by Brandy Colbert (2014)
Four years after Theo's best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.
Dori Sanders
"Traces the life and times of Mae Lee Barnes, a black woman from rural South Carolina ... including her challenges as a single parent on a working farm, her life after her children are grown, the realities of racial integration in the South, and the realization that her memory is slipping away"--Back cover.
Marita Golden
"A moving African-American family drama of love and devotion in the face of Alzheimer's disease. You just can't plan for this kind of thing. Diane Tate certainly hasn't. She never expected to slowly lose her talented husband to the debilitating effects of early-onset Alzheimer's disease. As a respected family court judge, she's spent her life making tough calls, but when her sixty-eight-year-old husband's health worsens and Diane is forced to move him into an assisted living facility, it seems her world is spinning out of control. As Gregory's memory wavers and fades, Diane and her children must reexamine their connection to the man he once was-and learn to love the man he has become ..."--
Colleen Faulkner
What happens after you get what you've always wanted? In Colleen Faulkner's thought-provoking and emotionally compelling novel, a mother is reunited with the daughter who was abducted as a toddler--only to face unexpected and painful challenges... It's the moment Harper Broussard always dreamed of. Her daughter Georgina, snatched fourteen years ago during a Mardi Gras parade, is standing before her, making cappuccinos behind the counter of Harper's favorite New Orleans coffee shop. Harper's ex-husband, Remy, has patiently endured many "sightings" over the years, and assumes this is yet another false alarm. Yet this time, Harper is right. The woman who kidnapped Georgina admits to her crime. Georgina, now known as Lilla, returns to her birth parents. But in all of Harper's homecoming fantasies, her daughter was still a little girl, easily pacified with a trip to the park or a cherry snowball. In reality, she's a wary, confused teenager who has never known any mother except the loving woman who's now serving time. Harper's younger daughter, Josephine, has spent her life competing with the ghost of a perfect, missing sister. Trying to bond with the real, imperfect version isn't any easier. And though Remy has agreed to give their strained marriage another chance, he and Harper struggle to connect. Clinging to dreams of reuniting has been Harper's way of surviving. Now she must forge new ones on an often heartbreaking yet ultimately hopeful journey--one that will redefine her idea of motherhood and family.
Clayton Bess
An African father tells his son about the disaster that followed the night a baby with smallpox was abandoned in his family's house.