Amanda and Clay head to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they've rented for the week. The houseowners, Ruth and G. H., arrive in the middle of the night in a panic. They say a sudden blackout has swept the city: the TV and internet are down, and no cell phone service. Is the vacation...

In this 1983 short story about race and the relationships that shape us through life, Twyla and Roberta, friends since childhood who are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem as they grow older, cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. After losing touch, they meet several times by accident. Seemingly...

Returning to the South to fight for the civil rights movement, a young black lawyer finds his life complicated by a beautiful white artist.

A magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. Cora is a young slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood-where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes...

When Tomb of the Unknown Racist opens in 1999, Ellen--now sober, haunted by her activist past, her failed relationships--is peacefully taking care of her demented mother in South Carolina. Ellen's brother, Royce, was a celebrated novelist who, a decade earlier, saw his work adopted by racists and fell under the sway of white supremacy. Ellen thought him dead from a botched FBI raid on his compound. But when his estranged daughter turns up on the news...

Nine stories highlight the complexities of being Black in modern America, including a Black son who visits his white father during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and a Black Republican whose skin disease is turning him white.

"Yolanda Álvarez está teniendo un buen año. Comienza a sentirse como en casa en la Secundaria Julia De Burgos, su escuela en el Bronx. Tiene a su mejor amiga Victory, y tal vez algo con José, un jevito de último año que está conociendo mejor. Confía en que su iniciación en la tradición de brujas de su familia sucederá pronto. Pero mientras tanto, un muchacho blanco, hijo de un político, aparece en la Secundaria Julia De Burgos y su energía...

"9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Mathews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had...

"From the author of Seven Types of Ambiguity, an epic that reaches across generations and spans continents, revealing the interconnectedness and interdependence of humanity and the profound impact of memory on our lives"--