake Shange novel. I was captivated by not only her sense of timing, characters and plot, but how she engaged all of the senses in telling this story of three sisters. A novel of experience. Shange made a believer out of me.

Title:  Holly
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Author:  Albert French
Publisher:  Viking Penguin
Date Published:  April 1996
Format:  Trade Paper

12 - French’s second masterpiece. I have a higher regard for him as a writer after reading this novel and that’s a hard row to hoe because I already thought the world of him after reading his first novel, Billy. Holly is the story of a Southern, young white woman who falls in love with a one-armed, black, World War 2 veteran. It’s a beautiful novel.

Title:  Walking through Mirrors
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13 - I’ve been waiting on this one for a couple of years. I am a big fan of Jackson’s The View From Here, and he did not let me down with his second effort Walking Through Mirrors. Walking Through Mirrors is the story of Jeremy Bishop who comes back home, Elsewhere, Louisiana, for his estrange father’s funeral. A novel of family, hope, and forgiveness, it’s not to be missed.

Title:  Touch
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14 - Rayna, an African-American, female, performing artist, discovers that she is HIV positive. Touch is how Rayna, her parents and her friends deal with Rayna and HIV. It is a story of heart break, healing, and hope. I readily admit, it broke my heart, but there was a rainbow, too. I don’t know how Miss Oprah missed this one, but her loss don’t have to be yours.

Title:  Some Love, Some Pain, Some Time: Stories
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15 - Boy, am I glad I was made to learn how to read!! I’m crazy about this J. California Cooper woman, Some Love, Some Pain, sometime is the first book that I read by her. It’s a wonderful collection of short stories. A wonderful introduction to the works of one of my all-time favorite authors.

Title:  A Different Drummer
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Author:  William Melvin Kelley
Publisher:  Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published:  May 1990
Format:  Trade Paper

16 - A saga of what happens when all of the black people, in 1959, one day starts leaving a Southern state. Told from the white citizens’ perspective, A Different Drummer tells the story of how a young black man, who burned down his house, salted his fields, and killed his livestock, started this great exodus and the effect it has on the white people of the town in which he lived. An unhearld classic that deserve a place with The Color Purple, Native Son, Beloved, Invisible Man, and Their Eyes Were Watching God. YES, it’s that good!

Title:  Mama Black Widow
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17 - My friend Gwen, hipped me to this one. Talk about a book that reaches out and grabs you by the throat! Mama Black Widow is the story of how one mother destroyed the lives of her children. Call this Iceberg Slim novel anything you want, black pulp, old school, I don’t care. But, if you want a book that will capture and hold your attention in a vise grip, this is the book.

Title:  I Can't Wait on God
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Author:  Albert French
Publisher:  Anchor Books
Date Published:  September 1998
Format:  Trade Cloth

19 - French’s latest novel that revolves around Jeremiah Henderson and his girlfriend Willet Mercer. Henderson needs money to get out of town so he decides that he’s going to pimp Willet to do it. Well, things don’t work out as he planned. This novel is about this strange couple and the neighbors that live in the same Pittsburgh alley, Homewood, as Henderson.

I love this novel. An interesting note, Homewood is the same alley that was brought to life by French’s first cousin, author, John Edgar Wideman. But, this is French’s novel, and what a wonderful novel it is.

Title:  Family
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Author:  J. California Cooper, Designed by Gina Davis
Publisher:  Doubleday & Company, Incorporated
Date Published:  December 1991
Format:  Trade Paper

20 - Family is the first novel by J. California Cooper and it is a magical novel. Family is told by a slave who is watching and telling the life of her oldest daughter Always. Despite being a novel that is told in slavery times and paints the ugly picture of the life of a slave, Cooper manages to bring a sense of magic and pride to the novel. It’s wonderful.