September #Blacklitchat Attica Locke The Cutting Season

We are so excited to have Attica Locke join us this Sunday, September 16 for #blacklitchat at 9 p.m. ET on Twitter.  Her new novel, The Cutting Season, is out on Sept. 18. It's a murder mystery set on a plantation. The Cutting Season is a great story and we can't wait to ask her all about it and her writing process. Please join us for the chat and let us know you're joining us on Sunday in the comments. As always, it will be a fun chat and we welcome your questions. We also will have prizes to giveaway.

Here's how to enter for a prize for our chat with @atticalocke:

 

 

 

1. Leave a comment below saying that you will join us for the chat.:
2. Follow @bernadettedavis, @deegospel and @atticalocke
3. Participate in the chat on Sunday, Sept. 16
4. Tweet one of the following before 5 p.m., 9/16:

RT @bernadettedavis Join me & @deegospel for #blacklitchat Sun., 9/16, 9p ET w/ @atticalocke, author of #TheCuttingSeason @harperbooks.

RT @bernadettedavis We're talking to @atticalocke about her new novel #TheCuttingSeason for #blacklitchat on Sunday at 9p ET.

@harperbooks Prizes will be shipped only to U.S. addresses. Here's more about Attica Locke and her books. New York Times review Los Angeles Times interview

About Attica Locke:

Attica Locke’s first novel, Black Water Rising, was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK in 2010. It was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, an NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a Strand Magazine Critics Award. The novel was also a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. In addition, Attica has spent many years working as a screenwriter, penning movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, and Dreamworks. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University. A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter. She is a member of the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

Visit her at http://www.atticalocke.com/

 About THE CUTTING SEASON

Caren Gray is the general manager of Belle Vie, a sprawling antebellum plantation where the past and the present coexist uneasily. The estate’s owners have turned the place into an eerie tourist attraction complete with full-dress reenactments and carefully restored slave quarters. Outside the gates, an ambitious corporation has been busy snapping up land from struggling families who have grown sugar cane for generations, replacing local employees with illegal laborers. Tensions mount when the body of a female migrant worker is found in a shallow grave on the edge of the property, her throat cut clean. The list of suspects is long, but when the cops zero in on a person of interest, Caren has a feeling they’re chasing the wrong leads. Putting herself at risk, she unearths startling new facts about an old mystery—the long-ago disappearance of a former slave—that has unsettling ties to the modern-day crime. In pursuit of the truth about Belle Vie’s history—and her own—Caren discovers secrets about both cases that an increasingly desperate killer will do anything to keep hidden. Taut, hauntingly resonant, and beautifully written, The Cutting Season is at once a thoughtful meditation on how America reckons its past with its future and a high-octane page-turner that unfolds with tremendous skill and vision, demonstrating once again that Locke is “a writer wise beyond her years” (Los Angeles Times).

Summer Thrillers with Miranda Parker July Blacklitchat

Twitter Book Club Discussion: SOMEONE BAD and SOMETHING BLUE

Join us for our #blacklitchat Twitter party. Miranda Parker, co-host of Blacklitchat and suspense author is our July host for this chat. We will be discussing her novel, SOMEONE BAD and SOMETHING BLUE (Kensington, July 2012).

Miranda Parker is the author of the Angel Crawford series. After graduating from Agnes Scott, she worked as a features editor for various magazines and spent many years as a publicist. She began writing features for newspapers and magazines, focusing on subjects in lifestyle, religion arts and entertainment and published over fifty articles. However, writing fun, feisty, redemptive, “bad girl gone good” stories is her passion. She began writing fiction in 2005 after she took an online writing workshop taught by Chuck Palahniuk. Now Miranda Parker writes comic romance suspense novels. Miranda has appeared at the 2011 National Book Club Convention, the 2011 Decatur Book Festival, the 2012 SC Book Festival and has been featured in The Atlanta Journal Constitution, RT Book Reviews and Publishers Weekly. She resides with her family in Georgia. Visit her at www.mirandaparker.com.

SOMEONE BAD and SOMETHING BLUE. . .

In the bestselling tradition of Janet Evanovich, Miranda Parker's debut novel, A Good Excuse To Be Bad, brilliantly blended mystery and humor, and introduced a beautiful, brainy, and tough-as-nails, single mom and bail recovery agent turned sleuth. In Parker’s second novel, Angel Crawford has a lot on her plate—but between crime-solving and kindergarten carpool, it’s all in a day’s work…. Angel Crawford appears to be on good terms with her family and on the cusp of a budding romance with her sidekick/pastor/crush, Justus Too-Hot-to-Be-Holy Morgan. But Angel still hasn’t solved a mystery that has haunted her for six years -- her fiancé's, Gabriel, murder. Then she receives a mysterious delivery on her doorstep that not only splits Gabe’s case wide open, but sends her on a chase through Atlanta’s secretive speakeasy society, the annual Running of the Brides, and a romp around the Okefenokee Swamp with a hot U.S. Marshall. Will Angel find the answers she seeks, or just unearth more danger?

"This book takes you on a dance and never lets you sit down!" Emerge VA Magazine

“From the first paragraph to the last, Parker has readers engrossed in the world of shady characters, secrets, romance and lies.” APOOO Book Club

“Miranda Parker has done it again. She has created an exciting tale that keeps you on the edge of your chair trying to figure whodunit.” World Mosaic Reviews

“It was just what I needed:  a fun rumble in the jungle with cool characters and plenty of action.” – Independent Online Booksellers Association

Join us this Sunday, July 22, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE here.www.twebevent.com/blacklitchat

NYT Bestseller Francis Ray hosts June#Blacklitchat

Twitter Book Club Discussion: WHEN MORNING COMES

Join us for our #blacklitchat Twitter party. We are excited and honored that Francis Ray is our June host for this chat. We will be discussing her novel, WHEN MORNING COMES (St. Martin, June 2012).

Francis Ray is the New York Times bestselling author of the Grayson novels, the Falcon books, the Taggart Brothers, and Twice the Tempation, among many other books. Her novel Incognito was made into a movie aired on BET. A native Texan, she is a graduate of Texas Woman's University and has a degree in nursing. Besides a writer, she is a school nurse practitioner with the Dallas Independent School District. She lives in Dallas. Visit her at http://francisray.com/

WHEN MORNING COMES . .

Five men and women who grew up as orphans seek out their lost brothers and sisters, finding love and family along the way.

Dr. Cade Mathis learned early that he was not the son of the man who raised him. His adoptive father, a cruel, bitter man had always been quick to tell him that he was a bastard and an embarrassment to the rich society family whose daughter got pregnant with him. So when Cade received a full scholarship to college, he was only too happy to leave the only home he had ever known behind and never looked back. Now a successful doctor and one of the best neurosurgeons in the state, the only thing he still wants are answers about where he came from. What he doesn’t expect to find is Sabrina Thomas, the new patient advocate at his hospital or how this woman will lead him to the family he has been searching for and a love he never expected to find.

"Family dynamics are at the core of Ray's new series, along with plenty of heartwarming romance. The primary and secondary couples here are smart, caring people and readers will root for them, making this a compelling series starter."—Romantic Times

"It's a perfect contemporary romance that will have you believing in true love. When Morning Comes is so powerfully written, and I guarantee, you won't want to miss it." -- Sizzling Hot Book Reviews

"Francis Ray creates characters and stories that we all love to read about."
--Eric Jerome Dickey

“Crisp style, realistic dialogue, likable characters and [a] fast pace.” —Library Journal

Join us this Sunday, June 24, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE here.www.twebevent.com/blacklitchat

Leonard Pitts, Jr. Hosts May 2012 Blacklitchat

Twitter Book Club Discussion: FREEMAN

Join us for our #blacklitchat Twitter party. We are excited and honored that Leonard Pitts, Jr. is our May host for this chat. We will be discussing his novel, FREEMAN (Agate, May 2012).

In a career spanning more than 35 years, Leonard Pitts, Jr. has been a columnist, a college professor, a radio producer and a lecturer. But if you ask him to define himself, he will invariably choose one word.  He is a writer, period, author of one of the most popular newspaper columns in the country and of a series of critically-acclaimed books, including his latest, a novel called FREEMAN. And his lifelong devotion to the art and craft of words has yielded stellar results, chief among them the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Visit him at http://www.leonardpittsjr.com

FREEMAN . .
Freeman is a love story--sweeping, generous, brutal, compassionate, patient--about the feelings people were determined to honor, despite the enormous constraints of the times. At the center of the novel is a love story. Sam Freeman, a liberated slave, embarks on a 1,000-mile journey to Mississippi in search of his wife Tilda. As Sam travels through the South, he encounters many different stories: slaves who are searching for their families, masters who won't give loved ones back and slaves who are killed on their way out of the South. Although the novel is set against the tumultuous backdrop of post-Civil War America, Pitts says, he wrote a love story to reveal the indelible strength of African-Americans during a time of oppression.

"Leonard Pitts has a passion for history and a gift for storytelling. Both shine in this story of love and redemption, which challenges everything we thought we knew about how our nation dealt with its most stubborn stain." —Gwen Ifill, PBS, author of The Breakthrough

"Post-Civil War America is fertile ground for novelists, but few have tilled it with such grace and majesty as Leonard Pitts. In Freeman, Pitts weaves a beguiling, cinematic love story against a rich tapestry of American history, evoking unforgettable characters in a narrative that could easily replace a shelf of textbooks. What a splendid read!" —Herb Boyd, co-editor of By Any Means Necessary—Malcolm X: Real, not Reinvented

"Leonard Pitts, Hr. crafts a novel as well as the great storytellers of our time. Freeman captured my attention from the very first sentence and my heart throughout. Sam and Tilda will stay with me for a very long time. I can't let them go." —Sybil Wilkes, The Tom Joyner Radio Show

"I fell in love with Leonard Pitts Jr.'s fiction with Before I Forget. Now he's out with a new one, Freeman....It's a beautiful book, and I highly recommend it." —Carleen Brice, White Readers Meet Black Authors blog

Join us this Sunday, May 20, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE  here.www.twebevent.com/blacklitchat

MARTHA SOUTHGATE APRIL 2012 BLACKLITCHAT

 

Twitter Book Club Discussion: TASTE OF SALT

Join us for our #blacklitchat Twitter party. We are excited and honored that Martha Southgate is our April host for this chat. We will be discussing her novel, TASTE OF SALT(Alonquin, September 2012).

Martha Southgate is the author of four novels. Her newest, The Taste of Salt, published by Algonquin Books, is in stores and available for pre-order now. Her previous novel, Third Girl from the Left, won the Best Novel of the Year award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was shortlisted for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy award. Her novel The Fall of Rome received the 2003 Alex Award from the American Library Association and was named one of the best novels of 2002 by Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. She is also the author of Another Way to Dance, which won the Coretta Scott King Genesis Award for Best First Novel. She received a 2002 New York Foundation for the Arts grant and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Her July 2007 essay from the New York Times Book Review, "Writers Like Me" received considerable notice and appears in the anthology Best African-American Essays 2009. Previous non-fiction articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine,O, Premiere, and Essence. Please visit her at http://www.marthasouthgate.com/.

TASTE OF SALT. . .
Josie Henderson loves the water and is fulfilled by her position as the only senior-level black scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family back in landlocked Cleveland. Her adored brother, Tick, was her childhood ally as they watched their drinking father push away all the love that his wife and children were trying to give him. Now Tick himself has been coming apart and demands to be heard. Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the Hendersons from the parents’ first charmed meeting to Josie’s realization that the ways of the human heart are more complex than anything seen under a microscope.

[A] searing, gorgeous, brilliant and profoundly human novel about two generations of an African American family riding the slow-mo roller coaster of addiction.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“In The Taste of Salt, Southgate writes with a minor-key melancholy that comes on softly, but lingers long after.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Southgate’s arresting, fluid prose and authentic dialogue come together in a resonating study of relationships, where selfish tendencies among the various characters are revealed, as are their feelings of regret. A fascinating story that shows how the mistakes people make affect all those around them.”—Publishers Weekly

Join us this Sunday, April 22, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE  here. www.twebevent.com/blacklitchat

Aliya S. King hosts March #blacklitchat

Twitter Book Club Discussion: DIAMOND LIFE

Join us for our #blacklitchat Twitter party. We are excited and honored that Aliya S. King is our March host for this chat. We will be discussing her sophomore novel, DIAMOND LIFE(Gallery, February 2012).
Aliya S. King is an award-winning journalist and the author of PLATINUM and DIAMOND LIFE. She is the co-author of Original Gangster and the New York Times bestseller Keep the Faith. Her work has appeared in Vibe, Giant, Uptown, Essence, King, Ms., Us Weekly, and Teen People, among others. Please visit her at www.aliyasking.com.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR . . .
Set in the highest ranks of the music industry’s fame machine, Diamond Life is an intoxicating story of love, sex, ambition, money, betrayal, and the surprising realities of making it big.
Alex Maxwell’s career as a journalist and celebrity ghost writer is taking off, despite the slightly embarrassing authorship of hip-hop super-groupie Cleo Wright’s memoir. And while Alex’s star is on the rise, it pales in comparison to her husband Birdie’s multiplatinum debut and world tour. Slowly but surely, everything they swore would never happen begins to come true, like leaving Brooklyn for a mansion in suburban Jersey and letting a reality TV crew into their home. Birdie is confronted time and again by the sexy groupies who pursue famous rappers like heat-seeking missiles and he’s forced to make some life-changing choices.
Meanwhile, aging rapper Z, in recovery from drug addiction, is too busy trying to repair his marriage to leave much time for his son Zander, newly signed to Z’s label and struggling to maintain his appeal in the wake of a domestic violence scandal with his diva girlfriend Bunny.
Record label president Jake is trying to deal with the death of his wife, multiplatinum R&B artist Kipenzi Hill, by drowning his sorrows in alcohol and women. When he meets Lily, a beautiful, quiet waitress, he can’t get her out of his head. But Lily has her own problems to handle and she wants nothing to do with the fame, drama, and baggage that Jake carries with him.
This juicy follow-up to Aliya S. King’s Platinum is a scintillating roman à clef that takes readers behind the curtain once again for the real scoop on the biggest players in the hip-hop game—and the first ladies who hold them together.
What they are saying…
In this atmospheric follow-up to 2010’s Platinum, entertainment journalist King continues the saga of her hip-hop moguls (and the women who love them) that she started inPlatinum… the author’s journalism experience with Vibe, Essence, and other publications lends an authentic air. Readers will enjoy guessing which real-life celebrity dramas might match their fictional counterparts. A solid page-turner.”
-- Publishers Weekly


Join us this Sunday, March 25, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE  here.

Jacqueline Luckett February Host #BLACKLITCHAT

Twitter Book Club Discussion: PASSING LOVE

Join us for our #blacklitchat Twitter party. We are excited and honored that Jacqueline Luckett is our February host for this chat. We will be discussing her sophomore novel, PASSING LOVE(February 2012).

Jacqueline worked in sales for Xerox for twenty years. During that time she married, raised a family and took creative writing classes where she reignited her love of writing. In 2004, Jacqueline formed the Finish Party (featured in O Magazine, October 2007) along with seven other women writers-of-color. The group provides strong support for each other's writing, good meals, friendship and fun. Since then Jacqueline has written two novels, Jacqueline is the author of two novels, PASSING LOVE and SEARCHING FOR TINA TURNER.

Nicole-Marie Handy has loved all things French since she was a child. After the death of her best friend, determined to get out of her rut, she goes to Paris, leaving behind a marriage proposal. While there, Nicole chances upon an old photo of her father-lovingly inscribed, in his hand, to a woman Nicole has never heard of. What starts as a vacation quickly becomes an investigation into his relationship to this mystery woman.

Moving back and forth in time between the sparkling Paris of today and the jazz-fueled city filled with expatriates in the 1950s, Passing Love is the story of two women dealing with lost love, secrets, and betrayal...and how the City of Light may hold all of the answers.

“Luckett weaves a fascinating portrait of women of color who defy family and tradition to follow love and chase success.”- Publishers Weekly

"Luckett is a writer to watch and admire."—ZZ PACKER, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Join us this Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE  here.

Bernice McFadden January 2012 #Blacklitchat Host

 

Twitter Book Club Discussion: Gathering of Waters

Join us for our first #blacklitchat Twitter party of 2012. We are excited and honored that Bernice McFadden is out host for this chat. We will be discussing her fantabulous new novel, Gathering of Waters (January 2012)

BERNICE L. McFADDEN is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels including the classics Sugar and Glorious, which was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, selected as the debut title for the One Book, One Harlem program, and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. She is a two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of two fiction honor awards from the BCALA. Her sophomore novel, The Warmest December, was praised by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison as "searing and expertly imagined." McFadden lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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.

Following her best-selling, award-winning novel Glorious, McFadden produces a fantastical historical novel featuring the spirit of Emmett Till.

"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

"As strange as this may sound, Bernice L. McFadden has created a magical, fantastic novel centered around the notorious tragedy of Emmett Till's murder. This is a startling, beautifully written piece of work."
--Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River

"In her new novel, Gathering of Waters, Bernice McFadden brings her own special vision to the unfortunate story of Emmett Till and his murder in Money, Mississippi. This moving and magical novel, which traces the generations leading up to and away from that horrible night in 1955, drew me in immediately and swept me along through its richly imagined world. I couldn't stop reading, caught up as I was in that enticing place between truth and fantasy, the here-and-now and the what-was, the living and the dead, the ugliness and the beauty, the hatred and the love. What a rich chorus of voices Bernice McFadden has fashioned from this place called Money."
--Lee Martin, author of Break the Skin and The Bright Forever

Join us this Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 9PM ET to chat LIVE with Bernice McFadden about GATHERING OF WATERS here.