New Books......!!

I'm sure you've noticed that I have not been posting as much. Well, hazy-hot days do not make for intelligent and/or witty narratives..at least not in my world. LOL

Today I just wanted to let you in on some new titles that you simply MUST go out and purchase!

Where are you from?' is a question I always find hard to answer. 1971: an ad in Nursery World. 'Private foster parents required for a three-month-old baby' - me. The lucky applicants are a 57-year-old white woman and her daughter, who love babies, especially black babies. My mother arrives, a haughty Nigerian woman in a convertible with a moses basket on the seat beside her, setting the net curtains in this all-white council estate twitching. And though the whole place makes my privileged mother's skin crawl, she returns to London with an empty basket beside her, choosing this home for me because, unusually for the estate, my foster mother talks proper, and I'll need a posh white accent for the bright future I have ahead of me. I'll cling on to that idea - that I've a bright future ahead of me - even though there's nothing in my upbringing to warrant it. Even though my mother's love consists of long absences, confusing behaviour and dauntingly high expectations. Even though my foster mother's love is overwhelming and suffocating. Even though I seem to be a magnet for abusive sexual attention from men I barely know. Even though the authorities have no idea where to put me or where I belong, and nor, really, do I. And even when I fall pregnant at eighteen and find myself back in the rural town I'd tried to escape from, with a tiny baby dependent on me, I still think the future's out there. I'll find it, whatever it takes. "Precious" is the story of growing up black in a white community, of struggling to find an identity that fits amid conflicting messages, of deciphering a childhood full of secrets and dysfunction. Painfully honest, swerving from farce to tragedy, "Precious" has a spirit that refuses to be crushed. Available NOW

Communicating with ghosts, including the spirit of her mother who died giving birth to her, is a gift that Lanesha, 12, has had for as long as she can remember. The girl's beloved caretaker, Mama Ya-Ya, a midwife and healer, has a gift that allows her to predict the future. When she begins to sense that a big storm is coming to their much-loved New Orleans neighborhood, both she and Lanesha must trust in their senses and in one another to survive. Lanesha is a wonderful character who exudes resilience and fortitude in the face of a catastrophe as well as a personal vulnerability in terms of her status as an orphan and an outsider. Words, numbers, and colors as seen through her eyes show the magic and wonder that exist in everyday things. The unique writing style even allows the unlikely combination of elderly Mama Ya-Ya's heady scents of Vicks Vapor Rub and Evening in Paris perfume to seem wonderful and inviting. Although the outcome of Hurricane Katrina is known, the clever writing allows the unavoidable tragedy to unfold in such a haunting and suspenseful manner that the extreme sense of foreboding and ultimate destruction is personalized and unforgettable. Heartbreak and hope are reflected in Lanesha's story, which will capture even reluctant readers due to the inventive storytelling and the author's ability to bring history to life"....We all know Jewell Parker Rhodes from such riveting works as "Voodoo Season" and "Douglass' Women." So it's a thrill to see that she has taken the leap from adult fiction to children's fiction with her latest book: "Ninth Ward," which will be available on August 16th. 

A year spent working as a nanny in Brooklyn helps directionless Zora discover that her true passions are cooking and her boss's husband. Tharps' guileless first novel (after Kinky Gazpacho: A Memoir, 2008) seems, like Zora, unsure of its orientation, heading out as a discussion of ambition but ending up a more conventional love triangle, the narration split between its two female characters, white overachiever Kate and the 30-year-old African-American college dropout she hires. Kate, happily married to Brad, is returning to her high-powered PR job after maternity leave and needs reliable help at home, which she finds in Zora, whose middle-class upbringing in Michigan has left her feeling guilty at her lack of professional focus. Although uncomfortable about "playing mammy," Zora enjoys being a domestic goddess and begins cooking meals for Kate and Brad, leading to dreams of having her own catering company. Meanwhile, Kate's job engulfs her, and Brad suddenly falls for Zora, leaving the marriage ruined. Tharp, more successful discussing stereotypes of black women and white men than explaining this plot twist, wraps matters up quickly, restoring her sadder but wiser protagonists to happiness. Available on August 24th!



Lori L. Tharps is the author of Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain,named by Salon.com as one of their top ten books for 2008, and the co-author of Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America.