No one's ever fallen out of love with Glorette Picard, with her black waterfall of hair and skin gold as a mothwing. Fine as wine and just my kind, they call her. Gilt, they call her. Still, when they drive by the alley where she work...

A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEARFrom the author of A Million Nightingales ("a writer of exceptional gifts and grace"—Joyce Carol Oates) comes a luminous new novel about the forces that tear families apart and the ti...

A haunting, beautifully written novel set in early-nineteenth-century Louisiana: the tale of a slave girl’s journey—emotional and physical—from captivity to freedom.Susan Straight has been called “a writer of e...

Full of defiance and tenderness, Aquaboogie chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the residents of Rio Seco. In “Aquaboogie,” art student Nacho finances his class out East by working as a janitor, subject to torment by ...

One of NPR\'s Best Books of the Year“Straight’s memoir is a lyric social history of her multiracial clan in Riverside that explores the bonds of love and survival that bind them, with a particular emphasis on the women&rsq...